External HDDs

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diegol
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External HDDs

Post by diegol »

Dear all,

I will soon be relocating to Madrid, Spain. As a result, I thought I would buy an external HDD so I could take all the info stored in my PC with me. A 500 GB unit will do, but I am also considering buying 1 TB.

According to a few friends I asked, Western Digital and Samsung are two strong brands in this market. My question is, do you think I should narrow down my search to these two brands only or is there another one I should take into account? And for those who have purchased external HDDs, do you have any suggestions? For example one friend said he liked his Samsung unit in that it doesn't need an external power supply (I figure it must feed from the USB cable).

Thank you very much.

:argentina: Diegol

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John Gray
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Re: External HDDs

Post by John Gray »

A 500 GB external hard disk which is not powered from a mains adapter would need two adjacent USB sockets. I'd go for the Samsung, meself.
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tedshemyers
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Re: External HDDs

Post by tedshemyers »

I have a 1 TB Seagate Free Agent Go USB HD. It is small, lightweight and works incredibly well. I love it. Less than $100 USD. Does not require an external power source. it does indeed power through the USB cable.
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diegol
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Re: External HDDs

Post by diegol »

John Gray wrote:A 500 GB external hard disk which is not powered from a mains adapter would need two adjacent USB sockets. I'd go for the Samsung, meself.
Sorry John, why two USB sockets? You mean, so it can be fed enough electricity?

:argentina: Diegol

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VegasNath
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Re: External HDDs

Post by VegasNath »

I'd be interested if anybody has any experience/ingormation re this particular model. It was a recent gift, still in the box. I can't find any customer reviews.
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PaulB
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Re: External HDDs

Post by PaulB »

An other important consideration is the interface between computer and disk. If the your computers support USB 3 or eSATA disks, I would strongly suggest you consider these over USB 2 disks. USB 2 HDDs are incredibly slow. I have a Seagate FreeAgent 2TB USB 2.1 HDD. It took over 26 hours to format the drive on an Intel Core I7 920 class computer. I have a 1TB eSATA WD MyBook HDD that can do a complete disk backup in about 1/5 the time it takes with the USB 2 Seagate. I was prompted to respond to your post because I am currently running a chkdsk on the Seagate. It's been running for about 3 hours now and only shows 10% completed. Not too happy...
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diegol
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Re: External HDDs

Post by diegol »

PaulB wrote:An other important consideration is the interface between computer and disk. If the your computers support USB 3 or eSATA disks, I would strongly suggest you consider these over USB 2 disks. USB 2 HDDs are incredibly slow. I have a Seagate FreeAgent 2TB USB 2.1 HDD. It took over 26 hours to format the drive on an Intel Core I7 920 class computer. I have a 1TB eSATA WD MyBook HDD that can do a complete disk backup in about 1/5 the time it takes with the USB 2 Seagate. I was prompted to respond to your post because I am currently running a chkdsk on the Seagate. It's been running for about 3 hours now and only shows 10% completed. Not too happy...
I acknowledge myself to be particularly ignorant as regards hardware in general. I thought USB ports were universal until I bought a webcam 4 months ago, which would work with certain USB sockets on my PC, but not all of them. Since it worked, I didn't worry much about how the other ports were different.

Now that I must get dirty again with hardware stuff I read things like "USB 2.0" or, as in your post, "USB 3". I don't know which USB version my PC's ports are, so I have some research to do.

And the time considerations you mention are indeed relevant. Not because I expect to ceaselessly copy/paste to and from the external unit, but because if I postpone buying the unit beyond say, 10 days, I may find myself in the the (frustrating) situation where I have not finished formatting the disk, that I have to take the plane!

Thank you very much.

:argentina: Diegol

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DaveA
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Re: External HDDs

Post by DaveA »

We have been using the Seagate line for years. Most of our drives are of the "FreeAgent GoFlex" series. We like the very small ones even though they are 1 TB in size. They run off the USB power source, so one does not have to carry anther "Power brick".
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John Gray
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Re: External HDDs

Post by John Gray »

diegol wrote:
John Gray wrote:A 500 GB external hard disk which is not powered from a mains adapter would need two adjacent USB sockets. I'd go for the Samsung, meself.
Sorry John, why two USB sockets? You mean, so it can be fed enough electricity?
Precisely!

