External drives
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That is the funny thing about hard-drives. You can find rabid anti-Brand X people for any of the major HD brands. I know people who swear by Maxtor but will drive you insane with boredom over all their Western Digital failures. People who think WD is the bomb and Seagate are a bunch of crooks ("It failed two days after the warranty expired!") and so on and so on. I don't know a single HD brand that doesn't have a horrific failure story. On the other hand I have never had a HD failure and I have used Maxtor, WD, Seagate and IBM. One does not find this rabid hatred and favouritism amongst other hardware components quite as much as when talking about hard-drives. regards, Paul Watson South Africa Colib and WebTwoZero. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!
Paul, I cannot argue at all with the advice you've been given so far. I'll pick up with Taka though. He seemed to be right on as far as traveling and a case I would get an esd back (it should ship in one) then wrap in some durable thick cloth to filter dust and things while on the go. My USB drives get lugged around all the time as I use them to backup client data before I muck with systems or do major installs. I'm not especially kind to mine (now) and they don't even seem to notice. I want to comment on the brand wars. I went through 3 Maxtor 1 Touch 300 gig drives in less than a year. Maxtor was very good about replacing them but my data was *ALL* gone on 3 different times. It kind of got me bitter after 3 in a row. I made them send me 2 250 gig hard drives (internal) and I shook the dust off my sandals to Maxtor. I think decided I would hop in bed with Western Digital. I did this for two reasons. One WD has always been a decent product for me. I've never been brand loyal for HDD's but I knew I'd never been burned by WD. The other is that Costco is about 20 minutes from where I live and they have this no-dicker return policy. I bought 2 of them and have never had a lick of trouble. I'm way more rough with them than I ever was my Maxtors and they just keep spinning. I'm paranoid though as I'm afraid to lose my data so I sync on to the other and they are redundant. I alos have a Lacie 40 gig drive and just love it. It's a 2.5" and it's very cool. Very portable etc...
My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will finish this project, in this life or the next. Slightly modified " from Gladiator. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
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That is the funny thing about hard-drives. You can find rabid anti-Brand X people for any of the major HD brands. I know people who swear by Maxtor but will drive you insane with boredom over all their Western Digital failures. People who think WD is the bomb and Seagate are a bunch of crooks ("It failed two days after the warranty expired!") and so on and so on. I don't know a single HD brand that doesn't have a horrific failure story. On the other hand I have never had a HD failure and I have used Maxtor, WD, Seagate and IBM. One does not find this rabid hatred and favouritism amongst other hardware components quite as much as when talking about hard-drives. regards, Paul Watson South Africa Colib and WebTwoZero. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!
Paul Watson and I have used Maxtor, WD, Seagate and IBM. I've had all of them fail on me before too (including a Mac brand external hdd), and the IBM one wasn't cheap either. Maxtor and Seagate are about the same quality IMO, they feel cheap and break often (for me at least). I've had a couple WD HDDs go too, but at least in my experience it's been less. Regardless of the brand you choose, it's so worth the extra $10 to get a HDD fan, but I don't think you can fit those on an external drive. Jeremy Falcon
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Paul, I cannot argue at all with the advice you've been given so far. I'll pick up with Taka though. He seemed to be right on as far as traveling and a case I would get an esd back (it should ship in one) then wrap in some durable thick cloth to filter dust and things while on the go. My USB drives get lugged around all the time as I use them to backup client data before I muck with systems or do major installs. I'm not especially kind to mine (now) and they don't even seem to notice. I want to comment on the brand wars. I went through 3 Maxtor 1 Touch 300 gig drives in less than a year. Maxtor was very good about replacing them but my data was *ALL* gone on 3 different times. It kind of got me bitter after 3 in a row. I made them send me 2 250 gig hard drives (internal) and I shook the dust off my sandals to Maxtor. I think decided I would hop in bed with Western Digital. I did this for two reasons. One WD has always been a decent product for me. I've never been brand loyal for HDD's but I knew I'd never been burned by WD. The other is that Costco is about 20 minutes from where I live and they have this no-dicker return policy. I bought 2 of them and have never had a lick of trouble. I'm way more rough with them than I ever was my Maxtors and they just keep spinning. I'm paranoid though as I'm afraid to lose my data so I sync on to the other and they are redundant. I alos have a Lacie 40 gig drive and just love it. It's a 2.5" and it's very cool. Very portable etc...
