Which external hard drive?

[jillmc]

I have Windows Vista Basic-I need to purchase an external hard drive for file
back-up. I have had such bad luck with printers, etc since purchasing this
laptop with Vista-anyone have suggestions on which brand of ext. hard drive
to purchase that will work with Vista? Thanks so much!

 

[Alan C]

I've had no problems with USB drives from Maxtor, Seagate and Fujitsu with
both XP and Vista.

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

I have Windows Vista Basic-I need to purchase an external hard drive for
file
back-up. I have had such bad luck with printers, etc since purchasing
this
laptop with Vista-anyone have suggestions on which brand of ext. hard
drive
to purchase that will work with Vista? Thanks so much!

If you buy a 'one touch' solution which comes supplied with backup software,
check with the manufacturer re Vista software compatibility. If you get a
vague non-committal answer or no answer at all, don't buy the product.

You can buy a USB drive enclosure, hard drive and Acronis TrueImage software
package for about the same price, all of which are Vista compatible..

--
Mike Hall - MVP
How to construct a good post..
http://dts-l.com/goodpost.htm
How to use the Microsoft Product Support Newsgroups..
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=newswhelp&style=toc
Mike's Window - My Blog..
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/default.aspx

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have Windows Vista Basic-I need to purchase an external hard drive for file
back-up. I have had such bad luck with printers, etc since purchasing this
laptop with Vista-anyone have suggestions on which brand of ext. hard drive
to purchase that will work with Vista? Thanks so much!

Two points:

1. Printers need a driver to work with the operating system you want
to use them with. So there's a potential compatibility issue there if
the driver you need is unavailable or isn't written well. But with an
external drive, no driver is needed, and all brands work with Vista.

2. An external drive is nothing more than a standard EIDE drive
mounted in an external USB enclosure. You can either buy such a
combination pre-made, or buy the two separately and assemble it
yourself. Mounting the drive in the enclosure is trivially easy and
takes under five minutes, even for someone who is all thumbs. So,
depending on what prices you find for the two alternatives
(pre-assembled or bought separately and assembled yourself), you might
want to consider both alternatives

 

[Cameron Snyder]

I just got a Seagate FreeAgent Pro for $180 at Costco. 5 year Warranty as
opposed to WD's 3-year. 750GB. USB, Fire wire and eSATA interfaces. Plugged
it in and was good to go. Excellent backup utility is included that
integrates well with Vista's system restore and tasking, backing up all the
time in the background to criteria that you establish. Works well as a media
reservoir for recorded HDTV, movies and music served to an Xbox 360
extender. Fancy lights--we all love that. Shuts off when not in use for
whatever period you assign, and when called upon does not cause any hiccups
when spinning up. No problems.

I'm lovin' it.

 

[Guest]

2. An external drive is nothing more than a standard EIDE drive
mounted in an external USB enclosure. You can either buy such a

Or a SATA drive. Don't want to get the wrong drive for the case...

For EIDE, you also have the potential that the encloser can't handle the
size drive you get.

I checked into that about a year ago and a surprising number couldn't handle
a 500g drive. Some topped out at about 250g, others said 320g. Some didn't
say at all.

You also might want to think about ventilation. If you use the external
drive a lot, it can get hot and some cheap cases have no vents at all. The
drive just keeps getting hotter.

combination pre-made, or buy the two separately and assemble it
yourself. Mounting the drive in the enclosure is trivially easy and
takes under five minutes, even for someone who is all thumbs. So,
depending on what prices you find for the two alternatives
(pre-assembled or bought separately and assembled yourself), you might
want to consider both alternatives

Also, it's worth pointing out two other things.

1) The Western Digital MyBooks sometimes has issues with Vista. I don't
know why, but sometimes it can take several minutes before Vista will
recognise the drive.

It's not hardware related because if you put XP onto the same computer,
it'll be recognised immediately.

I've seen a number of people comment about it, so it's not just mine.

Once it does get recognised, it works fine. Just sometimes it can take
several minutes after you plug it in before that happens.


2) Many external drives will be formated as FAT32 for compatability with
Linux & Mac.

You might want to reformat that to NTFS so you can hold large files. (FAT32
is limited to 2gig.)

UNLESS you plan to use the drive as a backup drive for disk images etc.
Many of the disk imaging tools are based on Linux (Acronis TrueImage,
CloneZilla) or DOS (the old Ghost floppy) and they don't always work right
with NTFS. It's pretty easy for the disk writing to go wrong and it start
damaging random files all over the drive. (Yes, I've had it happen!)

For those, you are better off staying with FAT32.

Now, having said that, the FAT32 that are on those big drives are not
regular FAT32. XP can't format a large drive as FAT32 (I don't know about
Vista).

So if you repartition the drive, one for NTFS and one for FAT32, you may
need to use Linux to format the FAT32 backup partition.

If you aren't going to do large files (or don't know how to repartition &
reformat using Linux), then you might want to leave it as FAT32. The backup
programs will split it into chunks.

 

[C.B.]

I have Windows Vista Basic-I need to purchase an external hard drive for
file
back-up. I have had such bad luck with printers, etc since purchasing
this
laptop with Vista-anyone have suggestions on which brand of ext. hard
drive
to purchase that will work with Vista? Thanks so much!

Jillmc,

I use two WD My Book Premium 500GB external hard drives. I keep them
connected at all times. They will shut down safely along with Windows and
will power up safely when Windows is started so there is never any need to
manually start or stop them. I can also shut them down safely and/or remove
them with Windows running without having to use the "safely remove hardware"
option. They include excellent backup software also.
I have also read good reviews concerning Maxtor and Seagate. I assume
some of their models also include backup software. You may wish to consider
one of these products also.

