External drives
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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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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 was in the same situation too, and recently bought an external hard drive casing (Icy Box 360) and a super-large hard drive. The total cost was about half what a pre-made device such as the Maxtor One-touch would have cost. If you can handle a couple of screws then it should be no problem. Anyway, to answer your questions: 1) Yes, a normal drive in explorer. If it's not then forget it! 2) My external hard drive going over a firewire interface is nearly twice as fast as the hard drive in my laptop. CPU usage is more than an internal drive, but I've had no problems editing videos. 3) See 2! 4) I've noticed that while USB2 is officially faster than firewire, it tends to use up much more CPU - if I am copying a large file then it really crawls if I do anything else. Firewire doesnt suffer this problem as much. If you are willing to splash out a bit more then there are some really interesting external hard drives that are USB, network attached, wireless, and can be plugged directly into your TV as a portable movie player. Check out the Mediagate 350[^] as one example.
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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 just bought one of these for 135 USD, and I love it. Yeah, I tossed the software. :) Paul Watson wrote: Forget the backup software. I can access it like any other drive through Windows Explorer, right? Yes Paul Watson wrote: 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? USB 2.0 performance is pretty good. You should be able to edit them directly from the drive. Paul Watson wrote: Can I reliably play music files stored on the drive? I don't see why not. The bandwidth required for music is really low. Consider, for example, that they make headsets that plug into the USB port. Paul Watson wrote: Is the extra price for the FireWire option worth it? Isn't it there so it's Mac compatible? I haven't tried it with FireWire. Paul Watson wrote: Functionality aside which type generally performs better. The USB/FireWire or the Ethernet connection*? Don't know. USB/Firewire might perform better if your Ethernet is seeing a lot of traffic. In general, I would think Ethernet though. But don't take my word for it. I've never really tested it. Marc My website
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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!
Hi Paul, I am using an external USB 2 HD (2.5 inch so no power supply needed) for (DV) video editing on my notebook, it behaves like any ordinary harddisk. Speed is no problem for me (notebook HD's are a bit slower as the desktop versions) I would assume that with USB 2 or firewire you should see no difference in speed, compared with the same disk mounted internally. regards Rutger
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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!
1- yes. 2- yes, no problem. 3- yes, all of my music is on an external drive, using it with either iTunes and Traktor ( dj software ) and it works well. 4- AFAIK ( and remember ), firewire will have a better transfer rate, but the usb2 will have a better "burst" rate ( whatever that means ) meaning that for streaming, firewire will be better by a small margin. 5- me think usb/firewire is better. I have 2 external firewire drives, one is a laCie porsche 160 gig and the other is a accom 160gig. I've had errors with the laCie drive, it could not access some files, I don't know if it was because the disk itself was bad or the firewire connection. hope it helps.
Maximilien Lincourt Your Head A Splode - Strong Bad
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I was in the same situation too, and recently bought an external hard drive casing (Icy Box 360) and a super-large hard drive. The total cost was about half what a pre-made device such as the Maxtor One-touch would have cost. If you can handle a couple of screws then it should be no problem. Anyway, to answer your questions: 1) Yes, a normal drive in explorer. If it's not then forget it! 2) My external hard drive going over a firewire interface is nearly twice as fast as the hard drive in my laptop. CPU usage is more than an internal drive, but I've had no problems editing videos. 3) See 2! 4) I've noticed that while USB2 is officially faster than firewire, it tends to use up much more CPU - if I am copying a large file then it really crawls if I do anything else. Firewire doesnt suffer this problem as much. If you are willing to splash out a bit more then there are some really interesting external hard drives that are USB, network attached, wireless, and can be plugged directly into your TV as a portable movie player. Check out the Mediagate 350[^] as one example.
What are the disadvantages of going your route of a HD enclosure and a separately bought HD apart from having to have a bit of technical knowledge (e.g. how to use a screwdriver)? Surely there is more to it than that or how can Maxtor and co. charge so much more for their drives? Plus one can upgrade the HD enclosures a lot easier. Heck, you could have a few HDs lying about and swap them in and out as needed. I don't need the one-touch backup button nor the software that comes with the Maxtor (and others.) One thing; The Icy Box 360, does it have any other ports on it? The Maxtor has two FireWire ports on it so you can chain devices up. Not terribly likely but something to think about. 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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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!