My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will finish this project, in this life or the next. Slightly modified " from Gladiator. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
Thanks Code-frog. I have been looking around for the last few hours and the best deal I can see is to get a Western Digital 320Gb ATA100 8Mb Cache (WD3200JB) drive and then a USB 2.0 case. What casing did you get for your WDs or did you get their Media-Center/Dual-Option external HDs? regards, Paul Watson South Africa Colib and WebTwoZero. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!
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Thanks Code-frog. I have been looking around for the last few hours and the best deal I can see is to get a Western Digital 320Gb ATA100 8Mb Cache (WD3200JB) drive and then a USB 2.0 case. What casing did you get for your WDs or did you get their Media-Center/Dual-Option external HDs? regards, Paul Watson South Africa Colib and WebTwoZero. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!
This is pretty much exactly what I went with. I didn't go with separate enclosure/drive purchases. I hate hardware and didn't want to mess with it at all. This way I just opened up the box plugged in the drive and started moving files. This is it right here.[^] - Rex
My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will finish this project, in this life or the next. Slightly modified " from Gladiator. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.
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My main 60 gig HD is simply not enough storage for me anymore. Has not been for a long time but it took the toppling of my DVD stack, now roughly 5 feet high, to make me realise just how inadequate it is. So I am on the hunt for a good external storage device. PCMag gives the Maxtor OneTouch II External USB Drive[^] a good review and it is reasonably priced even here in South Africa. Have couple questions I do:
- Forget the backup software. I can access it like any other drive through Windows Explorer, right?
- I want to store PSDs (Photoshop files) on it. They average in at about 30 megabytes each. Any idea if I will be able to edit them directly from the external drive or whether I will have to copy them to my main drive for editing and then back for storage?
- Can I reliably play music files stored on the drive?
- Is the extra price for the FireWire option worth it? (My PC has FireWire support.)
- You get external drives and you get Network Attached Storage devices. The latter is often more expensive but occasionally not a whole lot more. Functionality aside which type generally performs better. The USB/FireWire or the Ethernet connection*?
Can anybody recommend other good external drives you have used? ta. * Sure you get different NICs 10/100, gigabit etc. but generally speaking. regards, Paul Watson South Africa Colib and WebTwoZero. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!
I buy USB 2 Kits[^] and regular 7200 RPM drives. It ends up being lots cheaper than buying a stand-alone external drive (although bulkier) and I can always replace the drive if I need a bigger one down the road (or if it dies). They are fast, but not nearly as fast as a PATA or SATA drive inside your machine. You can definitely edit directly off of them though. Network attached drives will likely be significantly slower. 100BaseT Ethernet is 100 Mbits per second. USB 2 is rated at 480 Mbits per second max. (but usually about half of that in the real world). So unless you have Gigabit Ethernet and can find a cheap Gigabit network attached drive, don't bother. Cheers, Drew.
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My main 60 gig HD is simply not enough storage for me anymore. Has not been for a long time but it took the toppling of my DVD stack, now roughly 5 feet high, to make me realise just how inadequate it is. So I am on the hunt for a good external storage device. PCMag gives the Maxtor OneTouch II External USB Drive[^] a good review and it is reasonably priced even here in South Africa. Have couple questions I do:
- Forget the backup software. I can access it like any other drive through Windows Explorer, right?
- I want to store PSDs (Photoshop files) on it. They average in at about 30 megabytes each. Any idea if I will be able to edit them directly from the external drive or whether I will have to copy them to my main drive for editing and then back for storage?
- Can I reliably play music files stored on the drive?
- Is the extra price for the FireWire option worth it? (My PC has FireWire support.)
- You get external drives and you get Network Attached Storage devices. The latter is often more expensive but occasionally not a whole lot more. Functionality aside which type generally performs better. The USB/FireWire or the Ethernet connection*?
Can anybody recommend other good external drives you have used? ta. * Sure you get different NICs 10/100, gigabit etc. but generally speaking. regards, Paul Watson South Africa Colib and WebTwoZero. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!
I got a Maxtor OneTouch II External USB Drive from my company as a back up drive. Overall I am satisfied with the performance. I didn't install the software came with the drive. Just use windows explorer and copy the files. I have Virtual PC 2004 installed in my laptop and the location of the virtual hard drive(.vhd file) is in this external drive. sometimes I run windows from that external drive (through Virtual PC) and use this extra virtual machine for my testing. I found the performance satisfactory(I allocated 512 MB RAM for the virtual machine when it is running). -Madhu.