C.B.

 

[the wharf rat]

2. An external drive is nothing more than a standard EIDE drive
mounted in an external USB enclosure. You can either buy such a
combination pre-made, or buy the two separately and assemble it
yourself. Mounting the drive in the enclosure is trivially easy and
takes under five minutes, even for someone who is all thumbs. So,

I've converted dozens of old pata 2.5 and 3.5 inch drives to
useful USB storage. Now that USB is the "useful serial bus" instead of
the "unstable serial bus" it was not so long ago lol.

 

[NoStop]

Or a SATA drive. Don't want to get the wrong drive for the case...

For EIDE, you also have the potential that the encloser can't handle the
size drive you get.

I checked into that about a year ago and a surprising number couldn't
handle
a 500g drive. Some topped out at about 250g, others said 320g. Some
didn't say at all.

You also might want to think about ventilation. If you use the external
drive a lot, it can get hot and some cheap cases have no vents at all.
The drive just keeps getting hotter.




Also, it's worth pointing out two other things.

1) The Western Digital MyBooks sometimes has issues with Vista. I don't
know why, but sometimes it can take several minutes before Vista will
recognise the drive.

It's not hardware related because if you put XP onto the same computer,
it'll be recognised immediately.

I've seen a number of people comment about it, so it's not just mine.

Once it does get recognised, it works fine. Just sometimes it can take
several minutes after you plug it in before that happens.


2) Many external drives will be formated as FAT32 for compatability with
Linux & Mac.

You might want to reformat that to NTFS so you can hold large files.
(FAT32 is limited to 2gig.)

Try 4GB and you'd be correct.

Now, having said that, the FAT32 that are on those big drives are not
regular FAT32.

Of course they are.

XP can't format a large drive as FAT32 (I don't know about
Vista).

Intentional limitation of XP placed there by Microsoft to discourage using
FAT32 because it is compatible with other non-Microsoft operating systems.

So if you repartition the drive, one for NTFS and one for FAT32, you may
need to use Linux to format the FAT32 backup partition.

True.

Cheers.

--
The three Rs of Microsoft support: Retry, Reboot, Reinstall.

Proprietary Software: a 20th Century software business model.

Q: What OS is built for lusers?
A: Which one requires running lusermgr.msc to create them?

Frank, hard at work on his Vista computer all day:
http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/compost.htm

 

[Marcus Jackson]

Seagate is a pretty good brand/

Try 4GB and you'd be correct.



Of course they are.

Intentional limitation of XP placed there by Microsoft to discourage using
FAT32 because it is compatible with other non-Microsoft operating systems.

True.

Cheers.

--
The three Rs of Microsoft support: Retry, Reboot, Reinstall.

Proprietary Software: a 20th Century software business model.

Q: What OS is built for lusers?
A: Which one requires running lusermgr.msc to create them?

Frank, hard at work on his Vista computer all day:
http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/compost.htm

 

[Guest]

Try 4GB and you'd be correct.

Not entirely reliably, sorry.

In theory, yes it can do up to 4g-1 bytes. I've tried working with large
files and it wasn't reliable.

But I will grant you that was with Win98. Win98 couldn't reliably handle
FAT32 files over 2g.

WinXP & Vista may have fixed those issues.

Of course they are.

Wrong. They are often 64k clusters, which are not officially supported by
Microsoft.

I don't know why 64k clusters are wanted on an external drive, but some
manufacturers definetly use them. (Or at least they used to. My WD 500g
myBook used them.) (64k clusters used to be done on internal drives because
it made disk I/O a little more efficient. That's not really an issue over a
USB bus.)

It's a non-standard, unofficial extension.

It works (usually), but it's not official. It is not documented in the
official FAT32 specs.


As for XP formatting a regular, normal size cluster partition... No, it
can't. That is by design. It's possible that it was to retain
compatability with Win2k which couldn't handle them over 32g at all.

So either way you go, you can't use WinXP to repartition & reformat the
external drive.

Intentional limitation of XP placed there by Microsoft to discourage using
FAT32 because it is compatible with other non-Microsoft operating systems.

Wrong again.

FAT32 was never designed for such large drives or large files. It could
work with them, but it was very impractical to do so. It wasn't efficient
for such large drives.

FAT32 was just a hack for Win95.2. A stop gap measure that lasted longer
than expected.

Microsoft discouraged use of FAT32 with XP, but that was because NTFS was
much more suitable for that OS and the drives that would be available in its
lifespan.

You got 4k clusters, larger files, and more efficient disk operations on
large drives than what you'd give if you used FAT32.

When XP was being designed, Linux wasn't even close to being a threat to
anybody. Only in fanboy's fantasies was Linux any sort of threat back then.

True.

Or use the util that most external drive makers give you. But that has the
disadvantage of restoring the whole drive to the original size. Wiping out
your repartitioning.

I don't know if Vista could do it.

Possibly the Win98SE boot floppy could.

 

[metrotsl]

I have Windows Vista Basic-I need to purchase an external hard drive for file
back-up. I have had such bad luck with printers, etc since purchasing this
laptop with Vista-anyone have suggestions on which brand of ext. hard drive
to purchase that will work with Vista? Thanks so much!

 

[metrotsl]

Using Buffalo ext HDD. Could not get it to work with Vista Ultimate utilizing
Fire Wire connection. Had to go to USB.