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Post subject: external drive questions
 Posted: Jun 02, 2006 - 04:41 AM
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Joined: Dec 07, 2005
Posts: 369
Location: Port Angeles, Wa. USA
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| I recently saw an ad for an external USB 2G HD for $40 & thought that would be a good solution for backups. I would appreciate any suggestions on this as I haven't done anything like this before. I wonder if it will be detected at boot & will the fstab be updated or do I need to do that manually. Are there model recommendations for linux compatibility? What backup method would be best for copying? Thanks, kurt. |
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illegitimati non carborundum
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Post subject: external drive questions
Posted: Jun 02, 2006 - 07:01 AM
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Team Member
Joined: May 06, 2005
Posts: 3087
Location: berlin
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kurt,
check, if the drive supports usb 2. if its usb 1.1, dont buy it, it would be very slow.
otherwise it should give no problems. sometimes theses disks are formatted a tad strange, so that they need to be formatted again.
for backups i simply use:
cp -avx /media/whatever /media/whereever
greetz
devil |
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Post subject: RE: external drive questions
Posted: Jun 02, 2006 - 01:50 PM
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Joined: Dec 07, 2005
Posts: 369
Location: Port Angeles, Wa. USA
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Do you mean format with reiserfs for example and should I also use a -p switch to preserve attributes & timestamps?
thanks |
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illegitimati non carborundum
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 02, 2006 - 08:25 PM
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Joined: Apr 14, 2006
Posts: 60
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2radical,
I'm not quite sure if I understand your description of the hard drive. If it's only 2GB, that's *tiny*. For about $45 (which includes shipping), you can get a 40GB hard drive from Newegg; for about $20, you can also get a hard drive enclosure which will hold the hard drive, and interface it to USB2 (or, a bit more rarely, but still certainly extant, to firewire).
If you mean that it's a thumb drive which holds 2GB, that's probably a very good price you quoted. As devil28 says, though, make sure it's USB2, and not USB1.1 (just for the speed factor, which I think is considered to be about a 40x difference).
I'm probably giving too much advice (that's a typical problem of mine!).
Good luck! |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 02, 2006 - 11:56 PM
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Joined: Aug 16, 2004
Posts: 1905
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| USB 1.1 is limited by design to 1 MB/s, current S-ATA consumer hdds can achieve up to ~70 MB/s - external USB 2.0 enclosures usually decrease that to about 30-35 MB/s (firewire can be a bit faster). |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 03, 2006 - 02:01 AM
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Joined: Dec 07, 2005
Posts: 369
Location: Port Angeles, Wa. USA
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| My box doesn't even have USB 1.1, just 2. And yeah, the drive that I saw is one of those tiny ones. I will check out newegg.com as I've bought stuff from them before & was pretty impressed with how fast they delivered & the cost. If it's that little money, then it only makes sense to go for more capacity. As it is now I only have 40G internal HD & a bay for another one. I don't know what you mean by interfacing it to USB2, though. |
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illegitimati non carborundum
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 03, 2006 - 09:39 AM
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Joined: Jan 14, 2006
Posts: 287
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USB 2 is backward compatible with USB 1.1 by the way.
Interfacing to USB - he just means you can buy a normal internal drive (which are cheaper) then buy an enclosure, where you put the drive. This has a USB lead on it, so you can connect the whole thing as if it was a prebuilt USB external drive. This works out a lot cheaper - and you have a good drive if you ever want to put it internally (its faster inside as USB is slower than SATA)
But if you are using a thumb drive then none of that is that useful! |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 03, 2006 - 02:18 PM
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Joined: Dec 07, 2005
Posts: 369
Location: Port Angeles, Wa. USA
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| OK that explains it. I think I'll go that route since I haven't bought anything yet. It'd be nice to have the extra capacity, and I already have an avaliable slot for another internal HD. Thanks for the advice. |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 05, 2006 - 12:49 AM
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Joined: Jul 22, 2005
Posts: 124
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Hi Guys. H haven't looked lately, but a few months ago the proce difference on NewEGG between a 40gig Western Digital hard drive and an 80 gig (both with 8 meg cache) was only $6.00. Naturally I spent the extra $6.00 to get the 80 gig! I will only buy Western Digital drives, as in my experience (your milage may differ) they have been more reliable than other brands. Always go for the largest drive (with the largest cache) that you can afford! If you get an 80 gig, I would use that as your internal drive, and make the 40 gig a USB backup drive .
TTYL and good luck! |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 05, 2006 - 03:42 AM
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Joined: Mar 12, 2005
Posts: 1005
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| Also, you can now buy a 2 gig compact flash usb stick for about $50 if you shop around. Smaller, lighter, more durable. But you'd regret it, 2 gig isn't going to do much for real backups for long, even if you only backup /home. That's why the 2 gig usb hard drive is on sale, they are dumping them because 2 gig is obsolete for usb compact hard drives at this point, I think 4-8 gig is the norm now. |
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New: rdiff-backup script
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