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My main 60 gig HD is simply not enough storage for me anymore. Has not been for a long time but it took the toppling of my DVD stack, now roughly 5 feet high, to make me realise just how inadequate it is. So I am on the hunt for a good external storage device. PCMag gives the Maxtor OneTouch II External USB Drive[^] a good review and it is reasonably priced even here in South Africa. Have couple questions I do:
- Forget the backup software. I can access it like any other drive through Windows Explorer, right?
- I want to store PSDs (Photoshop files) on it. They average in at about 30 megabytes each. Any idea if I will be able to edit them directly from the external drive or whether I will have to copy them to my main drive for editing and then back for storage?
- Can I reliably play music files stored on the drive?
- Is the extra price for the FireWire option worth it? (My PC has FireWire support.)
- You get external drives and you get Network Attached Storage devices. The latter is often more expensive but occasionally not a whole lot more. Functionality aside which type generally performs better. The USB/FireWire or the Ethernet connection*?
Can anybody recommend other good external drives you have used? ta. * Sure you get different NICs 10/100, gigabit etc. but generally speaking. regards, Paul Watson South Africa Colib and WebTwoZero. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!
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I buy USB 2 Kits[^] and regular 7200 RPM drives. It ends up being lots cheaper than buying a stand-alone external drive (although bulkier) and I can always replace the drive if I need a bigger one down the road (or if it dies). They are fast, but not nearly as fast as a PATA or SATA drive inside your machine. You can definitely edit directly off of them though. Network attached drives will likely be significantly slower. 100BaseT Ethernet is 100 Mbits per second. USB 2 is rated at 480 Mbits per second max. (but usually about half of that in the real world). So unless you have Gigabit Ethernet and can find a cheap Gigabit network attached drive, don't bother. Cheers, Drew.
Drew Stainton wrote: They are fast, but not nearly as fast as a PATA or SATA drive inside your machine. You can definitely edit directly off of them though. Is this true for sustained traffic, or just bursts? I know ata will quickly saturate a HDs io buffer, and thought firewire/usb2 were also fast enough to do the same.
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The sys-admin where I would would go off in to a rant for half an hour if you mention Maxtor drives to him. He won't touch them.
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Me too. They failed to often at me, work & home.
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Drew Stainton wrote: They are fast, but not nearly as fast as a PATA or SATA drive inside your machine. You can definitely edit directly off of them though. Is this true for sustained traffic, or just bursts? I know ata will quickly saturate a HDs io buffer, and thought firewire/usb2 were also fast enough to do the same.
I think you're right. I just tried copying a 750 MB file - once from the USB 2 drive and once from an internal drive - they took exactly the same amount of time. This was on a 1.6 GHz P4 with a PCI USB2 card. On my primary machine (3.4 GHz with built in USB 2.0 and a RAID 0+1 cluster (4x160 GB 7200 RPM SATA drives with 8 MB cache) the USB2 drive was about 25% slower - to be expected with the speed gains the RAID cluster provides. Cheers, Drew.
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The sys-admin where I would would go off in to a rant for half an hour if you mention Maxtor drives to him. He won't touch them.
My: Blog | Photos WDevs.com - Open Source Code Hosting, Blogs, FTP, Mail and More
Colin Angus Mackay wrote: if you mention Maxtor drives to him. He won't touch them. That always cracks me up. It's like the anti-Ford/anti-Chevy zealots. "My uncle Bill had a ford and it broke down twice so all Fords are terrible. My Chevy hasn't broken down so Chevy's are great." To date I've had a couple of Maxtors blow on me, a Seagate and a couple of Western Digitals. Maxtor has replaced all the drives through their online warranty program, Western Digital was a little more difficult - I don't remember what happened with the Seagate. I think they're basically all the same. I buy the ones that are on sale - and back stuff up frequently. Cheers, Drew
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I think you're right. I just tried copying a 750 MB file - once from the USB 2 drive and once from an internal drive - they took exactly the same amount of time. This was on a 1.6 GHz P4 with a PCI USB2 card. On my primary machine (3.4 GHz with built in USB 2.0 and a RAID 0+1 cluster (4x160 GB 7200 RPM SATA drives with 8 MB cache) the USB2 drive was about 25% slower - to be expected with the speed gains the RAID cluster provides. Cheers, Drew.
That sounds about right. I wonder how much I'll gain with the raid5 I plan to setup in the near future. 4x160GB, 7200RPM, EIDE. It'll probably be a month before I can try it out since I need a bigger case, the raidcard, and probably a new PSU to run everything first. The drives are only $50 each after rebate games. :) I wish I could find adaptors to connect the drives to an sata card though. The IDE version's about $60 more, and will be obsoleted by the time I need to upgrade again.