Hard Drive

tvyankee · « **on:** 30 Aug 2005, 06:32 pm »

I am getting a sb2 and was wondering who makes a good external hard drive?

The hard drive is small on my computer so i thought this would be a good way to go.

Thanks for any help.

BTW this is what i found so far.

http://www.buy.com/prod/LaCie_d2_250GB_Hard_Drive_Extreme_with_Triple_Interface_300770/q/loc/223/10380972.html

Carlman · « **Reply #1 on:** 30 Aug 2005, 06:48 pm »

I just bought a Thermaltake HD enclosure from Newegg.com... That way I can swap in and out various drives. If you don't see yourself needing to do that, an external drive might be fine. I don't know much about 'LaCie' though... and I don't care for buy.com's customer service so I don't shop there anymore.

I have had good luck with this drive....

Best of luck.

Paul_Bui · « **Reply #2 on:** 30 Aug 2005, 07:39 pm »

An external HD enclosure is nice - I should get one sometime. For now I'm OK with the Seagate 300GB external HD that I bought $199 after rebate from Best Buy.

zybar · « **Reply #3 on:** 30 Aug 2005, 07:56 pm »

I just got a Seagate 200MB external from CC for $149.

Not as good a deal as Paul, but respectable.

No issues with use, setup etc...

George

bubba966 · « **Reply #4 on:** 30 Aug 2005, 09:21 pm »

If you want external I'd go for this http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101507

They've got other sizes there http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductList.jsp?ThirdCategoryCode=011008&SortBy=B&Brand=SEAGATE but the 300g is the best size/price one they have.

Personally I prefer IBM/Hitachi drives over the Seagates. But doesn't look like Hitachi makes external drives. The Seagate externals look to be the best available right now...

scottielee · « **Reply #5 on:** 30 Aug 2005, 09:45 pm »

i love my lacie 250gb designed by f. a. porsche: http://www.buy.com/prod/q/loc/10353523.html?dcaid=17587
it is fast and reliable. the only thing i don't like about it is the separate power adapter cluttering up my desk.

konut · « **Reply #6 on:** 30 Aug 2005, 11:06 pm »

I just picked up a 250GB Plextor internal that was on special at CompUSA, for $99.99, that Staples 110% price matched. I still need an external case though. The Plextor has a 16MB cache. That Porche unit only has a 2MB. I THINK Slim Devices recommends 8MB, but I could be wrong. I'm just learning about this stuff and, as always, the more you look into it, the more there is to look into. Internal power supplies create heat. There is an upside to that external supply.

jqp · « **Reply #7 on:** 30 Aug 2005, 11:54 pm »

Quote from: konut

I just picked up a 250GB Plextor internal that was on special at CompUSA, for $99.99, that Staples 110% price matched. I still need an external case though. The Plextor has a 16MB cache. That Porche unit only has a 2MB. I THINK Slim Devices recommends 8MB, but I could be wrong. I'm just learning about this stuff and, as always, the more you look into it, the more there is to look into. Internal power supplies create heat. There is an upside to that external supply.

You mean Maxtor not Plextor, correct?

There are several factors which contribute to the PC system's total throughput: your CPU speed, L1 cache, L2 cache, your RAM amount, your RAM speed, your bus, your hard drive data bus speed, your hard drive access time, hard drive rotation speed, hard drive cache, etc.

For example many laptops out there still use USB 1.x which is pretty slow, so external fast hard drives with a big cache will be on the other side of a USB bottleneck from the PC. USB 2.0 speed is much better, still may be a bottleneck for some of these drives though.

jqp · « **Reply #8 on:** 31 Aug 2005, 12:02 am »

Quote from: scottielee

i love my lacie 250gb designed by f. a. porsche: http://www.buy.com/prod/q/loc/10353523.html?dcaid=17587
it is fast and reliable. the only thing i don't like about it is the separate power adapter cluttering up my desk.

I saw a very reasonable LaCie drive that had 1394b Firewire - 800Mbps - thats fast! Of course you will need a 1394b port to take advantage of it.

konut · « **Reply #9 on:** 31 Aug 2005, 12:15 am »

Quote from: jqp

You mean Maxtor not Plextor, correct?

There are several factors which contribute to the PC system's total throughput: your CPU speed, L1 cache, L2 cache, your RAM amount, your RAM speed, your bus, your hard drive data bus speed, your hard drive access time, hard drive rotation speed, hard drive cache, etc.

