CALLING COMPUTER NERDS -- advice needed

Originally posted by ratioci nation:

it is a firewire drive hooked up to a 2nd generation imac, and the only hard drive failure I have had was the internal drive on the imac, I think I had a small problem with the firewire drive but I fixed it with disk utility software, I think the problem was exacerbated by the internal drive problems, I have had the drive for over 2 years and i know other people who have had an external drive for a couple of years with no problems

I have had no lag problems

cool, thanks for the low-down …

if anyone cares (and i have no illusions that you do), i went with:
NEC 16X Double Layer DVD±RW Drive
Seagate 200GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive

Originally posted by ratioci nation:

Originally posted by HoyaSaxa03:
usb 2.0 or firewire? hows the transfer rate? is there a noticeable lag when you're playing music?

the external drive is intriguing, but i've heard a lot of horror stories with them getting fucked up, like smackie was saying … if i'm planning on keeping this PC for a while, i'm thinking internal may be the way to go…

it is a firewire drive hooked up to a 2nd generation imac, and the only hard drive failure I have had was the internal drive on the imac, I think I had a small problem with the firewire drive but I fixed it with disk utility software, I think the problem was exacerbated by the internal drive problems, I have had the drive for over 2 years and i know other people who have had an external drive for a couple of years with no problems

I have had no lag problems

Did the other people have Firewires or USB? This is an issue that I've contemplated myself. Also, I have to consider that I'm not enough of a nerd to work with anything too techy because I'll have no idea what I'm doing or how to get around even some sometimes simple issues. Had planned on saving up for an external but now I'm not all that sure.

Originally posted by Jaguär:
Did the other people have Firewires or USB? This is an issue that I've contemplated myself. Also, I have to consider that I'm not enough of a nerd to work with anything too techy because I'll have no idea what I'm doing or how to get around even some sometimes simple issues. Had planned on saving up for an external but now I'm not all that sure.

the other people had firewire drives

Originally posted by HoyaSaxa03:
thanks for the advice … on second glance, it looks like there's some good deals in external HDs on newegg.com … anyone know anything about SimpleTech?
Simpletech 250GB 7200RPM USB2.0 External Hard Drive, Model STI-USB235/250

$145 after rebate…

Don't buy anything made by Simple Tech. It's crap. There is no padding inside the casing which means, if you tap on hard enough it will break. I mean tap, not hit or drop. A waste of money.

Western Digital makes some of the best external hard drives. May cost more but worth it.

from slickdeals: slick deals
250GB 7200RPM HD $70 Shipped AR B&M @ CompUSA


other good places to find deals:
bens bargains

fatwallet hot deals

Originally posted by HoyaSaxa03:


in response to your DVD $$ question, I can get a good DVD writer (good speed, dual-layer, +-, RW, etc) for about $60, and DVD+RWs for about $1 a piece …. so about $110 for the DVD+RW drive and 50 DVD+RWs, about the same price as a 200gb internal HD

That's pretty cheap. And yes, a DVD burner is much more valuable than for backing up so it has extra value. I can barely remember living without one, which is ridiuclous.

Originally posted by HoyaSaxa03:
only problem is that I only have 1 extra slot in my mini-tower for a new HD … I'm no computer expert and I wouldn't feel comfortable replacing my main HD, I'd rather just add one on

You don't have to replace the original unitl it is filled. The drives don't have to be the same size, so you can keep your current drive and as long as the second HD is larger, you can use that one as the mirror. When you fill the original drive up, you can switch the mirror to the master and buy a new mirror. My first drive was 40GB and then I bought a 150 GB to use as the mirror. When I filled the original drive, I simply bought a second 150 (for the half price, of course) and made it the mirror, switching the original 150 GB drive to the master. Within two hours the new mirror had automatically been copied. Seamless and painless backup, and my machine is never down.

How do you turn a second hard drive into a mirror? Do you need software?

Mirroring is standard with most Network OSs. i.e. Windows Server, etc.

XP Pro supports it because I just checked my work pc. Don't know about XP Home, Me, etc. The standard version of OS X appears to require seperate sw based on a very quick google.

Originally posted by bellenseb:
How do you turn a second hard drive into a mirror? Do you need software?

I can only speak for Windows based machines, but mirroring is commonly referred to as RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). There are varying options, RAID1 is mirroring, RAID0 is striping. For a good intro on RAID, read this.

You can RAID via Hardware (more expensive, IDE or SCSI) or via software (the likely choice for a home machine, mostly IDE). Server OS's have great RAID built into them. RAID1 is built into Windows 2000 and XP Pro (but can be very confusing to set-up). Some new IDE Hard Drives come with Seperate Software RAID.

There are many inexpensive third part products like this one or this one that are virtual RAIDS. They are highly recommended for novice computer users.