[Novalug] External harddrive units

Igor Birman igor_birman@yahoo.com
Sat Mar 7 18:32:02 EST 2009


You could always get an enclosure and put your own drive in, though the reliability of the enclosures is not necessarily any better than anything else.  I have a few of these:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=2020-OTB&cat=CBL&cpc=CBLbsc

The adapters work pretty well, but the power supplies they come with aren't too reliable.

We often use an old power supply from a computer to power them and jump them with a paper clip in the power adapter (connect the green and black wires to turn them on - like in this picture: http://www.dansdata.com/images/digidoc/runatx360.jpg)

I want to get one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817147065

But don't know if it will be any more reliable.

All hard drives die, and from what I understand the probability of death is more of a U shape - take a look at section 4.2 of this document:

http://usenix.org/events/fast07/tech/schroeder/schroeder_html/index.html

What it shows is that death in the first 6 months is typical, followed by several years of low probability of failure, followed by increased probability after 5-7 years.

Igor





________________________________
From: Nick Danger <nick@hackermonkey.com>
To: novalug@calypso.tux.org
Sent: Saturday, March 7, 2009 6:01:48 PM
Subject: Re: [Novalug] External harddrive units

John Franklin wrote:
> My experience with the USB powered drives has been bad.  I have yet to
> find one that is stable.  I suspect that part of it is they require the
> full 500mA, if the power is even a little low it'll fail to spin up.
>  Another one (the WD, IIRC) had horrible heat problems.  It'll run fine,
> go to sleep and not want to wake up.  Let it cool down and it's fine again.

Im running two at the moment, and I have a few more at the office. RIght
now i have a SimpleTech Pinnafarina model that is USB powered and its
been working for over a year. I think its the 2.5" laptop drive inside
it. Spends long amounts of time "on", as i don't usually turn this PC
off. I only opened it for the first time today and I didn't even think
to see what brand HD was in it. The second one here at home is a
Acomdata, which has a 3.5" drive and separate power supply. The drive
started clicking about a year ago, thats why I got the smaller faster
SimpleTech one.Even with the click its still functioning fine I just
dont leave it on all the time now.

Hard drive brands are very opinionated. People love or hate certain
brands based on self experience and really I think other then a few
issues like the IBM DeskStors that had recalls, its really hit or miss
with which brands you'll swear by vs which ones you swear at.


_______________________________________________
Novalug mailing list
Novalug@calypso.tux.org
http://calypso.tux.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/novalug
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.firemountain.net/pipermail/novalug/attachments/20090307/332e1c5d/attachment.htm>


More information about the Novalug mailing list