question about USB hard drives

[Blintok]

Is it safe to assume that the drive inside this USB case(any brand) is just a standard drive?
would it be a SATA or IDE drive do you think?

if this is true then, one could open up the case and use this drive as any old regular
hard disk?

 

[Ausm]

Better option would be to buy an External case then get the appropriate drive for it.



Ausm

 

[Oyeve]

For the most part its a PATA drive, and yes, you can pop it out and install. You will void any warranty you had tho.

 

[Blintok]

well i posted in an earlier message regarding the USB drives i have.
Even tho i have USB2 ..I either get a message that the drive would work better on a USB 2 port
and or the drive "disappears" and Xp then finds a new drive again. other times it just does not come back and
i have to restart the drive. Been trying to figure out what the problem is..i have tried every usb port and it is the same.

(dell dim8400..all current drivers for xp and current BIOS)

figured if it was just a regular hard drive i would pop it out of the case and install in the computer - one last thing i am going to try is
to remove all usb devices and delete usb stuff from device manager and reboot.

 

[jae]

If you have the extra space to add an internal hdd and dont really need the portability of a USB drive, then i throw that sucker in a bay.

 

[Blintok]

I like the portability of it and the only reason i got it was for backups. That is all intended to use it for
but unless i can sort out why it does not work reliable via the usb i want to get the data off of it and then
look for a better back up solution..guess its back to DVD-R disks.

 

[thetxstang]

Not to hijack this thread, but I have another question regarding USB 2.0 hard drives. Can you ever boot up from a USB 2.0 external hard drive?

 

[Old Hippie]

Copula thoughts here,
Some chipsets inside these external drives are better than others;
Some external drive enclosures need more than one USB connection to power reliabily...either a 110v brick connection or 2 USB connections;
Depending upon age, yours might be getting flakey.
All five of mine work reliably, but, ya get what ya pay for.

 

[Blintok]

I have 2 of these drives i got around and b4 last xmas. They were on special is reason i got them
one is a Comstar 250g and other is an I/O Magic 500g
Both get power from an external power source.

pricing on these external and normal internal (especially) are insane now(low) I remember buying drives at
~$1\meg and thot it was a good deal..now u can get them at .40c per gig!! ( 320g sata2 for $100)

i wonder if it a solution to get a decent external box..(better than the comstar and IOmega) and transfer these drives to the
new enclosures?

 

[Old Hippie]

i wonder if it a solution to get a decent external box..(better than the comstar and IOmega) and transfer these drives to the

We'll never know unless you try. Keep in mind that many of these external drives contained referbed HDs.
Did I mention, Ya get what ya pay for?.

 

[Blintok]

yes you did mention the value for money paid and most of the time i agree
but

i can get this
Vantec Nexstar 3 External 3.5IN SATA Black Hard Drive Enclosure USB2.0 W/ Power Adaptor & Stand for 53$cdn and
a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA2 3GB/S 7200RPM 16MB Cache NCQ Hard Drive for $107cdn

which is less than what i paid for the 250g comstar or 500g IOmagic so they must be better ;-)

did not know about these enclosures could be using refurbs

this is the HD that is in the Comstar box
SP2514N -- Samsung SpinPoint P Series

didnt even know samsung made drives
anyone know about these drives? are they good?
from the specs it looks like a decent drive(looked on the samsung website)

 

[setras]

toshiba drives have a high return rate and are prone to DOA