External Hard Drive.

[Gene K]

Good Afternoon (or Morning),
I have both USB 2.0 and Firewire [IEEE 1394] jacks enabled via a PCI card on
a Dell Dimension 8200 (1.9 HZ). I am thinking of purchasing an external Hard
Drive [40 to 120 GB depending on price, 7200 RPM, perhaps 8 MB cache. Would
be used for backup plus storage of rarely used stuff.
Questions:
A. Do they work well? Serve the purpose? Worth the cost?
B. Which brand would you recommend? Model of recommended brand?
C. Good points? Bad Points?
Thanks,
Gene K

 

[Quaoar]

Good Afternoon (or Morning),
I have both USB 2.0 and Firewire [IEEE 1394] jacks enabled via a PCI
card on a Dell Dimension 8200 (1.9 HZ). I am thinking of purchasing
an external Hard Drive [40 to 120 GB depending on price, 7200 RPM,
perhaps 8 MB cache. Would be used for backup plus storage of rarely
used stuff.
Questions:
A. Do they work well? Serve the purpose? Worth the cost?
B. Which brand would you recommend? Model of recommended brand?
C. Good points? Bad Points?
Thanks,
Gene K

This is one of those devices that you have to work out for yourself.
Sometimes firewire works on computers, sometimes there are difficulties
depending on the host controller involved. USB generally offers more
out of the box connectability (?) than firewire, but USB 1.1 will be
slow compared to USB2. If you have only USB 1.1, firewire may be your
choice since it is faster. If you have the ability in BIOS to boot from
USB or firewire, that might controll your choice if you want to image
and restore your HD from the external drive.

Q

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

It's still morning in Las Vegas!

Yes they work well, providing your power supply is adequate. Each USB port
requires power from the PC's PSU to power it, most problems are seen when
the PSU is inadequate to supply everything.

I only use Maxtor hard drives in my PCs (except my Toshiba notebook which
has a Toshiba hard drive).... primarily because their guarantee used to be
excellent. It's not as good anymore (more on a par with the other drive
manufacturers), but I have had drives fail and Maxtor have replaced them
without any problem. The few times I've had problems with other
manfacturers' hard drives, it's not been as easy or as quick for a
replacement drive to arrive.

Get as large a drive as possible. Think to the future. My very first hard
drive was a mere 20mb. I thought I'd never need anything bigger. I now
have 400gb of hard drive space.... and still need more (video editing takes
a LOT of space).

Cari
www.coribright.com

 

[James Silverton]

Good Afternoon (or Morning),
I have both USB 2.0 and Firewire [IEEE 1394] jacks enabled via a PCI card on
a Dell Dimension 8200 (1.9 HZ). I am thinking of purchasing an external Hard
Drive [40 to 120 GB depending on price, 7200 RPM, perhaps 8 MB cache. Would
be used for backup plus storage of rarely used stuff.
Questions:
A. Do they work well? Serve the purpose? Worth the cost?
B. Which brand would you recommend? Model of recommended brand?
C. Good points? Bad Points?
Thanks,

I've been using a USB 2.0 7200rpm 40 Gig Buslink hard disc for about
six months mainly for backup using Dantz Retropect. I can't say
anything bad about it and it simply works well. The only thing that
you have to watch is to use the supplied program if you want to
disconnect without going thro' a tedious startup procedure later. That
seems contrary to the spirit of USB somehow.