External Hard Drives
Discussion
Cheapskate that I am, I'm looking at the possibility of providing some additional external storage for our Dell server (the internal drives are very expensive!).
I'd like to have the ability to do back-ups of all the PC's on the network (currently 3 with 40GB drives and the server with a 20GB drive). Does anyone have any experience with USB hard drives ie are they worth it, do they work OK, is access acceptably quick, that sort of thing.
Cheers
I'd like to have the ability to do back-ups of all the PC's on the network (currently 3 with 40GB drives and the server with a 20GB drive). Does anyone have any experience with USB hard drives ie are they worth it, do they work OK, is access acceptably quick, that sort of thing.
Cheers
Thought about a networked attached storage (NAS)device? Although it will probably work out more expensive than just buying an extra hard drive they are bloody handy.
When looking at USB its important to distinguish if your machine supports USB version 2.0 rather than just version 1.1 (although u can always buy a USB ver 2.0 PCI card to stick in your machine). USB Version 2 transfer rates are 480Mbps which equates to about 60MB's a second. However, dont forget, this USB bus speed is probably much faster than the actual hard drive is capable of, which will prob have a transfer rate of around 16MB/s. So with USB 2.0 thats the maximum you could hope for although in reality its probably going to be less due to other factors (e.g processor support for UDMA, internal drive speed, cache, and bus etc etc!). For a full 40GB hard drive it would take at least 42 minutes to copy onto a USB 2.0 external drive if it was all running full speed. Realistically I reckon it would be running at 10-11MB/s which would take about an hour.
You can also get Firewire external drives which I think have a 400Mbps bus speed. But again this would be limited by the actual disk capabilities.
I've used both and they are a doddle to set up, reliable too.
If you think about Plotloss ' idea its a good solution. Although bear in mind if its an old machine it may not be able to take advantge of the modern, faster hard drives. Also, you would be limited by the speed of your network (e.g. is it 10MB/s or 100MB/s, or possibly gigabit?)
>> Edited by jam1et on Wednesday 14th January 11:37
When looking at USB its important to distinguish if your machine supports USB version 2.0 rather than just version 1.1 (although u can always buy a USB ver 2.0 PCI card to stick in your machine). USB Version 2 transfer rates are 480Mbps which equates to about 60MB's a second. However, dont forget, this USB bus speed is probably much faster than the actual hard drive is capable of, which will prob have a transfer rate of around 16MB/s. So with USB 2.0 thats the maximum you could hope for although in reality its probably going to be less due to other factors (e.g processor support for UDMA, internal drive speed, cache, and bus etc etc!). For a full 40GB hard drive it would take at least 42 minutes to copy onto a USB 2.0 external drive if it was all running full speed. Realistically I reckon it would be running at 10-11MB/s which would take about an hour.
You can also get Firewire external drives which I think have a 400Mbps bus speed. But again this would be limited by the actual disk capabilities.
I've used both and they are a doddle to set up, reliable too.
If you think about Plotloss ' idea its a good solution. Although bear in mind if its an old machine it may not be able to take advantge of the modern, faster hard drives. Also, you would be limited by the speed of your network (e.g. is it 10MB/s or 100MB/s, or possibly gigabit?)
>> Edited by jam1et on Wednesday 14th January 11:37
... or look at network attached storage.
Something like: http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/networking/0,39023970,10004049,00.htm
Edited to say: bugger, beaten to the NAS suggestion.
>> Edited by anonymous-user on Wednesday 14th January 11:34
Something like: http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/networking/0,39023970,10004049,00.htm
Edited to say: bugger, beaten to the NAS suggestion.
>> Edited by anonymous-user on Wednesday 14th January 11:34
I'm using an external 250GB USB/firewire drive for backups at home. Not quite as bomb proof as I had hoped, and I'm glad there's nothing particularly valuable or irreplaceable backed up there because the file allocation table seems to get screwed up on a regular basis. It does have a nice feature where you press a button on the unit and it automatically runs a backup script, makes ad hoc backups very easy.
Comparing the prices, 300GB of external USB for £200 + VAT, 80GB of NAS for £450 + VAT.....
All I'm looking for is somewhere to back-up files to, as the server acts fine as a file-handler, and it can run overnight doing the back-ups.
Unless the additional functionality of the NAS effectively makes it a second server, speeding up the access times if the data files were transferred to it, then I think I'd go for the USB option.
All I'm looking for is somewhere to back-up files to, as the server acts fine as a file-handler, and it can run overnight doing the back-ups.
Unless the additional functionality of the NAS effectively makes it a second server, speeding up the access times if the data files were transferred to it, then I think I'd go for the USB option.
I use a 160GB external harddrive for backup and transporting data. Came with USB 2.0 and Firewire, which I both use, because I connect it to four different computers regularly. No probs with hotplugging on Linux and W2K (one partition is ReiserFS for Linux backup, the other is FAT32 for both).
Cost was €110 for the Samsung 8MB cache hdd, and €44 for the case three months ago
Cost was €110 for the Samsung 8MB cache hdd, and €44 for the case three months ago
or, if I've got an old pentium could I just add a network card and change the hard drive.....
I don't "really" want to get into configuring RAID, as I've already got a spare 20GB drive in the server that no-one wants to touch as it wasn't originally set-up (it was knacked when we got started and not replaced for a few months) and the down time doing the change now is quoted as pretty much a whole day
.... (and I don't understand it properly either )
I don't "really" want to get into configuring RAID, as I've already got a spare 20GB drive in the server that no-one wants to touch as it wasn't originally set-up (it was knacked when we got started and not replaced for a few months) and the down time doing the change now is quoted as pretty much a whole day
.... (and I don't understand it properly either )Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff