[ale] Anyone using a Western Digital external HD ?

[Ron Frazier]

PS to prior message. This one from Fry's might be a good choice:

http://www.frys.com/product/5975474?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

It's $ 149. I guess the prices really have risen lately. I hadn't looked 
in the last few months. That's still not too bad for 2000 GB of data. 
You can only get 1 per household, and the offer expires today, if they 
have it in stock.

Sincerely,

Ron


On 11/17/2011 05:58 PM, Ron Frazier wrote:
> JD,
>
> My post on this topic at 2:42 AM today has much more detail on how I
> deal with hard drives. I recommend buying a bare internal hard drive
> with a 5 year warranty and putting it in an external case if you need
> external operation. I usually buy Seagate. I would not go for the
> shorter warranty drives. Nor would I go for a pre-encased drive like the
> MyBook since removing the drive from the case will probably void the
> warranty.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
>
>
> On 11/17/2011 05:46 PM, JD wrote:
>    
>> I purchased a 2TB MyBook USB3 HDD a few days ago.  Connected it via rear-USB to
>> my main storage server here, wiped the existing partitions and created an EXT4
>> partition in sdh5.  Started a copy, this new drive is intended for backups only,
>> and after 135GB, it stopped copying. Kicked off an rsync a few more times with
>> similar results. Even provided a huge area for rsync scratch.
>>
>> The USB bus started kicking out errors - LOTS of errors.  umount and mount
>> couldn't do anything with the mount point. It was ugly.  The entire system
>> started getting slow. Other USB devices work well enough on this machine and
>> were still working. Switched to a different USB port (front) and saw similar
>> results after a reboot.
>>
>> Rebooted this morning and the HDD wasn't seen well enough to mount, but it was
>> seen well enough to prevent the boot sequence from continuing.
>>
>> I expect to return the drive tomorrow.
>>
>> Would prefer an internal drive over an external, mainly due to the longer
>> standard warranty periods, but the price diff is huge now.  (1 vs 3yrs) or (2 vs
>> 5 yrs).  I need another HDD for backups and 2TB seemed like the sweet price
>> point.  Should we have gotten the Seagate for $10 less with only a 1 yr warranty
>> instead?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 11/17/2011 05:02 PM, Courtney Thomas wrote:
>>
>>      
>>> Mike,
>>>
>>> Thanks for the reply.
>>>
>>> How do you install it and under which Linux flavor ?
>>>
>>> Courtney
>>>
>>> On 11/16/2011 11:00 AM, Michael H. Warfield wrote:
>>>
>>>        
>>>> On Wed, 2011-11-16 at 05:22 -0500, Courtney Thomas wrote:
>>>>
>>>>          
>>>>> If yes, under what system and how should it be installed and used, please ?
>>>>> 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.
>>>>>
>>>>>            
>>>> IIRC, some of those WD MyBooks had problems with the spindown logic a
>>>> few years back.  I don't recall anything about Vista but Vista had its
>>>> own sets of problems so all bets are off there.  I've also seen some
>>>> comments about iMacs and the MyBooks.  I seem to recall some comment
>>>> from back then that the USB interface would disconnect when the drive
>>>> would spin down but, in retrospect, that really doesn't seen to make
>>>> much sense to me now.  If you do a google search on "western digital my
>>>> book linux spin down" you'll find lots of commentary on it with some
>>>> suggesting to set the spindown time to fairly long values.
>>>>
>>>> I've got some 750's that have never given me a problem under Linux.  I
>>>> guess I got lucky.  It was shortly after I bought those that I started
>>>> hearing that some people where having problems.  Mine DON'T have the
>>>> firewire port, though, so it may have been that particular model, which
>>>> was slightly more expensive when I was looking at them side by side.  I
>>>> bought these when Best Buy was clearing them out to make way for the
>>>> newer models that included the firewire port.
>>>>
>>>> I would hook it up and give it a shot and see how it behaves.  If you
>>>> need to, set the spindown timeout to a long value and see if that makes
>>>> an impact.  If it's been given to you, I would guess you don't have
>>>> anything to lose from playing with it and seeing how it acts.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>          
>    

-- 

(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new messages very quickly.)

Ron Frazier

770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
linuxdude AT c3energy.com