[Novalug] Recommendation: USB Large harddrives 400G(and up) What is a good filesystem to use?

[maxpublic08 at maxwellspangler.com]

yOn Sun, 3 Feb 2008, DonJr wrote:

>>> I just got a USB connected hard drive, says "500G" on the box. (but)

> So these external hard drive(s) {USB, Firewire or eSATA} with a "real"
> disk drive in them can in general be treated just the same as an
> internal drive?

They are designed to appear to you and your computer like just another hard 
drive.  Plug them in, format them with the filesystem of your choice and 
enjoy.

But,

Make sure you always umount the filesystem before yanking the USB cord or 
turning off the power to the drive.

Know that at least under Linux you won't be able to use the SMART drive 
diagnostic utilities to verify the health status of the drive.  The method in 
which the computer communicates over USB/Firewire to the drive doesn't seem to 
allow this operation.

Be weary of the cooling of your external enclosure.  Most don't have very 
large vents or cooling fans for adequate cooling.  Based on the fact that 
manufacturers aren't making huge vents or installing fans at all in some cases 
makes me hope that these drives can take heat in ways drives of the past 
can't, but I'm still skeptical.  I've got [yet another] IBM drive that is two 
years out of a five year warranty and still going strong and I'd like to 
believe ample cooling in the past and present has helped it.  So in my 
controlled environment, I actually take the top off the case and disable the 
small mostly useless fan so the drive can naturally cool via convection of air 
around it and the fan won't bother me with noise as it slowly fails.  Four 
relatively new and therefore quiet hard drives don't make much of a sound when 
operated this way.

Be weary of external drives with firewire.  There were some buggy chipsets in 
the past and firewire support in Linux seems to be less reliable than USB in 
some cases.

Finally, I'll report that I've had good success buying BYTECC brand cases from 
newegg.com.  They're cheap and use the same key chips to operate as name brand 
cases but cost a lot less.

If anybody has found a good case that is inexpensive, has good cooling and 
good shock absorption, please share it with us.  I'm still looking and not 
really impressed with what I've seen..


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Maxwell Spangler
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina