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"

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.

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.

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

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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

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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"

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.

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)?
--
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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:
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http://antiwar.com

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http://couragetoresist.org

Send spam to the FTC at

Thanks, robots.

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
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