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Old 06-23-2007, 11:54 AM   #1
terrie
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Default External harddrives...

Somebody talk to me about their experiences with external harddrives please...

I think that I'd need to go with either Firewire or USB2--I know there are new SATA drives out but I don't understand how you connect them to a system...

I also know that people often buy a drive by itself and then put it in an enclosure but I don't know enough about enclosures to make an intelligent decision...

Also...how trustworthy (as in how long to the drives last) are they--the external drives, not necessarily the separate enclosures...

How do you use them--backup only?

Thanks!

Terrie
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Old 06-23-2007, 12:04 PM   #2
Steve Rindsberg
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I've had pretty good luck with externals. I've got a couple, all USB2 or dual USB/Firewire.

By and large, you plug them in, they appear as a new disk drive, you use them (though on one system of mine, they don't appear until, of all the weird things, I hop out to a command prompt, do a DIR X: or whatever the drive letter should be, and THEN Windows does the Big Aha and sees it.) NBD.

Cant' say how trustworthy they are ... the drives inside are different from one to the next, and that probably has as much to do with it as anything, though if the case isn't ventilated or at least well vented, I'd be reluctant to put a 7200 or 10000 rpm drive in one. Self-immolation could be a factor.

I don't know enough about enclosures to make an intelligent decision either, so instead of picking up a "Mad Dog" brand (like Dave B, I don't make this stuff up) I got an Adaptec. Plug. Play.

Can't speak to the SATA thing. What do you plan to use it for though? Is the extra speed SATA presumably brings worth worrying about?

I use mine for backup, moving virtual computers around, extra storage on the net, I've got one big honker with a spare Mac OSX bootable install for development purposes, another little bitty portable one with all of my software installers, CD images and enough room for my main files.

Takes all kinds, hey?

   
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Old 06-23-2007, 01:04 PM   #3
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Quote:
steve: I've had pretty good luck with externals. I've got a couple, all USB2 or dual USB/Firewire.
I figured you might...


>>By and large, you plug them in, they appear as a new disk drive, you use them

Kind like what happens when you plug in say something like a card reader in that it picks up the next available driver letter? Does is show as "harddrive" or as a "removable drive"???


>>Cant' say how trustworthy they are ... the drives inside are different from one to the next, and that probably has as much to do with it as anything,

So I've read--apparently LaCie drives are to be avoided at all costs. Seagate has been recommended and I took a browse at newegg to see what they had and interestingly enough, I think I got the answer to the SATA hookup question...there were 2 Seagate externals that were SATA and hooked up via either USB2 or Firewire--my guess is that the SATA card is in the enclosure--but they were 2x the price of the same size drive without the SATA and I'm not sure what SATA buys you particularly when you are hooking to your system via USB2 or Firewire...

Apparently Best Buy (would never shop there as I loathe BB) has a 320gb 7200rpm drive for $99 and I found the same drive for the same price at newegg and one a bit larger (+500gb) for ummm...$134 which isn't too bad...


>>I don't know enough about enclosures to make an intelligent decision either, so instead of picking up a "Mad Dog" brand (like Dave B, I don't make this stuff up) I got an Adaptec. Plug. Play.

I think the only reason I'd go with buying an enclosure is if I had a drive lying around unused which I don't...I think buy and "all in one" is probably a bit more expensive but the combo is designed for each part and I think you'd have fewer problems...but as Jim used to say...wtfdik...'-}}


>>Can't speak to the SATA thing. What do you plan to use it for though? Is the extra speed SATA presumably brings worth worrying about?

I was thinking of using it for image storage--with another backup too like to DVD (once I get my dvd burner setup...finally got dvd burning software and now I just need to pick up a small pack of dvd's to test to see if both the drive and the software work). I don't know enough about what SATA offers to know if it's worth the extra bucks...for me, probably not...


>>another little bitty portable one with all of my software installers, CD images and enough room for my main files.

Is this for a pc or a mac?

Thanks!

Terrie
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Old 06-23-2007, 04:44 PM   #4
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>>Kind like what happens when you plug in say something like a card reader in that it picks up the next available driver letter? Does is show as "harddrive" or as a "removable drive"???

Shows as a hard drive here. Same deal otherwise ... it gets the next available drive letter.

>>So I've read--apparently LaCie drives are to be avoided at all costs. Seagate has been recommended and I took a browse at newegg to see what they had and interestingly enough, I think I got the answer to the SATA hookup question...there were 2 Seagate externals that were SATA and hooked up via either USB2 or Firewire--my guess is that the SATA card is in the enclosure--but they were 2x the price of the same size drive without the SATA and I'm not sure what SATA buys you particularly when you are hooking to your system via USB2 or Firewire...

I was asking my wizard friend the same thing earlier today. He figured it was SATA, USB or Firewire, SATA being a third alternative for hooking it up. Otherwise it doesn't make much sense.

>>I think the only reason I'd go with buying an enclosure is if I had a drive lying around unused which I don't...I think buy and "all in one" is probably a bit more expensive but the combo is designed for each part and I think you'd have fewer problems...but as Jim used to say...wtfdik...'-}}

That's about it ... but it *is* one less thing to worry about if you don't feel comfortable with it.