Personally, I have found the recent incarnation of Seagate external drives deeply unimpressive, in that

My 2 TB FlexAgent GoFlex Desk external hard drive running under WIndows XP Pro causes one or more Ftdisk error ID 57 entries
"The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur."
in the System Event log, and a bing-bong sound on my speakers, each time it powers down/disconnects (default after 15 minutes of inactivity).
After between 5 and 10 seconds, it will power up again/reconnect, giving a bong-bing sound.

The only way I seem to be able to stop this happening is to prevent the drive going into power-saving mode via the Seagate Dashboard.

Surely there must be a better way of doing a power-down? My ancient Maxtor OneTouch II drive hasn't given this problem throughout two or three years, and it also powers down when not in use. The only difference is that it is connected via Firewire 400 (which may or may not be relevant).
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diegol
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Re: External HDDs

Post by diegol »

diegol wrote:I acknowledge myself to be particularly ignorant as regards hardware in general. I thought USB ports were universal until I bought a webcam 4 months ago, which would work with certain USB sockets on my PC, but not all of them. Since it worked, I didn't worry much about how the other ports were different.

Now that I must get dirty again with hardware stuff I read things like "USB 2.0" or, as in your post, "USB 3". I don't know which USB version my PC's ports are, so I have some research to do.
I found my webcam's user manual, which doesn't specify the USB version the cam works with. In the troubleshooting section I found this though, which translates to:
Question 1: My PC does not detect the webcam when it is connected through an USB cable.
Solution:
Connect the webcam to your PC's USB port directly.
Make sure the webcam is connected to the USB port situated in the rear part of your PC. It is possible that some USB ports situated in the front part will not feed enough energy to your webcam.
That is exactly what happened in my case. Now I'm not sure if I have different versions of USB ports co-existing in my desktop PC. Since I bought my PC in early 2008, I guess there's gotta be at least one USB2 port. Any way I can check?

:argentina: Diegol

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stuck
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Re: External HDDs

Post by stuck »

I bought a Seagate 2TB GoFlex USB2 ext HDD just before Christmas.

It's attached to stuckling1's laptop and since the only feedback I've ever had on it was the initial, "Excellent, many thanks, Dad" when the gift was opened on 25th Dec I presume it's doing its job without any pain or grief.

Ken

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PaulB
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Re: External HDDs

Post by PaulB »

John Gray wrote:Personally, I have found the recent incarnation of Seagate external drives deeply unimpressive...
Unfortunately, I tend to agree with you. I think I will give these drives a pass for the foreseeable future.
Regards,
Paul

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PaulB
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Re: External HDDs

Post by PaulB »

diegol wrote:...situation where I have not finished formatting the disk...
Fortunately, most external HDDs come pre-formatted right out of the box, usually NTFS.

There are now 4 USB formats: USB 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0. If your computer is vintage 2008 it probably has 2.0. I'm not too sure how you determine which is installed on a given computer.

The chkdsk I was running on the Seagate HDD finished after 11 hours. No errors found. Yea!
Regards,
Paul

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John Gray
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Re: External HDDs

Post by John Gray »

PaulB wrote:Fortunately, most external HDDs come pre-formatted right out of the box, usually NTFS!
And even should they be formatted as FAT32, a Quick format to NTFS is all that's required. Should take less than a minute.
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Re: External HDDs

Post by viking33 »

PaulB wrote:
diegol wrote:...situation where I have not finished formatting the disk...
Fortunately, most external HDDs come pre-formatted right out of the box, usually NTFS.

There are now 4 USB formats: USB 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0. If your computer is vintage 2008 it probably has 2.0. I'm not too sure how you determine which is installed on a given computer.

The chkdsk I was running on the Seagate HDD finished after 11 hours. No errors found. Yea!
Go to Device Manager, click on Universal Serial Bus Controllers.
Check the details for USB Host Controllers. IF they are listed as "Enhanced," then they are 2.0
Also, right click on each USB Root Hub entry, click on "Advanced" and it should show if the hub is running at Half, Full or High speed. There is a reset box to set the hub to high speed if necessary.

I'm told that even if your Newer System has V 3.0 hubs, you need 3.0 devices to take advantage of the higher speed.
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Re: External HDDs

Post by BobH »

Hello Diego!

I envy you your relocation to Madrid. I worked there for 6 months in '91. It is a wonderful city and the people are the friendliest, in my experience. Even without mastery of Spanish, I was able to travel about and enjoy myself immensely. Enjoy!

