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#21
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What's a good external HDD to buy these days?
In article ,
Ant wrote: :In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Arno wrote: : Ant wrote: : On 10/4/2009 8:25 PM PT, Arno typed: : : Anyways, maybe your money would be better spend on a USB Flash : drive. They are typically in the 0.1A power class and whould work : on practically every USB port. : : Thanks Arno. Aren't Flash drives really expensive and limited with disk : sizes (only have seen 64 GB and really expensive)? : : Not that expensive anymore, but 64GB is about the largest at the : moment. How much data do you actually want to lug around? : :A lot like 500 GB. 64 GB is small. That's why I've been using 500GB 2.5" drives for the backups I keep in my safe deposit box. Those laptop drives are rated for 500,000 start/stop cycles (vs. 50,000 typical for desktop drives) and are designed to withstand higher non-operating shock -- just what I want for drives that will spend much of their lives being started, stopped, and carried around. -- Bob Nichols AT comcast.net I am "RNichols42" |
#22
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What's a good external HDD to buy these days?
Ant wrote
Rod Speed wrote Yeah, nothing like those 2.5" external drives portability wise. Yeah, still need to think about the USB power issue that you and others mentioned. It isnt a problem with those 2.5" external drives that have two USB cables. The most you might need is a couple of short USB cables with thin plugs when you have very close USB ports and thicker plugs on the cables that come with the drive. Ah two. I will keep that in mind. It will suck for netbooks that have limited/low numbers of USB connections. Yeah, but I cant think of any with just one. Are hubs a no no for drives that use two USB cables since hub coneects to the same port? Nope, its fine, the second one only uses the power pins, not the data pins. Corse the hub is just about as big as the external power wart. Do these external 2.5" HDDs also have ESATA support and dual USB too, A tiny subset do. Someone else said that the ones that that support sata drives take more power than the ones that dont tho, havent measured that myself yet. or are those only found in those big enclosures and docking stations? Nope. And the big enclosures and docking stations are never dual USB cable powered. I am trying to which one is better. The 2.5" drives are much more portable. Even the docking stations are much bigger than a 2.5" USB only external drive. |
#23
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What's a good external HDD to buy these days?
Robert Nichols wrote
Ant wrote Do these docking stations require drivers? I want to be compatible with many OS like Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, etc. No problem there. They use the same USB mass storage driver that USB flash memory devices use. You do lose the ability to perform SMART queries on the drive, Nope, particularly with the ones that have eSATA. because there is no established method to pass those commands through the USB interface. Some of the USB bridges do support that now. For that to work, you would need a docking station with an eSATA interface and use that to connect to your PC. |
#24
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What's a good external HDD to buy these days?
Ant wrote:
On 10/5/2009 5:19 PM PT, Ed Light typed: Anyways, maybe your money would be better spend on a USB Flash drive. They are typically in the 0.1A power class and whould work on practically every USB port. Arno I think Flash drives go bad a little easier. Because of the number of writes? Because they're not physical like hard drive, I would think -- just delicate memory cells. Some anomaly made mine unreadable. I repartitioned it and formatted it but it was not usable. -- Ed Light Better World News TV Channel: http://realnews.com Bring the Troops Home: http://bringthemhomenow.org http://antiwar.com Iraq Veterans Against the War: http://ivaw.org http://couragetoresist.org Send spam to the FTC at Thanks, robots. |
#25
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What's a good external HDD to buy these days?
Robert Nichols wrote:
No problem there. They use the same USB mass storage driver that USB flash memory devices use. You do lose the ability to perform SMART queries on the drive HD Sentinel gets SMART info. from my Western Digital 3 1/2" USB drive. However, I have 2 1/2" IDE drive in a Rosewill USB enclosure, and it can't get any SMART data from it. -- Ed Light Better World News TV Channel: http://realnews.com Bring the Troops Home: http://bringthemhomenow.org http://antiwar.com Iraq Veterans Against the War: http://ivaw.org http://couragetoresist.org Send spam to the FTC at Thanks, robots. |
#26
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What's a good external HDD to buy these days?
