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Author Topic: External Hard Drive Enclosures  (Read 15545 times)

BernardLanguillier

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External Hard Drive Enclosures
« Reply #20 on: May 10, 2006, 09:05:46 pm »

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Ah, I did not know that, so LAN is required. Regardless, it is still a very good unit.

Cheers,
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=65008\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Yes, it is still pretty good, just not as fast as it would be with USB2.0 or firewire.

Regards,
Bernard

allanjder

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External Hard Drive Enclosures
« Reply #21 on: June 14, 2006, 04:12:56 pm »

I came here looking for speed comparisons, after reading the post, I did my own test. I tested the speeds of FireWire 800/FireWire 400/Gigabit Ethernet.

So I think the NAS with gigabit is the best way to go. It allows expandability to a network or just connected via a ethernet cross over cable to one station. Gigbit is really cheap now, I picked up a 8 port gig switch for under 50 bucks.

Setting:
Workstation: G5 2.7 Ghz, 4GB DDR SDRAM, Mac OS 10.4.5
Local Storage: Internal SATA disk 234 GB HFS+ Journaled and LaCie d2  
150 GB HFS+ Hard Drive Extreme with triple interface USB 2.0,  
FireWire 400, FireWire 800.
Network: Cat 6, Linksys SRW2016 16-Port 10/100/1000 Gigabit Switch
Server: Xserver 10.2.8 Dual 1GHz, 2 GB Memory with internal ATA and  
SCSI RAID 5.

File: 1 GB Photoshop PSD file.

Workstation internal SATA disk to server ATA disk-29.5 sec.
Workstation to external disk via FireWire 400-29.8 sec.
Workstation to external disk via FireWire 800-17.9 sec.
Workstation to external disk via USB 2.0-1 min. 2.6 sec.

Conclusion: Gigabit Ethernet is dam fast, USB 2.0 is dam slow  
compared to FireWire 400 under my normal and typical working  
environment.
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Gregory

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External Hard Drive Enclosures
« Reply #22 on: June 14, 2006, 10:15:18 pm »

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These days a Lacie 160 Mb external USB2 drive costs about $125 (or less). It hardly seems worth it to roll your own.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=64807\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I can't recommend a Lacie drive. I bought two of them and regretted it.

first, almost all HDDs sold in third-party enclosures are only covered by a 1 year warranty while you can get up to 5 years warranty if you buy the drive separately.

second, the Lacie (and some other companies) enclosures have hardware limits on the visible capacity of the enclosed drive, but Lacie will not tell you what that limit is unless you ask specifically, and even then they might not answer. if you buy a 160GB and later decide to replace the drive with a 400GB unit, you're out of luck because the enclosure is probably limited to 250GB.

third, one of my Lacie enclosures failed just outside of the 1 year warranty. it would have cost almost as much to get it repaired by Lacie as to buy a new one.

don't buy a Lacie. get a decent enclosure (perhaps under the guidance of one or more of the available reviews; the FireWire chip and the power supply seem to be the most important aspects of the enclosures) and get an HDD with a reasonable warranty; at least 3 years.

I'm in the process of getting a new 2.5" drive for my Hyperdrive. the Seagate (Momentus) drives all come with 5 years warranty. you'll never get that from Lacie.
« Last Edit: June 14, 2006, 10:16:34 pm by Gregory »
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allanjder

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External Hard Drive Enclosures
« Reply #23 on: June 15, 2006, 11:54:48 am »

Re. externals

What Gregory said is true to a point. I "roll my own" and buy off the shelf depending on time and resources.

In the first year, LaCie has sent back the drives with NEW disk inside if they went bad. With the disk mfgs. warrantees (including Seagate), you often get back a refurbished disk. Mfg. replacement disk have never been any good. They arrive dead or soon fail. I have two hardware RAID 5s with lots of ATA disk and have gone through many disk from many mfgs. 1 year to 5 years. But at 5 years, the capacity is way too small anyway. Any replacement is almost useless. An example is a 4 year old disk with 10 GBs, they send you a refurbished 10 GB that is too small and slow for anything. In 5 years SATA will be obsolete. Long warrantee with computer equipment may not be worth the extra cost.

I have not checked into it lately, but some bridge boards firmware can be upgraded to take higher capacities.
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budjames

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External Hard Drive Enclosures
« Reply #24 on: June 24, 2006, 08:26:36 pm »

I have a Dell Precision Workstation with an internal RAID 0 config for speed.  I have a PCI-Express Firewire 400/800 card installed. I have an external FW800 Lacie Extreme Big Disk 500GB for working storage for video. I have a Maxtor 300GB OneTouch II external FW400 drive for daily back up of the My Documents folder on my internal RAID drive. I have 2 Adaptec external FW400/USB2.0 drives with Western Digital 300GB drives daisy chained via FW400 to my Maxtor drive.

This system gives me lots of flexibilty.

I just purchased another Adaptec external drive enclosure, available at Best Buy for $60. It's a nice sleek aluminum enclosure that does not require a fan, therefore, it's silent. The Western Digital 300GB IDE drives are purchased online for about $120. The result is a really nice and inexpensive FW400/USB 2.0 compatiable 300GB external drive. I plan on using this 3rd drive to back up MyDocuments folder once a month and keep it at my office (off site).

I've been using Restrospect Pro 7 for backing software, but, Microsoft SyncToy is great for manual backups and it's free.

Finally every 6 months, I back up all of my image files from the preceeding 6 months to DVD-Rs using Archive Creator 3.0.

Bud James
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henk

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External Hard Drive Enclosures
« Reply #25 on: June 26, 2006, 06:47:40 pm »

I have a Windows system with only one 250 Gig HD S-ATA with 3 partitions
1- C drive 30 gig for OS and software
2- D data  30 gig drive for documents, mail etc.
3- E work drive 190 gig for projects in progress. When a project is finished I copy the directory to the last external HD.

External via 2 Build in Bays for S-ATA drives in Alu cases like the MXQ-SS-300. http://www.cooldrives.com/sata-serial-ata-...losure-lcd.html
2 bays so I can copy from one to the other.

I have now 6 extra HD each 250 Gig which are stored in a vault. An index off each drive is on the system for search. This works very well for me.

Note: the old trays have wired connections for the HD as you can see on the pictures on the site. They are vry fagile. The new once have a fixed connector and you slip in the HD very easely and without any problem because the room you have with the wires is very,very small!!

Henk
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roberte

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External Hard Drive Enclosures
« Reply #26 on: June 26, 2006, 11:46:27 pm »

Hi,

You need fans for HDD. Passive cooling is only good for very short periods of spin time.

For near silent external cases I found these recommended by a gamer:

http://www.amselectronics.com/Products/Ven...s/Venus_ds.html

With any ambient noise such as the typical CPU case fan these cases are silent. I also like their little 2.5" enclosure for onsite backup when using a laptop. I'm a fan of Seagate HDD and roll my own.

-- Robert.
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