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Author Topic: External Hard Drives  (Read 15450 times)

stevie

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Re: External Hard Drives
« Reply #15 on: April 04, 2008, 11:18:25 PM »

Thanks for that stevie,I like the look of the seagate,can you just drag and drop the files across easily.I am looking for about a 250gb.My main hd is still 80% empty( 230gb spare) but just want to back things up.I just had alook a lacie one on E-Buyer,that looks pretty easy to usejust drag and drop and done.

I`d be tempted to go for this, if you click & collect its £64.99 for a 500Gb seagate, only £3 more.

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1578854601.1207347202@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccckadedjmflldjcflgceggdhhmdgmk.0&page=Product&sku=970233

As already said, you can drag & drop, it also has a simple simple back-up system if you want to use it.
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guest

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Re: External Hard Drives
« Reply #16 on: April 05, 2008, 11:11:03 AM »

We've used 10 Freecom Classic SL Network drives for about 5 years and they've been fine - these seem to be the current version : http://www.freecom.com/ecproduct_detail.asp?ID=3400&CatID=8020&sCatID=1146266&ssCatID=1147446

As you can see they work on both 10/100Mbps LAN and USB 2.0 which is rather handy.

One thing I would say is that the drives aren't (IMHO) suitable for leaving powered on 24/7 if you connect them via USB. The first ones we got had a small fan in the enclosure and they stayed cool but they later ones had no fan and ran a bit too hot for my liking although it is worth pointing out that only one of the ten disks has failed. That's not too shabby considering it was running 24/7 recording CCTV footage for 3+ years.

The heat "issue" is something to do with Windows XP and USB drives though as they run cool enough on a LAN or on a Linux box. Windows doesn't seem to be permitting the drive to spin down despite all the power settings being set appropriately but its entirely possible that this is something local to us rather than something generic - I don't have the inclination to investigate further at the moment.
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UncleUB

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Re: External Hard Drives
« Reply #17 on: April 05, 2008, 11:56:02 AM »

Thanks for all the input guys.All this is new to me because in 13 years since my first computer I have never backed a single thing up(Shock horror I can hear you all saying).So I thought it was time I got my act together and made a start,although I'm not sure what to do and where to start.I have seen acouple of external hard drive sthat look interesting( through your recommondations)
1, Seagate Freeagent
2, Maxtor 1 touch 4
and another one is the Western digital Mybook
The problem is each manufacture has that many models its knowing what to choose.I know I don't want anything more than 500gb.


Edit. I see some drives are pre-formatted to NTFS,others come with FAT32 and need formatting to NTFS,Why?.Can someone explain all this jargon to me please.
« Last Edit: April 06, 2008, 07:52:59 AM by UncleUB »
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Pwiggler

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Re: External Hard Drives
« Reply #18 on: April 06, 2008, 08:23:00 AM »

NTFS and FAT32 are types of file systems, i.e. simply put, the data is arranged in different ways.

NTFS is a secure and efficient file system, FAT32 is quite basic and does not have any security (if thats an issue with you).

a FAT32 drive does not need reformating to NTFS coz if you were to drap and drop FROM an NTFS partition, its converted to FAT32 as it is copied across.

have a look at MSs description:   

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/russel_october01.mspx

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Paul

UncleUB

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Re: External Hard Drives
« Reply #19 on: April 06, 2008, 09:42:20 AM »

Thanks Paul,is it the same with vista?
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roseway

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Re: External Hard Drives
« Reply #20 on: April 06, 2008, 09:46:32 AM »

>> NTFS is a secure and efficient file system

A somewhat dubious point (it suffers badly from fragmentation, and it doesn't have journalling, for example) but I agree that it's better than FAT32, which isn't difficult. :)
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  Eric

oldfogy

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Re: External Hard Drives
« Reply #21 on: April 06, 2008, 09:55:43 AM »

Quote
NTFS is a secure and efficient file system, FAT32 is quite basic and does not have any security
Exactly what type of security this is I don't know.

What I feel obliged to point out is that the new PC I purchased last month still came with one of the partitions as FAT32, so if there was a security issue Medion would not send it out like that.

I think the word "security" is a misleading word and really means "Secure" in that Windows Vista or XP can handle it better and in a more efficient manner than FAT32 when it comes to the displacement of data.

Basically Vista or XP is just the names of the OS.

Warning - while you were typing a new reply has been posted. You may wish to review your post.
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guest

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Re: External Hard Drives
« Reply #22 on: April 06, 2008, 10:14:11 AM »

Quote
Exactly what type of security this is I don't know.

FAT32 has no method of controlling permissions (ie who can read/write/delete/run etc) at anything other than a folder level and even then that's only for access over a network. In short FAT32 has no way of controlling access by users actually working at the computer - for example there would be nothing to stop a user deleting the C:\Program Files folder if they chose to do so.

If you are the only user then its not really that much of an issue but FAT32 is hideously inefficient and was really just a bodge to allow larger volume sizes and also long file names (the latter was much more important to MS than the former).
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UncleUB

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Re: External Hard Drives
« Reply #23 on: April 14, 2008, 11:21:28 AM »

Just got one of these,I've transfered all my music and photo's.Can't believe how simple and painless it was.When I finished just clicked on 'the safely remove icon' and removed the pen drive.When I put it straight back in it was recognised straight away without a restart. :)

Edit,just noticed the pen drive is FAT32,should I have formatted before downloading my files,or does it not really matter.Also it is a 4GB drive but with only 3.72GB capacity.Where's the 280MB gone?

[attachment deleted by admin]
« Last Edit: April 14, 2008, 01:17:38 PM by UncleUB »
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mr_chris

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Re: External Hard Drives
« Reply #24 on: April 15, 2008, 04:40:24 PM »

>> Also it is a 4GB drive but with only 3.72GB capacity.Where's the 280MB gone?

Traditionally, capacities were measured in powers of 2, e.g. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 etc. Because of the way computer architecture works, these were natural boundaries for memory etc in computers. The old 8 bit computers like the Spectrum and the BBC were limited to 64KB of addressable memory space - this was 65,536 bytes (216).

So over time, 1 Kilobyte has become known as 1,024 bytes, rather than 1,000. Similarly, 1 Megabyte = 1,024 KB, or 1,048,576 bytes. Similar for 1GB.

It seems that storage manufacturers use the decimal versions of GB rather than the binary versions... so given you've bought this 4GB storage card ... they use 4GB = 4,000,000,000 bytes... divide this by 1,073,741,824 (230 - the number of bytes in 1 computer GB!) gives you 3.72529 GB
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Chris

UncleUB

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Re: External Hard Drives
« Reply #25 on: April 15, 2008, 05:35:02 PM »

Thanks mr chris.Will have to get the calculator out in future. :)
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oldfogy

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Re: External Hard Drives
« Reply #26 on: April 15, 2008, 10:23:09 PM »

For "quick" mental maths I just work on 10% - (minus).

But if you want to be a "little bit" more accurate without being exact just try minus 7%

So: 4 - 7% = 3.72
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UncleUB

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Re: External Hard Drives
« Reply #27 on: April 16, 2008, 06:34:32 AM »

Oh thats much easier OF.My internal drive is a 320GB which I'm left with 297GB.So your -7% is spot on.Thanks.  ;)
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