USB2 Hard Drive Caddy

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 00:58:56 +0000, Paul F wrote:

"Alex Butcher" wrote in message
Have a poke around with the flash tool; you can read the firmware out
apparently without doing any harm and it'll tell you what revision your
firmware is. Based on the fact that you bought yours around the same
time, I'd be interested to know whether your firmware has the same date
as mine.

Best Regards,
Alex.

Hello Alex

I've had a look at the sites. Oo-er.

In devices I get:
Prolific PL3057 Combo Device (1394 ATAPI_Rev1.00) IEEE 1394 SBP2 Device;
driver version 5.1.2535.0

Doesn't say if its PL3057 A, B or C. What's the flash tool you refer to?

One of the RomWriter Windows executables found at
http://member.newsguy.com/~siccos/PL3507%20Firmware.htm should work. One
or more will probably crash, but at least one should be able to
successfully perform the 'Read ROM' function. Note that the drive needs to
be connected via USB (and only USB) for the RomWriter to function.

Note that if you attempt anything more than that, it's at your own risk. I
don't want your dead caddy on my conscience. ;-)

My caddies have a Pm37LV512 flash chip which isn't flashable. The
Pm39LV512 is, however (along with a bunch of others).

Paul F

Best Regards,
Alex.
--
Alex Butcher Brainbench MVP for Internet Security: www.brainbench.com
Bristol, UK Need reliable and secure network systems?
PGP/GnuPG ID:0x271fd950 http://www.assursys.com/

"AMO" wrote in message
...
I am thinking of buying the following hard drive:

http://uk.aldi.com/
Go to Internal Hard Drive Drive to get a Western Digital 250Mb hard drive
for £79.99. This seems to be a good deal.


Having done a little research on this drive I think unless you really
require 250GB for your pc it would be better to go for the WD2000BB model
which is 200GB. The speed specs are pretty much identical and can be had for
less than £80, typically £69. Yes you get 50GB for a tenner but if it is not
going to be used to it's capacity then might as well save dosh.

Steve

"Stevie Boy" wrote in message
...
Having done a little research on this drive I think unless you really
require 250GB for your pc it would be better to go for the WD2000BB model
which is 200GB. The speed specs are pretty much identical and can be had
for less than £80, typically £69. Yes you get 50GB for a tenner but if it
is not going to be used to it's capacity then might as well save dosh.

Steve


Thanx Steve. I did some thinking myself and I came to the following
conclusions. Either I go for a really low capacity one which are so small
and slimline such that I can carry it around quite conviniently - the sub
40Gb drives are really good for this. And they are about as slim as a CD
(with case).

But then I also argued from my usual perspective in that with computer
technology, you really need to buy at the best price/megabyte ratio. Whilst
a hard drive might seem a bit large, people's use over time will change and
for example I might start to store downloaded DVD videos there etc just as
I've stored MP3s in the last few years.

As a USB hard drive is likely to be an item that you would hope to use
between two or more computers, in general, you'd want it to have a capacity
a little larger than a normal hard drive.

I have however, decided not to go for the ALDI hard drive. Instead I am
going to go for the best price/megabte Lacie drive at Ebuyer and when I
actuallly will need it which actually isn't going to be for a couple of
months or so.

Thanx.

AMO

Thanx Steve. I did some thinking myself and I came to the following
conclusions. Either I go for a really low capacity one which are so small
and slimline such that I can carry it around quite conviniently - the sub
40Gb drives are really good for this. And they are about as slim as a CD
(with case).

Umm you must be talking laptop style drives?

But then I also argued from my usual perspective in that with computer
technology, you really need to buy at the best price/megabyte ratio.

This generally is the case but for PC performance and reliability always
come first.

Whilst a hard drive might seem a bit large, people's use over time will
change and for example I might start to store downloaded DVD videos there
etc just as I've stored MP3s in the last few years.

Yep you may but what with those dog damned free sites closing down ya may
find it hard.
Even then I think you'll have to go some to fill it. Mp3's don't use an
awful lot of hd space. As you know an ipod can hold thousands and they are
only 20gb.

