SiG Lady Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 I've done some of the traditional online research and have something I can go with if no other/better/wiser advice comes my way within 48 hours. Any thoughts on external HDDs out there in the 120GB size (but no larger)...? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GRD Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 I've been trying out the Maxtor One-Touch USB2.0 and 1394 drives...seem to work OK. Comes with a version of Retrospect. Works as advertised. Why external? - Gabe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D.Hayden Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 I have a couple of the Maxtors (250's though) they work fine. USB 2.0 and Firewire are pretty close in speeds, the Maxtor's have both so you can always move one if you need too. Or if you get a Mac. I don't use the software... you can use anything you have (even the built in XP backup). I basically do full xcopys into named-dated directories, so I can find things faster, and then don't need specific software to use to restore (one reason I went with bigger drives too). I'd go external all the way for backups... save the fast access for things that need it.. I remove the backup and throw it in my gun safe... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted July 23, 2004 Author Share Posted July 23, 2004 Yes, the one-touch was on the list but a bit more pricey than a couple of others. Still, it seemed like a decent candidate. External... don't want to crack the box any more often than necessary; I have extra USB 2.0 connections; want to do something ELSE with the remaining old/small HD that's internal at the moment (like, REMOVE and REPLACE it, namely). I only have one main HDD at the moment and it's flying without a net. I can no longer afford to do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidwiz Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 When I used to work in IT, I had good luck with the Western Digital and Quantum drives. The Maxtor is good too. I see that Iomega is making a 120gb external drive now. If its anything like their Zip drives, it would be another good choice. Now that I think of it, with 600+ desktops to look after, I don't recall ever having a drive fail, from any manufacture. We were using Norton's Ghost program to build the machines. -David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted July 23, 2004 Author Share Posted July 23, 2004 I've never had an Iomega fail either. Yes, I noticed the Iomega item with some interest. DID have one HDD go south a few short years ago (somewhat disastrously) and just don't want to take that chance ever again--even though I have only about 20GB of data that needs backing-up at the present time... that'd be 20GB of SiG Lady's total business-and-everything-else that'd be gone if it 'went'. Not going to happen. Thanks! (to both of you) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz-0 Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 well as far as hard drives, the IBM deskstars with 20GB per platter surface density or higher are just horrid for reliability. I've had 15GB per platter surface ones last for 5+ years. The denser ones seem to make it about 18 months at best, even less with poor cooling and if you torque the drive mounting screws too much. As for Iomega, well the click of death on the zip drives was enough to stick them at the losing end of a class action suit. I've had quite a few of the jazz drive cartridges go toes up on me. The drive itself lasted about 3 years. I don't know if their newer stuff is any better, but unless you keep a LOT of full periodic backups, the cost per megabyte of their hard-drive-ish carts is pretty high compared to digging up a USB2.0 enclosure and a good HD. You want an external drive, or a removable internal for backup purposes, because spinning up and down and being exposed to the heat of operating and the disk seeks of things like searching puts wear on the drive. It is also constantly exposed to the same risk of power surges and failures as the rest of the system. However, if you turn it off and unplug it, that goes away. You can even keep the backups off site in the event of something like fire, earthquake, flood, etc.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loves2Shoot Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 I have had so many Maxtors die I'm a bit soured on them (14 drives to be exact) Western Digital is my drive of choice now. If you just want a back-up I would go with a DVD-R, comaparatively cheap and easy $40 for a basic model. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidwiz Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 Looks like the attorneys on the Iomega Zip drive suit made out like bandits, while the consumers got a $40 coupon. That leads me to believe that maybe there wasn't much merit to the class action. If the attorney's estimate is right of 28m affected drives, that works out to $1.12 billion in coupons. Kinda like what happened when the plaintiff attorney's filed suit against Toshiba a few years ago, saying that there was problems with their 1.2mb floppy drive software. I never had a problem w/ my laptop (and still don't), but was included in the class anyway. Toshiba settled by giving out coupons and the attorney's wound up with a boatload of $$$. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz-0 Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 the lawyers win out on class actions, but there were a LOT of users with the click of death. The fact that they got screwed by iomega and the lawyers dodesn't make the zip drive mroe reliable. At my last job, I went through something like 4 of the suckers in 2 years. In our labs at my current job, we don't expect them to lst more than a semester before going CoD. I think we phased them out last year finally, I just know the lab guys hate them with a passion and none of the ones in surplus work. The zip disks themselves seem to be pretty durable if you make sure to keep a sacrificial one around to make sure the drive still works before inserting the valuable ones. Use them if you like them, but I really ahve to say after dealing with the iomega removable media offerings, and other types of removable cartridges, use tape, removeable/external HD, or optical. In pretty much that order for longevity. Don't cheap out on the tape drive. Optical is convenient, but I'm finding that a lot of recrdable media gets sketchy after about a year, for regular full backups that you dispose of the old as you make new ones, they then move up a notch if stuff fits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted July 23, 2004 Author Share Posted July 23, 2004 I've had no problems with WD and have heard other people mouth them as their first recommendation as well for ANY kind of HDD use. Concur with the 'external' idea as a way to isolate the data completely off the system (conveniently) if need be as additional insurance against this or that kind of corruption or accident. L2S-- I think the HDD that did go bad on me was a Maxtor (looking back over my records and doing some process-of-eliminating)... but it WAS awfully old and no matter WHAT brand it was I wasn't wholly suprised by the dropout when it happened--just horribly inconvenienced due to lack of backup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merlin Orr Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 Want the real skinny? Storage Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz-0 Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 just a heads up, at this point toms pretty much writes whatever the vendors pay him to often enough that most folks don't trust the site anymore. Anandtech is a bit better, but you are going to have to spready your research around if you care about discerning anything resembling facts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted July 23, 2004 Author Share Posted July 23, 2004 "...spread your research around if you care about discerning anything resembling facts." You have NOOOOO idea how much time I spend online doing (all kinds of IT) research......! And still I feel I've only scratched the surface.Like IT news? Try www.dailyrotation.com One of thousands......... of places........ I discovered Anand's site (on my own) almost the first day I attended A+ class last April. I liked it. Granted, there's tons more than that even, but somehow his site had a tone of validity. For some reason I've never been a fanatical visitor to the Tom's Hardware site. Just a gut-level thing. That doesn't mean I don't use their items and information there as comparative elements in decisions sometimes... Back to Iomega for a moment: The reason I wasn't putting their 'REV' on the front burner of decision, exactly, was size: It's only 35GB. I'm looking for 80-120GB. The Iomega class-action suit sounds like it was plucked straight out of King of Torts (John Grisham). Lawyers pack it in and consumers get rebates or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob Boudrie Posted July 24, 2004 Share Posted July 24, 2004 Another approach is to take an old PC (chances are either you or someone you know has one laying around), installiing an inexpensive IDE drive (www.newegg.com for great prices), and any version of Windows (NT or later is best, so you can use NTFS), and share the drive for backup, and turn the system off when not backing up. If you're feel like a project and want a legit free OS< try Red Hat Fedora (fedora.redhat.com), with SAMBA and SWAT and use a Linux drive for backup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted July 24, 2004 Author Share Posted July 24, 2004 Rob-- I just scanned several sites for WD 80GB External HDD and newegg.com had the lowest price of all, hands down. Sounds like the unit is virtually a PnP type of device, too. It comes pre-formatted in FAT32, though--but reviewers said they used it as is with XP. My primary internal drive is NTFS. My weekend mentor (former fellow student from our A+ Cert class this spring) is a Linux specialist. I'm determined to (someday) pick up a bit of Linux skill, but until I decide whether or not to follow thru with the A+ Cert exams, I'm going to stick to Windows or I'll just muddy the mental waters even worse than they are now. But at least I have access to someone who could expertly point the way when the time comes. We get together at a lab downtown on Saturdays. Kinda eats into my trigger time sometimes, but it's important to do this IT thing right now. (FYI--I cobbled the Franken-system from variously-scrounged sources. Former home system upgrade leftovers, forum members' generosity, garage sales, computer lab friend donations (the case and a HD), even eBay.) I'm planning to convert the funky Win98 Practice Franken-system I've got started at the lab into something a bit more sophisticated (XP) and eventually bring it home, functioning and networkable. Meanwhile though, the external drive will be installed here at the home office ASAP for security's sake. Components being what they are, changes could always be made later if that looks like a better idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Rogers Posted July 24, 2004 Share Posted July 24, 2004 This site is a non-affiliated reviewer of storage devices. It's the best place I know for the straight dope on storage. Storage Review The home storage system I have for our family is a dedicated older PC with an Escalade controller configured for RAID 1. It was set up before every motherboard and her daughter's dog had a RAID controller built in, hence the dedicated device. The system has a removable (not external) drive for next level of backup. If you're not familiar with them, they consist of a docking station that occupies a 3.5" case slot and the drives are internal IDEs mounted in a caddy. They can be hot-swaped by turning a key to kill caddy power and allow removal. The RAID dumps to the removable nightly, I pull and store in safest area of house once a week and replace with one of two other rotating drives in caddies for the docking bay in the PC box. I used to have tape drive, but tape density just can't compare with HD any more, at least on my personal budget. CD-R density long ago couldn't meet my needs. I initially struggled to run the system in Linux/Samba but it was a big hassle compared to Windoze in a home setting. I got tired of having to get device drivers from some kid in Romania or such and recompiling the kernel to get peripherials installed, most of which never quite worked correctly and didn't play well together. This from someone who has been using *nix professionally since '85 and currently writes robotics control apps for a Linux-based realtime OS called Lynx. For the actual drives, noise is the #1 concern I have. I silence