external hard drive question

I've got:
PII 400 PC
440BX chipset
two 80GB internal hard drives

I'm thinking of buying an external hard drive.

I am better off buying a USB 2 card or can I get good enough results
from a USB 1 connection?

I applied the latest BIOS update in order to use the 80GB hard drives.
Does anyone know if the motherboard will handle a 120 GB drive?


Thanks in advance.


Ed Spand

An external hard drive on USB1.1 is painful and extremely slow. Takes 3 or
more hours to copy what can transfer in less than 10 minutes via USB2.0

Don't even consider running an external hard-drive on USB1.1
USB1.1 runs at only 12Mbits per second. Approx 1 Megabyte a second.....
Gonna take about 17-20 minutes to copy a 1 Gigabyte folder. Don't even think
about how long 80 or 120 Gigabytes would take to copy.......

If you must use an external drive, go for Firewire or USB2.0 - Firewire is
up to 400 Mbits per second and USB2.0 is 480 Mbits per second.
Firewire has approximate maximum transfer of 40 Megabytes per second, and
USB2.0 about 48 Megabytes per second.
Would only take about 20-30seconds to copy a 1 Gigabyte folder.....

I may be wrong, but AFAIK, if the board can handle 80 Gb drives, it should
also be able to handle 120Gb drives.
IIRC, the next BIOS size limitation is somewhere around 128-137 Gb. Can't
recall the exact figure....

Cheers,

John S.

"Edward Spand" wrote in message
news:EHhwb.483771$9l5.135329@pd7tw2no...
I've got:
PII 400 PC
440BX chipset
two 80GB internal hard drives

I'm thinking of buying an external hard drive.

I am better off buying a USB 2 card or can I get good enough results
from a USB 1 connection?

I applied the latest BIOS update in order to use the 80GB hard drives.
Does anyone know if the motherboard will handle a 120 GB drive?


Thanks in advance.


Ed Spand

I've had excellent luck with firewire myself. I've used and ADS
http://www.adstech.com/ external firewire case that you can put whatever IDE
hardrive you want in it. The transfer speed is excellent and has been very
reliable. I've had it for a couple years now and I see Western Digital sells
a USB or firewire 120gb drive now at Circuit City.

"Edward Spand" wrote in message
news:EHhwb.483771$9l5.135329@pd7tw2no...
I've got:
PII 400 PC
440BX chipset
two 80GB internal hard drives

I'm thinking of buying an external hard drive.

I am better off buying a USB 2 card or can I get good enough results
from a USB 1 connection?

I applied the latest BIOS update in order to use the 80GB hard drives.
Does anyone know if the motherboard will handle a 120 GB drive?


Thanks in advance.


Ed Spand