Removable drives

[Andrew Shugg]

Morgan Storey said:
> Realistically as long as it is just an external drive it will work, you
> could save some money by buying an external caddy (around $70 for a good
> one) then just putting as big a drive as you want/can afford in it.

Agreed.  I have a couple of home-brew removable drives and they work
very well.  Don't be scared to get your own empty case and put a hard
drive in it yourself - it's very easy, some cases just snap together
with pins and rails holding the drive so there aren't even any screws.

Here are some:

  http://www.pccasegear.com.au/category287_1.htm

I recently bought one of their Vantec 'Nextar' cases, but my workhorse
enclosure so far has been a Laser brand one from a local PC retailer.

If you have Firewire (IEEE1394) ports in your PC, consider getting a
combo case that can do either USB2 or FireWire.  Subjective testing has
shown I getter performance over FireWire in both Ubuntu and WinXP by
about 3Mb/sec.

If you're going to be sharing the drive between Linux and Windows you
will likely be formatting the disk as NTFS (unless you are game to try
the ext2 drivers for Windows).  Ubuntu has no problems reading my NTFS
drives, however I don't know what the status is with Linux writing to
NTFS.  It used to be a very risky thing but it might be better now -
anyone know?

Only other thing is to remember to take the disk offline before
unplugging it so you don't mess up the filesystem.  A right-click on the
desktop icon and selecting 'Eject' will do this nicely.

Andrew.

-- 
Andrew Shugg <andrew at neep.com.au>                   http://www.neep.com.au/

"Just remember, Mr Fawlty, there's always someone worse off than yourself."
"Is there?  Well I'd like to meet him.  I could do with a good laugh."