URGENT - Source for Reasonably-Priced Disk Drives

The Crofter · Post by **The Crofter** » Fri 15 Feb, 2008 9:29 am

Many moons ago Lacie produced a "Big Drive" with 500Gb capacity. At the time it was very expensive but I thought it would solve the problem of carting may smaller disks half way round the world several times a year. The disk drive housing was designed by Porche, a company noted for its air cooled engines.....

From the begining I was unhappy with the temperature of the case. It became too hot to touch after a short period and I always worried about premature failure. This eventually happened and I was lucky to recover my data. A search on the Internet at the time revealed I was not the only one to have problems.

So the next time I looked at external disk storage my primary concern was to find a unit that was not totally encased in aluminium but had visible air vents. I settled on Seagate.

Different capacities are available. I have used these drives for a couple of years without any problems.

In my desktop I have 4 Samsung Spinpoint SATA drives. I have used Samsung for many years and they are quiet, reliable and run cool. Having said that I do have a front fan on the case as well as a large fan on the rear. Proper Airflow through the PC case is vital and will extend the life of the internal components.

Moglet · Post by **Moglet** » Fri 15 Feb, 2008 7:36 pm

Just about to place my order for technostuff, but I'm still a little perplexed by the external drives.

So last question to all you techno-heads out there is: if I have an external hard drive attached to the PC, does it "look" like a regular drive (i.e. can you see the directory structure in Explorer and save files directly to it?).

Spit · Post by **Spit** » Fri 15 Feb, 2008 7:42 pm

It will just install itself as a new drive, looking & behaving no different to any other.

Moglet · Post by **Moglet** » Fri 15 Feb, 2008 7:48 pm

Brilliant! Just what I wanted to hear!!! Thankyou!

Post by **John** » Sat 16 Feb, 2008 6:53 am

By default the drive letter assigned to your external disk is assigned 'on the fly' by your OS when you plug it in to the USB port. Usually the next available letter after the internal floppy and hard drives and external devices already attached and running such as cameras and card readers.

So the drive letter of your new external USB drive will not necessarily be the same each time it is plugged in.

Post by **prospero** » Sat 16 Feb, 2008 10:59 am

I had an ext HD hooked up which was drive F. Just installed a extra int drive and now the ext one is G.

Q for techies:

I always thought it was not a good thing to install programs on a external drive. Partly because of the data transfer rate down a USB connection. But if you did have a program installed on the ext drive and later the letter for the drive got switched, wouldn't it confuse the registry or something?

Spit · Post by **Spit** » Sat 16 Feb, 2008 11:11 am

Yep, that is the case - it should be used as a data only drive.

I think there is a way to reserve a drive letter, but it's been nearly 5 years since I've done any windblows work, I've forgotten how to do it........

Spit · Post by **Spit** » Sat 16 Feb, 2008 11:14 am

Ah, here we go:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... 44&sd=tech

But to be sure, this program could help

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

Post by **John** » Sat 16 Feb, 2008 11:23 am

prospero wrote:I always thought it was not a good thing to install programs on a external drive. Partly because of the data transfer rate down a USB connection. But if you did have a program installed on the ext drive and later the letter for the drive got switched, wouldn't it confuse the registry or something?

Lots of software will fall over when moved to a different location to that in which it was first installed.

However, well behaved applications (such as, for example, EstLite and Pre-View) will run faultlessly from any location.

w00dward · Post by **w00dward** » Sat 16 Feb, 2008 9:29 pm

While its true that the external drive will be assigned the next available drive letter in most installations it will remain consistant.

The only variable is the number of external devices you have.

For example, if you have a multi card reader and a external drive then it can be a lottery on which is loaded first if they are both on during boot up.

In my case at home, I have 3 internal drives, a multi card reader, 2 network drives and a external drive. I make sure they are switched on in a certain order.

The computer is turned on with the multi card reader already plugged in. C, D, E drives are internal, F, G, H, I are the card reader. J and K are mapped to the server. Once the machine is booted I turn on the external drive which I know will be L. Once you have a routine its easy to predict.