A few external hard drive questions......

[jazzman42379]

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for a cost effective, reliable, and large storage system for a lot of music, movies, and software. Idealy, I could get a raid 5 array with a couple of big drives, but right now that doesn't seem logical. Also, might be selling my main desktop server for a Shuttle SN40 ( the nForce2 Shuttle....does anyone know how much these are supposed to cost? ), so the external is sounding good.

How reliable are external drives? Better than your average hard drive or about the same? What's better....an open box to put my own drive in or one that comes pre-built with a drive in it? USB2 or firewire? I'm thinking USB2 since if anything, it's backwards compatible with USB, and with a SN40, it'll have the room and speed for the USB2. Any particular brand to look at?

Thanks in advance. Lemme know what you all think for these....
Jazzman

 

[kami]

If you're getting an external drive, go firewire without a doubt. Firewire drives aren't more or less reliable than regular drives. They are just normal internal hard drives inside a special enclosure. You can even buy the enclosures seperately and put in your own IDE drives (they convert IDE to firewire). I use a 40gig 7200rpm firewire drive...couldn't be happier with it. Good for transporting large amounts of data. It's also very fast...you could even install and run apps off it.

 

[TNTrulez]

Firewire or USB2.

 

[McCarthy]

USB 2.0 has faster transfer rates on paper, Firewire has faster in real life. At least with hardware that's come out so far, though just the nature of the different buses makes me think that's going to stay the same. Short bursts they do about the same, large files USB drops off.

Ideally, get an enclosure with both. I've seen a couple and they usually only run a few bucks more than one that's USB or Firewire only. Gives you more options, especially when hooking up to strange computers.

--Mc

 

[vetteguy]

Ideally, get an enclosure with both. I've seen a couple and they usually only run a few bucks more than one that's USB or Firewire only. Gives you more options, especially when hooking up to strange computers.
--Mc

That's good advice. I actually have 2 external drives, a 60GB USB2.0 and an 80GB FireWire (from the Staples Maxtor deal). I'd prefer if I only had one with both connections, though.