For example many laptops out there still use USB 1.x which is pretty slow, so external fast hard drives with a big cache will be on the other side of a USB bottleneck from the PC. USB 2.0 speed is much better, still may be a bottleneck for some of these drives though.

Brain fart.........Maxtor it is! Since I'm using an Apple iBook its Firewire for me. I bought it primarily as a backup and boot drive should the onboard HD fail. Use with the SB2 will be down the road a piece.

JoshK · « **Reply #10 on:** 31 Aug 2005, 02:35 am »

just an fyi, firewire is faster than USB 2.0, atleast firewire 800. If its an external HD, then it probably is moot but if you were to put a burner in an external case, I'd definitely go for firewire 800.

You can put basically any HD in an 5 1/4" external case with an appropriate bridgeboard. You can find firewire bridgeboards & cases at fwdepot.com.

scottielee · « **Reply #11 on:** 31 Aug 2005, 02:37 am »

Quote from: konut

That Porche unit only has a 2MB.

it actually has 8mb of buffer per lacie http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10384

mizzuno · « **Reply #12 on:** 31 Aug 2005, 02:52 am »

The main benefit of firewire is the isochronous bus best explained here:
http://www.wd-3.com/archive/1394IsochronousTransfersPart1.htm

which basically guarantees a high steady data rate.

tvyankee · « **Reply #13 on:** 11 Sep 2005, 02:26 am »

hey guy's

i ended up getting a 250 gig drive but i am having a slight problem.it installed well but when i go to put just like a excel file or just click on it, it says (insert disk into drive f)

does anyone know what i could do to fix it?i have been messing around with it but have no luck.

thanks

Carlman · « **Reply #14 on:** 11 Sep 2005, 11:59 am »

tvy... Have you run diskmgt.msc to assign the drive letter?

tvyankee · « **Reply #15 on:** 11 Sep 2005, 12:38 pm »

hey carlman,

i have run the computer mgnt and when i turn on the external disk it shows up as disk-1 and my c-drive shows up as 0 and then underneth 1 it shows f: drive but nothing in the space where is say how much room on the disk or anything else about it.

when i am in computer mgnt and i turn of the external disk the #1 goes away and the F external stays there.

still when i try and drag and drop something to the f drive it says needs disk.

any clue.

thanks

Carlman · « **Reply #16 on:** 11 Sep 2005, 01:22 pm »

If it were ME... I would re-run the disk management wizard again and see if you can remove and/or re-add that drive as a hard drive. BTW, have you formatted this drive?

The fact that you have no statistics on the drive tells me there's no volume information on the disk yet... and therefore the device can be seen but not what's really on it... so your PC sees it but sees it wrong.

I would do a search on the disk management wizard see if you can get better advice on other forums... I'm assuming you're on XP and I'm not a guru of it. (yet

)

jermmd · « **Reply #17 on:** 11 Sep 2005, 02:00 pm »

TVYankee,

Here's a good site for technical support with these type of problems.

Joe

Levi · « **Reply #18 on:** 11 Sep 2005, 05:32 pm »

Quote from: tvyankee

hey carlman,

i have run the computer mgnt and when i turn on the external disk it shows up as disk-1 and my c-drive shows up as 0 and then underneth 1 it shows f: drive but nothing in the space where is say how much room on the disk or anything else about it.

when i am in computer mgnt and i turn of the external disk the #1 goes away and the F external stays there.

still when i try and drag and drop something to the f drive it says needs disk.

any clue.

thanks

Yes. Hopefully, you have it fixed by now.

If not, I need more information so I can help you. Assuming there are no Hardware issues.
For starters:
Can you go back to Disk Managment and right click the target HDD and select explore?

Second:
Can you go and right click the target drive and right click and select properties?

PM me your phone# and time where I can call you.

Levi

Papajin · « **Reply #19 on:** 11 Sep 2005, 06:11 pm »

Sounds to me like he didn't actually format the drive. Right now it's probably just partitioned, but not formatted.

Assuming Windows, go to "My Computer", find the drive you're having trouble with in the list, and right click on it. A menu should pop up, and then you select format. I would probably select quick format, but make sure compression is NOT selected. The rest of the stuff can probably be left at default.