- Yes, it looks like any other drive, in fact doesn't look any different than those little USB key drives. 2) You can edit directly off the drive, Photoshops "work" drive should be set to one of your local drives though for an easier time editing, but otherwise you simply add time copying. 3) Yes/No/Maybe/Depends (see firewire vs. USB) 4) Theoretically Firewire 400 is near enough equal to USB2 (480). Theoretically. 5) USB/FireWire or Ethernet generally comes down to what are you using it for, what else are you doing at the same time situations. You can get higher performance from ethernet 1gig network connects are getting more common and cheaper. USB1&2 are shared device protocols, the more you use, the more it gets split up to the host controller. Firewire "can be" shared, by common usage it is usually not. Ethernet gets the bonus of usage by multiple people at the same time, which may not matter to you. Firewire has a 800 option availability, but finding FW800 devices is a little more difficult, fully using either a 1gig or FW800 speed line is unlikely. With using external drives as backups, they all pretty much look the same. Generally one doesn't use the machine while backing it up, so USB 2.0 runs at reasonable performance, you at least minimize sharing of the USB 2.0 controller with other devices. My preference is if you are going to use the drive "live" get a dedicated controller for that drive. Wether it is ethernet, USB 2.0 or Firewire, or even external SATA (which is available now) the fewer devices going through the PCI I/O slot the better. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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What are the disadvantages of going your route of a HD enclosure and a separately bought HD apart from having to have a bit of technical knowledge (e.g. how to use a screwdriver)? Surely there is more to it than that or how can Maxtor and co. charge so much more for their drives? Plus one can upgrade the HD enclosures a lot easier. Heck, you could have a few HDs lying about and swap them in and out as needed. I don't need the one-touch backup button nor the software that comes with the Maxtor (and others.) One thing; The Icy Box 360, does it have any other ports on it? The Maxtor has two FireWire ports on it so you can chain devices up. Not terribly likely but something to think about. regards, Paul Watson South Africa Colib and WebTwoZero. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!
I guess the main disadvantage is in terms of warranty and the 'safety' of buying a pre-built unit. But, as you say, they do charge a lot for this safety and I cant see a real reason for such a big price difference other than they are going for the premium market. The Icy Box 360 has two firewire ports and a USB.
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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 just buy a quality drive (I like Western Digitals and have never had any problems with them) and a case. It literally takes 5 minutes to put everything together and then you just plug it in. Maxtor and the like charge more for their products because people think that there's something special about them. They come in a fancy case and the special button but if you pull them apart, they're exactly the same as something you put together at home :-) And you don't get to choose what sort of drive you get inside! USB2 is officialy slightly faster than FireWire but in practice, Firewire is usually quite a bit faster. For playing MP3's or video, USB is fine. I only really use FireWire when I'm burning DVD's since it gives noticably better results. I've got 2 external hard drives and a DVD player plus a whole bunch of low-bandwidth devices coming into my laptop via 2 USB ports and generally don't have too much of a problem (although I don't work the high-bandwidth devices too hard, especially if I'm burning DVD's).
The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity. - Harlan Ellison Awasu 2.1.2 [^]: A free RSS reader with support for Code Project.
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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!
The LaCie range go to huge capacities (2.5 TB), and also support RAID in the enclosure, for added protection. Some have both USB2 and FireWire ports (FireWire 400 and 800). Nominally, FireWire 800 is almost twice as fast as USB2 (800MB/s vs 480MB/s), but although we have a FireWire 800 capable LaCie drive here (and are very happy with it), we don't have any FireWire 800 cards, so I can't comment on the actual speed increase.
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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!
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
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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
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!
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I just buy a quality drive (I like Western Digitals and have never had any problems with them) and a case. It literally takes 5 minutes to put everything together and then you just plug it in. Maxtor and the like charge more for their products because people think that there's something special about them. They come in a fancy case and the special button but if you pull them apart, they're exactly the same as something you put together at home :-) And you don't get to choose what sort of drive you get inside! USB2 is officialy slightly faster than FireWire but in practice, Firewire is usually quite a bit faster. For playing MP3's or video, USB is fine. I only really use FireWire when I'm burning DVD's since it gives noticably better results. I've got 2 external hard drives and a DVD player plus a whole bunch of low-bandwidth devices coming into my laptop via 2 USB ports and generally don't have too much of a problem (although I don't work the high-bandwidth devices too hard, especially if I'm burning DVD's).
The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity. - Harlan Ellison Awasu 2.1.2 [^]: A free RSS reader with support for Code Project.
What case would you recommend? I will be travelling soon so it needs to be packable/portable/holdable/durable. Thanks Taka. 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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What case would you recommend? I will be travelling soon so it needs to be packable/portable/holdable/durable. Thanks Taka. regards, Paul Watson South Africa Colib and WebTwoZero. K(arl) wrote: oh, and BTW, CHRISTIAN ISN'T A PARADOX, HE IS A TASMANIAN!
To be honest, I don't really bother too much with the case. As long as it has a fan, it'll probably be OK. It's not like there are any moving parts or anything like that :-) The only problem I've ever had with an external drive is when a cleaner dropped one and it totally hosed not only the drive but the case electronics as well (and this was one of those fancy pre-built ones as well :-)). If it's for travelling, you might want to look at getting a 2.5" drive but these are a fair bit more expensive than your normal 3.5" drives. There are 2.5" cases that are specifically designed for portability so presumably they're a bit tougher although I don't know how much that matters since the weak point is always going to be the drive itself :-).
The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity. - Harlan Ellison Awasu 2.1.2 [^]: A free RSS reader with support for Code Project.
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What are the disadvantages of going your route of a HD enclosure and a separately bought HD apart from having to have a bit of technical knowledge (e.g. how to use a screwdriver)? Surely there is more to it than that or how can Maxtor and co. charge so much more for their drives? Plus one can upgrade the HD enclosures a lot easier. Heck, you could have a few HDs lying about and swap them in and out as needed. I don't need the one-touch backup button nor the software that comes with the Maxtor (and others.) One thing; The Icy Box 360, does it have any other ports on it? The Maxtor has two FireWire ports on it so you can chain devices up. Not terribly likely but something to think about. 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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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.