[Ham-Computers] RE: External Hard Drives?

[Pat Cook]

Hi everyone:

First off...Newbie to the group, but NOT new to computers.  :)

On 3/31/06, Philip Atchley < Beaconeer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> Hi Aaron et al,
>
> Thank you for all that good information.  Naturally, "pig headed" as I am
> (one list member knows where-of I speak) I didn't take all your advice, in
> particular about the 2.5" drives.  I'm usually pretty easy on my
> equipment,
> it doesn't 'usually' get banged around much.
>
> Last night I stopped by "Best"Buy" and they had nice 3.5 EIDE Western
> Digital 250GB drives on sale for 89.95 as well as an external case/power
> supply with USB buss.  Effectively a very large external drive at much
> lower
> cost than buying an "integrated" unit.  Took one of them home, partitioned
>
> it as two FAT-32 drives (rather than the preferred NTFS) and it works very
> well.  There is a lot of drive space there (I have two 80GB SATA drives IN
> the computer) and I'll use one partition to backup the entire main hard
> drive and the other just for archiving my OTR (Old Time Radio) programs.


 As an OTR & OTV (Old TV Show) collector myself, I have been backing up onto
CD-R or CD-RW, but find that once they become damaged, the data stored on
those discs is gone for good (Just as if it was zapped by a virus).

I was the local Sam's Club today and saw some DIRT CHEAP prices on external
HDs.  In fact they were so dirt cheap, I would've actually BOUGHT one had I
not realized and remembered that I needed to PAY BILLS first.  :(  *Ugh!*

Instead, I bought more CD-R (And probably WASTED $18 in the long run in
doing so too  :( )

That brings up another question.  When I "prepared the drive for service"
> using the Western Digital "Data Lifeguard Tools", the Partitioning AND
> formatting of the drive was nearly "instantaneous".  That is, it didn't go
>
> through the long drawn out "format" that I'm used to seeing on hard
> drives.
> It can't be that my computer is so fast OR that the drive is that much
> faster than the older drives, there has to be something else at play here.
>
> (I expected it to take a long time to format the drive).


It was so fast because it didn't have to go through a reformatting process.
That is because there wasn't anything on the HD to begin with.

Seems like a logical explaination to me Phil.  :)

Cheers & 73 everyone  :)

--
Pat Cook, KB0OXD
Denver, CO
KB0OXD Cybershack Soap Box - http://kb0oxd.blogspot.com/
ADMIN - Colorado eQSO Conference Server - jeeperone.bounceme.net
EchoLink Node No. 19905


--
Pat Cook, KB0OXD
Denver, CO
KB0OXD Cybershack Soap Box - http://kb0oxd.blogspot.com/
ADMIN - Colorado eQSO Conference Server - jeeperone.bounceme.net
EchoLink Node No. 19905