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

[DonJr]

On Sun, 2008-02-03 at 18:31 -0500, maxpublic08 at maxwellspangler.com
wrote:
> 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.

This is how I'm starting out.
  Although the first operation after repartitioning and formatting has
been some very large copy operation using a util I wrote called cptree
basicly it's a wrapper around the following:

   (cd "source area"  && tar cf - . )
          |
   (cd "output area"  && tar xvfp - )

Yes there are other ways to do the above, but sometimes tried and true
make you feel safe.

The USB interface will handle one such stream of data with ease, but a
second one slows the visible transfer rate down to a crawl.
   I'm seeing a constant load averages 14.20+- 

> 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.

That I heard/read about. Hope it don't byte me later on.

> 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.

The case on this one has vents (slots in rows from top almost to the
bottom) covering most of the sides on three of the four sides. I don't
think I'd gain much in the way of cooling by taking the cover off.
  If there is a "fan" in there I can not hear it over top of the rest
currently running in this room.
    {-: I'm almost sitting in a draft any place in this room. :-}

> 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.

I currently believe that the only system I have with a firewire port is
my Gateway CX2615 Tablet, but it takes a different size cable then what
came with this drive. ;-} Haven't tried to use it yet. {-;

> 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..

A good case that I could leave the cover on and still have good cooling.
 Now that would be nice.

-- 
  DonJr