Name: Nick Ritchie Date: January 3, 2008 at 06:50:49 Pacific Subject: Externial H.D. OS: WinXP MCE 2005 CPU/Ram: @.8 G.B. Dual Core Procc Model/Manufacturer: XPS400
Comment:
For X-Mas my wife was going to buy me a Externial H.D. ,now here it is after X-Mas and I still cannot decide on which on to buy ,trying to keep the price around $120, FYI my current system has a 250G.B. internial SATA 8M.B.cache 7200rpm ,I found a Western Digitial externial H.D. 500G.B. E-Book ,however the onlnie reviews I've been reading are not good ,in fact they are terible ,most saying the H.D. will fail in at the most a year, a year of constant problems to top it off. Iam really surprised because I always thought Western Digitial was one of the best H.D. manufactuers , my H.D. internial is a Samsung ,and my system was a year old as of last August of 2007, its still working ,however I did have a trojan or some kind of spyware that attacked my system and completely destroyed my originial OEM install of WindowsXP MCE 2005 ,I performed a fresh install and after alot of getting the bugs out of the install ,then re-installing all of my apps my system is now running at peak performance .I want to be able to back up the entire drive to a externial. A couple of ?'s does the externial need to match the specs on the internial besides the size ,for instance does it have to be 7200 rpm ,or would a 10,000rpm work ,and the cache of 8 M.B. my internial has ,will it work with a 10 M.B.cache ? instead of a 500G.B. ,Iam looking more at the 320G.B. size ,or in that area .Any suggerstions on brand and modle of a good solid performer would be greatly appreciated ! Thank You ,Nick
The issue with external drives is heat. The normal exclosure is not much larger than the drive so it holds in the heat generated by the drive. USB 2.0 is slow in comparision to an internal harddrive. Buying a faster drive in a USB enclosure isn't going to change transfer times much, if at all. The bottleneck is the USB connection. There are ways to extend the life of an external drive. Get on that has an On/Off switch so it isn't always running. If you keep the drive constantly accessable it is also vulnerable to the same nasties as the internal drive.
I have a 320GB WD IDE drive that I installed into an external enclosure. My enclosure will accomodate an optical drive OR a harddrive. That means it is physically larger. The HDrive has lots of space around it.
Ghosting to another drive is OK to do but ALL harddrives are prone to failure. If you have data that you treasure you need to keep at least two copies of the files.
I rely on optical media for my important backups. DVDR is what I usually use.
Below are two links to Newegg.com for 5.25" enclosures and IDE HDrives. Use this for reference. Newegg is a top shelf online retailer. I would recommend you avoid Hitachi, just my opinion. For tips on how to partition your harddrive look at the third link at the bottom. Partitioning your promary HD will make it easier and faster to perform necessary backups.
Rather than buying a "pre-packaged" unit, go with OtheHill's suggestion...buy an external case for approx $20, then install the size/brand HDD of your choice.
If it's a desktop, I would check to see if there is a place to install an internal drive. You can connect two drives to each internal controller/cable. It's not that hard to do.
I just looked at your listings for the system specs. You list 8GB dual Core processor. There is no such thing. What brand and model processor do you have.
Hi to All, and thank you for your reply and suggestions in rferance to my topic ! First of all my system is a 2.8 G.B. Dual Core Proccesssor ! My system is already setup for a second internial H.D. with a slot next to the originial H.D. that came with the system a 250G.B. Samsung 7200rpm 8M.B. cache ! I need a SATA compatable drive for it to work well with my exsisting H.D. ! Also Iam not sure ,my originial H.D. may be on a RAID configuration ? Any opther ? or suggestions always appreciated ! Thank You All Nick
Me again , I re-read the p[ost and a couple of ?'s I did not answer ,my proccessor a 2.8 Pentium by Intel Spec's> DELL XPS400 2.8Gig 820 D Dual Core -VIIV O/S-WinXP Media Center Edition 2005 2G.B. DDR2 RAM 533MHZ-4x512M.B. Samsung Hard Drive 250G.B. 7200RPM ATI 128M.B.HYPER Mem PCI-E X16 X300SE.DIM ATI TV Wonder Elite PCI 19" FP Sigma-Tel Intergrated Audio 7.1 channel Logitech G15 Keyboard DVD-/+RW & DVD-ROM "Pertelian X2040 ForeSight Systems LCD information Display" Dell 944 AIO Printer
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