[Ham-Computers] RE: External Hard Drives?

[Philip Atchley]

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.

I figure that the unit will only be "powered on" when I'm actually doing the 
backups and the drive 'should' collect very few hours compared to the drives 
in the computer.

HOWEVER, I expect that the next acquisition will probably be an outboard DVD 
burner.  (I'm still not certain about the long term reliability of "home 
burnt" DVD's) This machine already has two Hard drives and two CD drives 
(one CDr), but there is room, adequate power supply and connections for 
still more internal drives in this machine (the MB is fully RAID 
supportable) but I'll probably opt for 'Outboard' because I can use it on 
different machines that way.

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).

73 de Phil,  KO6BB
DX begins at the noise floor!

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Merced, Central California,    37.3N  120.48W  CM97sh


----- Original Message ----- 

Most any external HD would work in your situation.  For simplicity, I
would suggest a "portable" 2.5" drive rather than a 3.5" drive.  2.5"
drives are a bit more rugged than 3.5" drives as they were designed for
laptop use.  They're slower, but you'll be limited by the interface
anyway.  Most can also run just by drawing power from the USB port - as
long as the USB port can source the full 500ma USB spec.  I would stick
with a drive from an actual HD manufacturer (such as Western Digital or
Seagate).  Currently, all my external 2.5" drives are leftover drives
(from laptop ugrades) with a "generic" case, but if I bought an "all in
one" (drive & case) solution, I would go with the Western Digital
"Passport" drives.

Most all external drives these days have a "Hi-Speed" USB 2.0 port
(480Mbps/60MBps max).  Due to overhead, you'll lose 10-20% of this
bandwidth.  Most 2.5" HD's I've seen max out around 35MBps, so it'll
take about 5 minutes to copy those 10 gigs (plus overhead)...actual
results may vary.

Might I suggest archiving to DVD's instead?  That way, you have a true
"archive" that can be updated (older backups contain original material,
newer backups contain "updated" material).  Plus, you have more than one
backup - should the external HD fail, you've lost your only backup.  As
CD/DVD recordable media isn't 100% infailable either, check them a
couple times a year to make sure everything is still readable.  There
are free utilities that will do simple read tests Some companies (such
as Plextor) include diagnostic software to check dics almost at the bit
level - the more bits in the "red", the more likely uncorrectable errors
will eventually show up (time to move the data to a new disc).  At 4.3GB
per disc, you can categorize the shows per disc and probably end up with
about 5 or 6 discs for the entire collection.

73,

  - Aaron, NN6O