[ale] Anyone using a Western Digital external HD ?

[Greg Clifton]

I don't have any direct experience with these, but I do have some general
comments.
First, most PCs do not have firewire ports, however, if you have one that
does, throughput should theoretically be better (theoretically because
thought firewire is much faster than USB, the internal converter board may
slow the process down to the point that it makes no difference, esp. if it
should actually be an IDE hard drive vs a SATA hard drive inside the
enclosure).
Second, if the drive would go off line at times, I suspect two things (1)
cables not securely plugged into the computer and/or the HDD enclosure and
(2) thermal issues--some of the fanless drive enclosures have had
overheating problems. You can address the thermal issue by having a small
fan blow air over the drive if it goes offline and see if it comes back
once it cools down. If you continually have overheating problems, consider
shucking the drive out of the enclosure and using it as an INTERNAL drive.
Finally, it is also possible that the drive going off line is because it is
a "green" drive that aggressively goes to sleep when not being written
to/read from (again no personal experience, but it seems reasonable that a
drive in a sealed enclosure might well be a green drive to reduce the heat
loading). This is a big problem with RAIDed drives, but wouldn't think it
should be a big problem as a single drive at least under Windows, not sure
about how Linux handles "sleepy" hard drives.

Regards,
Greg Clifton

PS, I like your signature quotes, but wonder when the Lincoln quote was
written. Seems his prosecution of  the War Between the States would be a
rejection of that principle.

On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 5:29 AM, Geoffrey Myers <lists at serioustechnology.com
> wrote:

> Courtney Thomas wrote:
> > If yes, under what system and how should it be installed and used,
> please ?
>
> I have two of them.  Just plug it in and it is automounted.  Mandriva on
> that machine, but I've connected to it with Red Hat as well.  Only usb
> though.
>
> >
> > I've been given one [500MB MyBook, USB & Firewire capable] that the
> > former owner says will only intermittently shutdown or be recognized
> > by Windows Vista, so would like to use it myself if I can figure out
> > what's been the problem under winders.
> >
> > Thank you,
> > C.Thomas
>
>
> --
> Until later, Geoffrey
>
> "I predict future happiness for America if they can prevent
> the government from wasting the labors of the people under
> the pretense of taking care of them."
> - Thomas Jefferson
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