Re: [gentoo-user] recommendation sought for external disk
On 01/01/2014 11:07:22 PM, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: My home desktop has had a seagate external 750GB drive ST3750640cbrk for a number of years and the disk is starting to fail. The system gets only modest usage. It is powered on about 1/2 the time and the disk often goes significant periods without activity so it spins down. I was considering what seagate calls an expansion hard drive. They are USB 3, but I will be using only USB 2. If you have a free expansion slot I'd install a (very cheap) USB 3 adapter. There is a tremendous difference in speed compared to USB 2. Data transfer to my (quite recent) external USB 3 drives is about 130 MB/s (measured by iotop) which is faster than for my built in SATA 3 drives. Helmut
Re: [gentoo-user] recommendation sought for external disk
On Thu, Jan 02 2014, Helmut Jarausch wrote: On 01/01/2014 11:07:22 PM, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: My home desktop has had a seagate external 750GB drive ST3750640cbrk for a number of years and the disk is starting to fail. The system gets only modest usage. It is powered on about 1/2 the time and the disk often goes significant periods without activity so it spins down. I was considering what seagate calls an expansion hard drive. They are USB 3, but I will be using only USB 2. If you have a free expansion slot I'd install a (very cheap) USB 3 adapter. There is a tremendous difference in speed compared to USB 2. Data transfer to my (quite recent) external USB 3 drives is about 130 MB/s (measured by iotop) which is faster than for my built in SATA 3 drives. Helmut Thanks for the advice (and numbers). I do have a slot and may follow your suggestion. My only reluctance is that the disk gets such light usage that I don't notice its slowdown compared to my internal faster disk. So I have pause if opening the case is justified. But again, thanks for your helpful msg. allan
[gentoo-user] recommendation sought for external disk
My home desktop has had a seagate external 750GB drive ST3750640cbrk for a number of years and the disk is starting to fail. The system gets only modest usage. It is powered on about 1/2 the time and the disk often goes significant periods without activity so it spins down. I was considering what seagate calls an expansion hard drive. They are USB 3, but I will be using only USB 2. The desktop is gentoo-only and I don't need any backup software from seagate. The models are STBVx000100 for x=1,2,3,4 TB. I understand the price capacity trade-off, but wonder if anyone has any experience with these drives. Thanks in advance, allan
Re: [gentoo-user] recommendation sought for external disk
On 01/01/2014 02:07 PM, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: I was considering what seagate calls an expansion hard drive. They are USB 3, but I will be using only USB 2. The desktop is gentoo-only and I don't need any backup software from seagate. The models are STBVx000100 for x=1,2,3,4 TB. I understand the price capacity trade-off, but wonder if anyone has any experience with these drives. Hi Allan, I am currently using 11 of these drives (1TB model; STBV1000100) connected via USB doing daily/weekly backups of infrastructure at work. They're specifically used on mostly Windows servers via WSB. They're written to quite often and have been on 24x7 since last January. I did have a problem with one drive a month in but it was replaced and have had no issues since. Keep in mind these have no on/off switch and are literally an expansiond drive, meant to be on all the time. I've performed test restores to a VM and no issues. Performance is OK even on USB2. I have no complaints on these particular models (other than the lack of a power switch), although I really should have purchased the 2TB models. Oh well. Dan
Re: [gentoo-user] recommendation sought for external disk
On Wed, Jan 01 2014, Daniel Frey wrote: On 01/01/2014 02:07 PM, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: I was considering what seagate calls an expansion hard drive. They are USB 3, but I will be using only USB 2. The desktop is gentoo-only and I don't need any backup software from seagate. The models are STBVx000100 for x=1,2,3,4 TB. I understand the price capacity trade-off, but wonder if anyone has any experience with these drives. Hi Allan, I am currently using 11 of these drives (1TB model; STBV1000100) connected via USB doing daily/weekly backups of infrastructure at work. They're specifically used on mostly Windows servers via WSB. They're written to quite often and have been on 24x7 since last January. I did have a problem with one drive a month in but it was replaced and have had no issues since. Keep in mind these have no on/off switch and are literally an expansiond drive, meant to be on all the time. I've performed test restores to a VM and no issues. Performance is OK even on USB2. I have no complaints on these particular models (other than the lack of a power switch), although I really should have purchased the 2TB models. Oh well. Dan Thank you dan. I didn't realize there was no on-off switch. But I assume it (or the driver/controller) will spin it down after prolonged idleness. Also from seagate are back plus drives. The documentation I found on the seagate site was scanty, but I am guessing they are the same as the expansion plus some windows/mac software that I won't use so I was planing on saving the $10. I wonder if they have power switches. Here are the prices seagate lists for some stores (cheapest shown). Backup Expansion Plus 1TB 8090 2TB100 110 3TB120 130 4TB170 180 I am leaning toward the 2TB. Again thanks for the information. allan
