[RndTbl] External hard drives for Linux

Gilbert E. Detillieux gedetil at cs.umanitoba.ca
Tue Mar 3 10:24:08 CST 2009


On 2009-03-03 10:02, John Lange wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-03-03 at 10:26 -0600, schwartz wrote:
>> I'm thinking of buying an external USB hard drive for my Linux desktop.
>> I'm concerned that these USB drives might be non-generic, somehow dependent
>> on XP/Vesta or have fixed file systems ( NTFS or FAT36 ) or just slow.
>>  Are any of the above an issue, or do they do a reasonable job.
> 
> They are not OS specific. Some of them may come pre-formatted (must USB
> keys do) but you can easily reformat it. Keeping that in mind, if you
> intend to move it between a Windows machine and a Linux machine you
> should stick to a file system the Windows OS understands.

I've used external drives on Linux systems, using either USB or FireWire 
interfaces, and have had no trouble with using them as FAT32, NTFS, or 
reformatted as ext3.  It all depends on what you plan on using it for, 
and where else you might connect it.  (Just as John suggested above.)

>> I just want to use one for storage, not to run an OS on.

Also, as Bill mentioned, the BIOS is not an issue if you're not going to 
boot from it or use it with an OS that needs BIOS support for I/O. 
(Linux doesn't.)

>> Best Buy has a SimpleTech 1 TB for $150. 
> 
>> Future Shop has Comstar One-touch 1 TB for $150.
> 
> Storage is so cheap now is ridiculous. Mind you I'd be interested to
> know how reliable they are.

I've found that not only reliability can vary a lot, but performance 
too.  So, you might want to check online first to get good technical 
specs., reviews, etc., before you buy.

In particular with USB interfaces on these external drives, even if 
they're USB 2.0 rated, it doesn't mean you can get the maximum 
throughput that USB 2.0 would allow.  Some of them are quite a bit 
slower than that.  If you'll be transferring a lot of data, look for a 
drive that has good I/O performance.  (I'm not familiar with either of 
the two you mention above, nor really any of the current crop of 1TB 
external drives, so I can't offer specific recommendations.)

-- 
Gilbert E. Detillieux		E-mail:	<gedetil at cs.umanitoba.ca>
Dept. of Computer Science	Web:	http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~gedetil/
University of Manitoba		Phone:	(204)474-8161
Winnipeg MB CANADA  R3T 2N2	Fax:	(204)474-7609


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