External Harddrive

	External Harddrive
	Discussion by tezza with 23 Replies. Last Update: January 5, 2007, 12:17 am (View Latest)	Page 1 of 2 pages.

tezza

Who owns their own external harddrive? What is its capacity? What is it mainly used for? Mine is for a backup of my web design stuff, videos, and my music collection.
The main one I use is my 120 gb drive as its small and very portable, rather than the 360 gb ones where you need power supplies and a huge case for them.

Wed Nov 1, 2006 Reply New Discussion

saint-michael

Actually EHD (External Hard Drives) at 300-400bg can come in smaller sizes instead of looking like a tower. It's due to the fact of the rapid updates in computer technology that everything is becoming smaller and yet just as powerful.

Mine is a Dell 180gb (EHD)

Wed Nov 1, 2006 Reply New Discussion

tezza

Cool. How quiet is yours?

Wed Nov 1, 2006 Reply New Discussion

foolakadugie

I have two external drives. One is a 160 GB LaCie (firewire/usb) with a very heavy duty metal casing/stand. I first bought it when I was in design school to transport all of my projects back and forth between school and home. Now I store and backup files on it that I don't readily nead on my computer. I also use it for transporting data when I need to. The other external drive was a 120 GB usb western digital drive, but it ended up dying on me so I swapped out the drive with an old 40 GB drive I had laying around. I use that as sort of a temporary drive to store files before I have time to archive and such.

Wed Nov 1, 2006 Reply New Discussion

talktime

QUOTE (tezza)

I recently bought a 160 GB External Hard Drive by 'MY BOOK'.
Its compact.. and literally looks like a little book :)Since it is compact it takes up less space on your desk, stacks horizontally.I found it easy to set up and also easy to use. One feature I liked about it is that it turns itself on and off with your computer. I found it exceptionally fast and ultra quiet.
It is really useful and as it is relatively cheap, its a great way of storing or backing up your computer. The only problem was that with larger files it can take a long time to copy or during play back it can be a little bit jumpy. Other wise it is a very good product. I just opened the box, plugged in the power, connected the USB and it works perfectly. It was recognised immediately.
I basically use it to store all my pictures & my baby's videos. With 160 GB in hand, I have hardly used any space!
I m really glad I bought this hard drive... its become one stop-shop for all my pictures & videos...

Thu Nov 2, 2006 Reply New Discussion

WeaponX

Are we talking about the original external hard drives? Do those that use USB enclosures count?

I have a USB Enclosure drive and also a IDE to USB adapter that I use to connect my internal hard drives to make it act like it's an external one (which is basically how they are made anyway - break one open and the inner workings should be identical in a sense).

I personally have over 1 terabyte of data ranging from 120GB to 400GB in size. It's been 8 or 9 years now and I have accumulated more data than I could imagine. Mostly backups of DVDs and everything else I can make a backup of. You can never have enough space

Thu Nov 2, 2006 Reply New Discussion

saint-michael

Except for a couple of click and a spinning of the hard drive it is silent.

@weaponx I might have seen one, but of course I used tape drives in the army talk about archaic right there.

Thu Nov 2, 2006 Reply New Discussion

unimatrix

I have the external 1TB Mybook drive from Western Digital with firewire cables. Currently I have it set for 500GB capacity with the other drive as RAID backup.

Thu Nov 2, 2006 Reply New Discussion

knight17

I don't have an external HDD.But can you clear my doubt ?Can I use an external HDD to install and learn Linux ?

Sat Nov 4, 2006 Reply New Discussion

xboxrulz

yes, but highly not recommended because the speed of USB 2 is slower than ATA/SATA connections. You will have major trouble w/ speed.

xboxrulz

Sat Nov 4, 2006 Reply New Discussion

Levis

I bought an internal hard drive and stuck it into a special case that i made which converted it itno an external one. It currently can be used either through USB or Firewire which is much faster then USB2. Its size is 120 gigs even theough the bad clusters make it 117 gig.

If you want to learn linux and have a fast enough computer. Download Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 which is FREE and install any Distro that u'd like. If you plan to use Ubuntu or Kubuntu make sure to change the Windows size, otherwise u won't be able to boot he live CD. If you need help on that, contact me.

Sat Nov 4, 2006 Reply New Discussion

WeaponX

QUOTE

That's cool that you have your own custom built enclosure drive. Are we talking about Firewire II here? Otherwise, USB 2.0 should be a bit more faster than the original Firewire connection (assuming that you don't have other USB devices sharing the resources).

Sat Nov 4, 2006 Reply New Discussion

knight17

I know about Virtual PC 2004 and desktop virtualisation

But the problem I am facing is practical my brother uses Windows and he is not interested in Linux (saying it is not going to overtake Microsoft Operating systems in the Home desktop)he may be true.But I want to learn Linux so I am thinking an option in which I can install it in the same machine via a external Drive or something like that.I don't need a lot of space 20 GB will be more than sufficient.

Sun Nov 5, 2006 Reply New Discussion

foolakadugie

QUOTE (knight17)

I know about Virtual PC 2004 and desktop virtualisation

I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to linux, but I know this is possible. I think the best way is to just make multiple partitions on the drive. Then you would just have a boot menu to choose which OS to boot into.
You could run it from an external drive too if you wanted but it is possible to have both on the same drive.

Sun Nov 5, 2006 Reply New Discussion

WeaponX

It might be more convenient to install Linux under Virtual PC 2004 instead since you can run it directly from Windows. Otherwise, you will have to work in a full Linux environment if you install it on it's own drive/partition.

Install them on the same hard drive. You will need to get a non-destructive data partitioning program like Partition Magic (I recommend using this as I haven't tried others...like the free ones even). You will need to create a partition for Linux and the swap partition. Then install Linux on it and use a boot manager like the GAG Boot Manager to create a boot menu.

Sun Nov 5, 2006 Reply New Discussion