External Hard Drive?

[dajoga]

Since I'm not too 'puter minded, I was wondering how valuable an external HD would be so I could use it on both my desktop and laptop? That way I'd have all my stuff on a single HD rather than some here and some there. Pros and cons anyone? Or is there a better way, i.e. using burner and carry CD's?

[JonECat]

Probably better off with an external CD burner, those external Hard Drives are clunky, and almost obsolete considering all the portable storage devices nowadays.

[dajoga]

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Probably better off with an external CD burner, those external Hard Drives are clunky, and almost obsolete considering all the portable storage devices nowadays.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hmm....good point, thanks

[Rhino]

Or get network cards for both and transfer/copy files directly.

[Keith J]

The new USB 2.0 drives are worth looking into...much faster than burning and larger capacity too. Even faster than 100 BaseT. Almost like a gigabit net.

[DoctorDoom]

I have a couple of those, a 20-GB Pocketec drive and an 80-GB Maxtor. They're great for mass storage, and the newer op systems recognize them as soon as they're plugged in.

Depending on the amount of data involved, Iomega's new 750-meg USB 2.0 ZIP drive might be a good way to go.

These options of course depend on the availability of USB 2.0 ports on the computers. They'll also run on USB 1.1, but with less speed (60 MBps with 2.0 vs 1.5 MBps with 1.1). The difference isn't substantial with a ZIP drive, since it's a floppy drive, ergo inherently slow, but when moving several gigabytes around with a hard drive, it can take minutes at the slower speed. Of course, if you're not in any big hurry, that's a non-issue.

[nosferatuscoffin]

If you are going to go with USB 2.0, make sure you have XP Pro and all of the Microsoft Service Packs installed.

Also, certain chipsets (SIS 7100 especially) are VERY finicky when it comes to USB 2.0. This PC here is SIS 7100 and it is a bear to get it to properly accept 2.0. SIS updates are buggy and Microsoft is of no help driverwise.

For example, it was a total bear to get my Visioneer 8100 USB scanner installed to it. It took a few hours, but I finally got it install properly. XP then promptly vomited it out a few weeks later, so I finally just hooked the scanner to my secondary machine.

[DoctorDoom]

dg, ignore those geeks behind the curtain. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/biggrin.gif

[nosferatuscoffin]

THE GREAT AND POWERFUL OZ HAS SPOKEN! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[dajoga]

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THE GREAT AND POWERFUL OZ HAS SPOKEN!

[/ QUOTE ] /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/worshippy.gif

Thanks everyone--great help-- /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon16.gif

[nosferatuscoffin]

Hey, anytime. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

We always leave our customers satisfied. ***hiccup***

[Keith J]

If you have an older (Win 98 minimum) computer without USB 2.0 support and have an open PCI expansion slot, the add-on cards have no compatability issues AFAIK. It works fine on a 98 machine of my father's.

That is the problem with bleeding edge technology.

[nosferatuscoffin]

Nod. Those machines were both 98 boxes, and it worked fine with that. However. I upgraded them both to XP Pro a few months ago and it works fine on the secondary XP box. And that one is PII/233 I got for free from one of my clients when he bought a new box! Heh.

The problem is not XP but the SIS 7100 chipset on this machine. Compatiblity problems have been an issue with SIS since XP came out, and their driver updates are not very reliable. The update will work, if installed in a very ass-backawards way, but the driver itself is very unstable and XP itself will lose it after a period of a few weeks. Another problem is that Visoneer driver will mistakenly assign logical drives of E and F to the system. This has happened on all boxes I have tested it on, whether SIS or non-SIS chipsets and 98 or XP OS'es.

It is not a biggie to me, since I have multiple PC's here, but it can be an issue with people who have only one older box w/SIS and XP and need to upgrade to USB 2.0.