>>I was thinking of using it for image storage--with another backup too like to DVD (once I get my dvd burner setup...finally got dvd burning software and now I just need to pick up a small pack of dvd's to test to see if both the drive and the software work).

Wadja get wadjaget huh wadjawadja huh wadja?

I just picked up a Pioneer CD/DVD burner to replace a friend's dead CD writer. Seems pretty nice, it's quiet and worked with Sonic or whatever it was she had installed for burning CDs. Came with a kind of lite version of Nero 7. Nice deal for 60 bucks, I thought.

>> I don't know enough about what SATA offers to know if it's worth the extra bucks...for me, probably not...

Doesn't seem that speed would be the big issue. I'd spend the extra buckage on size instead, is what I'd do. But that's just me ...

>>another little bitty portable one with all of my software installers, CD images and enough room for my main files.

>> Is this for a pc or a mac?

Yes.

That is, it being a USB, it'll work with either. Well. If you MacFormat it, it won't work on PC, and if you format it NTFS on the PC, it won't work on Mac.

   
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Old 06-23-2007, 11:26 PM   #5
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Originally Posted by Steve Rindsberg View Post
>> Is this for a pc or a mac?

Yes.

That is, it being a USB, it'll work with either. Well. If you MacFormat it, it won't work on PC, and if you format it NTFS on the PC, it won't work on Mac.
So format it FAT32 which is pretty much universally supported (including Linux). But for PC only I'd go with NTFS which is much more reliable.

   
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Old 06-24-2007, 05:24 AM   #6
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>> So format it FAT32 which is pretty much universally supported

If it needs to be Mac compatible, yep.

   
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Old 06-24-2007, 06:10 AM   #7
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Quote:
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>> So format it FAT32 which is pretty much universally supported

If it needs to be Mac compatible, yep.
Or Linux-compatible.

   
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Old 06-24-2007, 12:13 PM   #8
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Quote:
steve: Shows as a hard drive here. Same deal otherwise ... it gets the next available drive letter.
Cool...figured it would...


>>I was asking my wizard friend the same thing earlier today. He figured it was SATA, USB or Firewire, SATA being a third alternative for hooking it up. Otherwise it doesn't make much sense.

That's what I thought...but I don't know much about SATA...


>>Wadja get wadjaget huh wadjawadja huh wadja?

DamnedifIknow...a friend of mine gave it to me about a year ago--been floorware ever since--and I think it's a Pioneer DVR-107...it's firewire and for reason that make no real sense, I got it into my head that I couldn't set it up until I got my office rearranged which I have finally accomplished--see the Ta Da! thread for pics--and of course I also needed to get dvd burning software as my version of Nero didn't have the capability...I was able to get Nero6 off ebay for a nice price


>>I just picked up a Pioneer CD/DVD burner to replace a friend's dead CD writer. Seems pretty nice, it's quiet and worked with Sonic or whatever it was she had installed for burning CDs. Came with a kind of lite version of Nero 7. Nice deal for 60 bucks, I thought.

I think the $60 price was very good too...my CD-r reader died a number of months ago and I bought what I thought was a dual burner but it turned out that the DVD side is just a reader and I didn't discover that until I'd installed it and it was too much trouble to return it and of course, I have this other external DVD burner so...

I didn't buy Nero7 as I'd read it can cause problems plus it's expensive in sooo bloated with stuff I didn't need that the ebay Nero 6 seemed a better way to go...


>>Doesn't seem that speed would be the big issue. I'd spend the extra buckage on size instead, is what I'd do. But that's just me ...

Me too...'-}}


>>That is, it being a USB, it'll work with either. Well. If you MacFormat it, it won't work on PC, and if you format it NTFS on the PC, it won't work on Mac.

What a pita...but somehow sooo typical...

Thanks...

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Old 06-24-2007, 12:36 PM   #9
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>>That is, it being a USB, it'll work with either. Well. If you MacFormat it, it won't work on PC, and if you format it NTFS on the PC, it won't work on Mac.

"What a pita...but somehow sooo typical..."

But as Marjolein says, if you know you need to use it on other platforms, don't Mac or NTFS format it and it should be fine.

   
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Old 06-24-2007, 12:42 PM   #10
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>That is, it being a USB, it'll work with either. Well. If you MacFormat it, it won't work on PC, and if you format it NTFS on the PC, it won't work on Mac.
>What a pita...but somehow sooo typical...

Win32 works on all platforms (but has limited size support). Macs can read/write and format Win32.
HFS Plus is the latest format from Apple (you won't find it available from Microsoft)

For HFS on Windows you need to use:

http://www.macdisk.com/mden.php3

...or this:

http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6/

NTFS disks can be read but not written to by Macs (Microsoft doesn't publish the NTFS spec ... it's a proprietary albeit nice format choice).
extX are the various flavors of Linux file system (suitable for Mac or Windows use with free system additions)

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