As for HDD generally and external HDD specifically, I recommend Western Digital. If your computer has USB 3, be sure to buy a drive with that capability. We have 2 WD external HDDs - one is 500GB and the other 750GB (I think). They do not require a power brick, taking their power from the USB connection to the computer. USB 3 is certainly faster than Enhanced (USB 2) but I have not found the speed to be a problem except when doing whole drive backups or restores. With software like Acronis, you can do incremental backups wherein only the files that have changed will actually be transferred.

I have experienced 4 hard drive failures over the years - all were Seagate. I have no experience with Samsung hard drives. I purchase WD whenever I need a drive. They make models that are 'green' that are somewhat slower, but preserve power; so spend the time to educate yourself and assess what suits you best.

You have already been given the information about using control panel to determine your computer's USB capability. I will add that a very useful - and free - tool for inventorying your computer is Belarc Advisor (http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html).

Hope this helps. You must share your experience of Madrid with us when you get settled in. FYI: The summer I was there, temperatures reached 55° Celsius in July. I didn't experience winter temperatures, but the summers are remarkably hot for that latitude.

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wasbit
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Re: External HDDs

Post by wasbit »

Diegol, apologies for being off topic.

Most of the problems with external hard drives are caused by the small USB Printed Circuit Board.
Remove the hard drive from its container and connect via a dedicated USB adaptor & all the troubles disappear. I've proved it time & time again.
Regards
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diegol
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Re: External HDDs

Post by diegol »

viking33 wrote:Go to Device Manager, click on Universal Serial Bus Controllers.
Check the details for USB Host Controllers. IF they are listed as "Enhanced," then they are 2.0
Also, right click on each USB Root Hub entry, click on "Advanced" and it should show if the hub is running at Half, Full or High speed. There is a reset box to set the hub to high speed if necessary.

I'm told that even if your Newer System has V 3.0 hubs, you need 3.0 devices to take advantage of the higher speed.
Hi Bob,

Great! I seem to have at least one "enhanced" ("mejorado") USB (2) controller. Thank you!

:argentina: Diegol

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diegol
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Re: External HDDs

Post by diegol »

BobH wrote:Hello Diego!

I envy you your relocation to Madrid. I worked there for 6 months in '91. It is a wonderful city and the people are the friendliest, in my experience. Even without mastery of Spanish, I was able to travel about and enjoy myself immensely. Enjoy!

[...]

Hope this helps. You must share your experience of Madrid with us when you get settled in. FYI: The summer I was there, temperatures reached 55° Celsius in July. I didn't experience winter temperatures, but the summers are remarkably hot for that latitude.
Hi BobH!

Your wishes are much appreciated. I have never been to the city, and I hope it will be a very fulfilling experience. Temperatures here in BA can reach as high as 42° Celsius in Summer, so it will probably take some getting used to :cool:.
Nice to know I will have someone to share my experience with!
As for HDD generally and external HDD specifically, I recommend Western Digital. If your computer has USB 3, be sure to buy a drive with that capability. We have 2 WD external HDDs - one is 500GB and the other 750GB (I think). They do not require a power brick, taking their power from the USB connection to the computer. USB 3 is certainly faster than Enhanced (USB 2) but I have not found the speed to be a problem except when doing whole drive backups or restores. With software like Acronis, you can do incremental backups wherein only the files that have changed will actually be transferred.

I have experienced 4 hard drive failures over the years - all were Seagate. I have no experience with Samsung hard drives. I purchase WD whenever I need a drive. They make models that are 'green' that are somewhat slower, but preserve power; so spend the time to educate yourself and assess what suits you best.
Thanks for your input. As for backups, I had not thought of that -yet-. I tend to use :free: Karen's Replicator, which also performs incremental backups as per your description, and I will probably continue to use it. Come to think of backups, now I definitely believe it would be a good idea to buy 1 TB: 500 GB for one-time data transport (and perhaps, permanent storage of these original data), and additional 500 GB for backup purposes.

Following this article, it seems impossible that my PC has USB 3 ports, as the USB 3 spec was released in Nov-2008 and I had bought the computer about 8 months earlier.

So far Seagate seems to be losing to Samsung and WD. It won't be long until I make a decision, which of course I will let you know. Thank you all very much for the massive support.

:argentina: Diegol

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diegol
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Re: External HDDs

Post by diegol »

Dear all,

Today I made up my mind and bought a 750 GB Western Digital external HDD (which is a nice compromise between 500 GB - 1 TB). I could not try it out yet; I'll let you know the outcome once I do.

Thank you very much for your advice!

:argentina: Diegol