all my gear best I can. I currently use the 80G Hitachi Deskstar. Yeah, there's that dreaded Deskstar (aka Deathstar) moniker. I had three of the infamous IBM 45G Deathstars go bad in this backup system (but the procedures prevented any data loss) - I know first hand about them. But, what ever has changed, the Hitachi version is rock solid and all but silent. I learned about them and decided to give them a try after going to Storage Review. My tuppance, your milage will vary, good luck. -KR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob Boudrie Posted July 24, 2004 Share Posted July 24, 2004 www.searchstorage.com if you want to see what real storage is. Watch out for on-board RAID. Some of the low end raids you get on PC's (for example, the Silicon Image raid controller) can be unreliable at protecting data. I tested by Silicon Image raid controller by indicing failures (pluggin cables, etc.) and it worked flawlessly. The first time I had a "real failure" on one half of a mirrored pair, the controller trashed the metadata on the other drive ... and the vendor (ASUS) refused to even consider it was a "real problem"; answered questions only from the "user error" perspective; and refused to escalate to development engineering. I reformatted the drive and recovered from backup, but no longer trust Silicon Image raid. I've had no problem using Linux (RH9) with Maxtor IDE drives without getting any drivers other than those packaged with Linux. The only "catch" in running SAMBA is that if your network is internal only, it's worth setting the windows registry key to permit unencrypted passwords to simplify your Samba configuration. It's also worth installing SWAT (Samba Web Admin Tool). My Linux and Windows systems see each other's drives via Samba, and it works rather nicely. Add a Linksys KVM2 two system KVM switch and you have a nice Win+Linux development environment. (Especially useful if you like to have your own Apache + MySQL server for development) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GRD Posted July 24, 2004 Share Posted July 24, 2004 Storagereview is the bomb for hard disk reviews. Tom's used to be cool way back when, but is of limited usefulness now. Zip drives are the cracker-jack toys of storage. I wouldn't trust a zip disk to store my laundry list. Price/MB, HDD's are where it's at. - Gabe PS: If you're into silent computing: silentpcreview.com is worth browsing. PPS: 600 boxes and zero HDD failures? You, sir, are a lucky man. HDD failure is a fact of life: plan on it. It will happen, it's only a matter of when. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted July 24, 2004 Author Share Posted July 24, 2004 I, too, figured HDDs were the way to go for this project. I use Zips and CDs for transport of files to other entities (the county IT Dept for publishing of stuff, the print shop for printing of stuff, handoffs to other clients for graphic files on their behalf, etc.). I've had no problems with Zips over the years for modest storage and transportation of files, but they're too small (CDs, too, for that matter) for full system backup any more. Again, I have only about 20GB of stuff that needs backup, but that's going to grow (for one thing) and is the sole identity of my business and personal 'stuff' at the moment (for another)--too valuable to have floating in the ozone without the proverbial net. Plus, I'm still in full student research mode for various methods of storage and system upgrade/maintenance, so all this terrific feedback is of GREAT value at the moment. I really appreciate it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Rogers Posted July 24, 2004 Share Posted July 24, 2004 I'm sure Linux is more end-user friendly now than when I was setting up my system. I didn't use Red Hat, but it was at 6.0 then. Silent PC Review is well known to me. iOmega. I'm a techie living in Utah and we used to bump into them all the time. (note the past tense) I wouldn't trust anything from them. Nothing. Nada. The stories are amazing. One of the better ones came from an engineer I know who was hired to do studies on the "seemingly poor track record" of the Jaz product. The punch line I remember is when she was directed to a building where defective ones were stored to get some failed samples to investigate. The conversation went something like, "Hi, I'm new and studying failed drives. I was told I could get some here." "Sure, how many do you want?" "Would three be okay?" <barks laughing> "I've got over 40,000 dead units in there. You can have three truckloads if you want." These were just the ones that failed MAT. They had a double digit manufacturing failure rate alone. In the end they weren't serious about determining and fixing problems. 'nuff said. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SiG Lady Posted July 28, 2004 Author Share Posted July 28, 2004 The HDD arrived already today!!! (Oh, did I mention that I bought a WD 80GB external...?) Newegg.com had the lowest prices, the $20 rebate, the incredibly low shipping charges and 3-day FedEx to my door. Hotcha! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uscbigdawg Posted October 1, 2006 Share Posted October 1, 2006 FWIW, a lot of soldiers are taking the 300-750GB hard drives with them to Iraq/Afghanistan with movies from home on it. The point is that we can carry them a LOT easier and more securely than DVD's from home. Priced a bunch today at Best Buy. Pretty sweet. Rich Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted October 1, 2006 Share Posted October 1, 2006 Hot trick lately for me is to buy bulk HD's at CompUSA and stuff them into cheap USB/FW housings I get for $50-60. I have been getting Seagate, WD and Samsung 7200 RPM 250-300GB ATA-133 drives w/ 8MB cache for $119-139 lately. Including housing that comes out to way under a buck a gig. I get to retire the bulk HD and just stuff another one into the case when the drive fills up. Win, win compared to buying the pre-assembled external HD's for $1.25 to $1.50, or even more a gig ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uscbigdawg Posted October 1, 2006 Share Posted October 1, 2006 George, Way over my head. I just want to plug the box into my laptop and watch TV. That being said, I still need to workout the skipping problem with playing DVD's! Rich Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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