As a USB hard drive is likely to be an item that you would hope to use
between two or more computers, in general, you'd want it to have a
capacity a little larger than a normal hard drive.

Yea without doubt but I think 250GB is just a bit overkill.

I have however, decided not to go for the ALDI hard drive. Instead I am
going to go for the best price/megabte Lacie drive at Ebuyer and when I
actuallly will need it which actually isn't going to be for a couple of
months or so.


You tempted me with your post to toodle of to Aldi to take a look, tis very
tempting but I had in mind slotting it into my PVR so where this case
price/megabyte is an absolute must, Being a WD reliabilty should be good
too. Only hitch is will it work?
If not I was considering a home in my pc but damned if I gonna stick this
250GB drive there when the 200Gb is much identical in performance and their
very own WD2000JB and WD2500JB which have 8Mb cache's perform better.... not
to mention Maxtor's recently released 16Mb cache models :-)

Steve

On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 at 13:57:53, AMO (AMO )
wrote:
I am thinking of buying the following hard drive:

http://uk.aldi.com/
Go to Internal Hard Drive Drive to get a Western Digital 250Mb hard drive
for £79.99. This seems to be a good deal.

I am looking for a case to support this drive. I don't actually know the
exact term for this. Is it a caddy? Anyway, I have found one he
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...073179&action=
c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=79985
Is there are better one I should go for?

Is this hard disk drive good value? I believe so.

Thanx.

AMO


People at work are saying copying large (say 100mb) files to large
external drives can cause i/o device timeout kind of errors. Regardless
of OS (windows or linux) and connection port (USB2 or firewire)

Since I was thinking of using one for copying large ghost image files
to, I was wondering if anyone could comment on the above
--
Mike
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On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 22:47:26 +0000, Mike NG wrote:

People at work are saying copying large (say 100mb) files to large
external drives can cause i/o device timeout kind of errors. Regardless
of OS (windows or linux) and connection port (USB2 or firewire)

Since I was thinking of using one for copying large ghost image files to,
I was wondering if anyone could comment on the above

I believe that's a symptom of the problems I posted about earlier in this
thread. Non-buggy USB/Firewire caddies should have no such problems.

Best Regards,
Alex.
--
Alex Butcher Brainbench MVP for Internet Security: www.brainbench.com
Bristol, UK Need reliable and secure network systems?
PGP/GnuPG ID:0x271fd950 http://www.assursys.com/

People at work are saying copying large (say 100mb) files to large
external drives can cause i/o device timeout kind of errors. Regardless
of OS (windows or linux) and connection port (USB2 or firewire)


I've never had any problems copying/transfering files of 50,60,70MB in size
via USB1.1 or 2.0 to memory stick and zip drive devices as I do on a fairly
regular basis no matter if they are individual/multiple files, ghost images
or Zip files.

I'm not sure why Hard discs or even large hard discs should make any
difference, they have memory buffers. I've had more trouble with internal
CD-Rom devices trying to load data due to read errors.

All I do say is if you do not have dedicated USB ports make sure you get a
decent card that works properly, as so,so ones can cause connection errors
and conflicts with open programs (i.e makes them crash when usb in use).

Steve

Mike NG wrote:

On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 at 13:57:53, AMO (AMO )
wrote:
I am thinking of buying the following hard drive:

http://uk.aldi.com/
Go to Internal Hard Drive Drive to get a Western Digital 250Mb hard drive
for £79.99. This seems to be a good deal.

I am looking for a case to support this drive. I don't actually know the
exact term for this. Is it a caddy? Anyway, I have found one he
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...073179&action=
c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=79985
Is there are better one I should go for?

Is this hard disk drive good value? I believe so.

Thanx.

AMO


People at work are saying copying large (say 100mb) files to large
external drives can cause i/o device timeout kind of errors. Regardless
of OS (windows or linux) and connection port (USB2 or firewire)

Since I was thinking of using one for copying large ghost image files
to, I was wondering if anyone could comment on the above

It's rubbish. I use one to back up my compnay dataset which is a 3G
compressed file. That's using a flaky Manhattan caddy and a dodgy old
Maxtor drive.

HTH
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