In article ,
Rod Speed wrote: :Robert Nichols wrote : Ant wrote : : Do these docking stations require drivers? I want to be : compatible with many OS like Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, etc. : : No problem there. They use the same USB mass : storage driver that USB flash memory devices use. : : You do lose the ability to perform SMART queries on the drive, : :Nope, particularly with the ones that have eSATA. : : because there is no established method to pass : those commands through the USB interface. : :Some of the USB bridges do support that now. Do you know if they can do that without installing a driver (presumably Windows-only) for that particular bridge? Last I heard, there was no standardized method of passing commands needed for SMART through a USB bridge, leaving every manufacturer free to implement it in a different way (and probably patent their chosen method, thus making it unlikely to be adopted as a standard). T'would be nice to hear that things are moving in a better direction than that. -- Bob Nichols AT comcast.net I am "RNichols42" |
#27
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What's a good external HDD to buy these days?
Robert Nichols wrote
Rod Speed wrote Robert Nichols wrote Ant wrote Do these docking stations require drivers? I want to be compatible with many OS like Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, etc. No problem there. They use the same USB mass storage driver that USB flash memory devices use. You do lose the ability to perform SMART queries on the drive, Nope, particularly with the ones that have eSATA. because there is no established method to pass those commands through the USB interface. Some of the USB bridges do support that now. Do you know if they can do that without installing a driver (presumably Windows-only) for that particular bridge? Yes they can, just by passing the SMART request thru the bridge. Last I heard, there was no standardized method of passing commands needed for SMART through a USB bridge, leaving every manufacturer free to implement it in a different way In practice there arent that many ways its done, so the bridge can allow for at least the most commonly used methods. (and probably patent their chosen method, thus making it unlikely to be adopted as a standard). I dont recall that anyone has patented any of them. T'would be nice to hear that things are moving in a better direction than that. It is certainly doing that. |
#28
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What's a good external HDD to buy these days?
On 10/6/2009 11:21 AM PT, Rod Speed typed:
Do these external 2.5" HDDs also have ESATA support and dual USB too, A tiny subset do. Someone else said that the ones that that support sata drives take more power than the ones that dont tho, havent measured that myself yet. or are those only found in those big enclosures and docking stations? Nope. And the big enclosures and docking stations are never dual USB cable powered. I am trying to which one is better. The 2.5" drives are much more portable. Even the docking stations are much bigger than a 2.5" USB only external drive. Thanks. I think I will look for 2.5" ones instead of docks and enclosures. Now, the hard part is which ones are good since they are rare (with ESATA)? -- "Ladies and gentlemen, er, we've just lost the picture, but, uh, what we've seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft has been taken over--'conquered', if you will--by a master race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to...toil in their underground sugar caves."--Kent Brockman in The Simpsons' Deep Space Homer (1F13) episode. /\___/\ / /\ /\ \ Phil/Ant @ http://antfarm.ma.cx (Personal Web Site) | |o o| | Ant's Quality Foraged Links (AQFL): http://aqfl.net \ _ / Nuke ANT from e-mail address: NT ( ) or Ant is currently not listening to any songs on his home computer. |
#29
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What's a good external HDD to buy these days?
Ant wrote:
Thanks. I think I will look for 2.5" ones instead of docks and enclosures. Now, the hard part is which ones are good since they are rare (with ESATA)? These are the few on newegg. Be sure to read all the user reviews. Apparently you must plug in the USB for power while using the esata. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...lue=360%3A7801 -- Ed Light Better World News TV Channel: http://realnews.com Bring the Troops Home: http://bringthemhomenow.org http://antiwar.com Iraq Veterans Against the War: http://ivaw.org http://couragetoresist.org Send spam to the FTC at Thanks, robots. |
#30
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What's a good external HDD to buy these days?
On 10/7/2009 12:13 PM PT, Ed Light typed:
Thanks. I think I will look for 2.5" ones instead of docks and enclosures. Now, the hard part is which ones are good since they are rare (with ESATA)? These are the few on newegg. Be sure to read all the user reviews. Apparently you must plug in the USB for power while using the esata. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...lue=360%3A7801 Thanks. Wow, not very many models and reviews. Are people not liking these external 2.5" USB HDDs or something? -- "An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox." --Mexican Proverb /\___/\ / /\ /\ \ Phil/Ant @ http://antfarm.ma.cx (Personal Web Site) | |o o| | Ant's Quality Foraged Links (AQFL): http://aqfl.net \ _ / Nuke ANT from e-mail address: NT ( ) or Ant is currently not listening to any songs on his home computer. |
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