Portable USB Hard Drive

[Lona]

I'm thinking of buying a portable USB hard drive and can't make up my mind whether to buy a Buffalo, Seagate, Samsung or WD.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003M5N3NQ/ref=asc_df_B003M5N3NQ877460?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&tag=googlecouk06-21&linkCode=asn&creative=22206&creativeASIN=B003M5N3NQ

This is the one I have my eye on.

[Rik]

On personal experience, I'd got for Samsung or Seagate, Lona. Do Buffalo make drives, or just the enclosures?

[Ray]

I don't know, Rik, but they certainly make good kit, I've got one of their NAS drives that's been running trouble free for over 4 years and its on for about 18 hours per day.

[Rik]

Have you ever checked what make the drives are inside, Ray?

[pctech]

Ray's NAS drive suddenly crashes upon clicking post





Edit: Markup sorted

[Lona]

Buffalo make lots of different portable and desktop hard drives.

I bought my son a Samsung last week and it looks great but has gone up in price since I bought it.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dcomputers&field-keywords=michael+jackson+this+is+it+hard+drive&x=0&y=0

I only paid £46 for it from Play.com and it has gone up in price there also.

I don't want to pay over £50

[Ray]

Have you ever checked what make the drives are inside, Ray?

I haven't, Rik, but I probably could if I can open it up easily.

Edit: that doesn't seem to possible without wrecking the enclosure.

[pctech]

it should tell you if you have it connected and go into disk management Ray

If using XP/Vista/7 Pro or Ultimate:

Right Click on My Computer/Computer and select Manage
Click Disk Management and click on the drive letter the drive has been assigned.
Click Properties and then the Hardware tab.

WDC is Western Digital, Maxtor and Seagate generally appear in full, not sure about the others.

[pctech]

I have a Toshiba enclosure with a Western Digital 500 GB drive inside.

[Rik]

I haven't, Rik, but I probably could if I can open it up easily.

Edit: that doesn't seem to possible without wrecking the enclosure.

What Mitch said, Ray.

[Ray]

It doesn't I'm afraid, Mitch, you can't access the root of the drive as it runs a form of Linux and all you are seeing in Windows is a share mapped as a network drive. You can't get details of the drive even by logging onto the NAS drive web interface either.

[pctech]

Ah, yes mine is a USB linked one so is mounted as an additional drive rather than a share.

[Rik]

It doesn't I'm afraid, Mitch, you can't access the root of the drive as it runs a form of Linux and all you are seeing in Windows is a share mapped as a network drive. You can't get details of the drive even by logging onto the NAS drive web interface either.

Have you tried SiS, Everest etc, Ray?

[Ray]

Just tried SIW, Rik, all that can see is the IP address and the MAC address.

[Rik]

OK, it's screwdriver time. 

[Ray]

No screws, Rik.

[Glenn]

Hammer then. 

[Rik]

Or blowtorch. 

[esh]

If you log into the linux box via ssh you can do something like this :

Code Select Expand


[rhickman@paragon]$ sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda
Password:

/dev/sda:

ATA device, with non-removable media
       Model Number:       ST3500830A
       Serial Number:      5QG1DX9H
       Firmware Revision:  3.AAC


ST stands for Seagate Technologies in this case.

[Ray]

Mystery solved it's a Western Digital HD

[Rik]

 

[Ray]

They're a sod to get into, Rik, but it's a good job I did, it was full of dust and cobwebs.

[talos]

They're a sod to get into, Rik, but it's a good job I did, it was full of dust and cobwebs.

Dont whatever you do remove the cobwebs they're there to trap bugs

[Rik]

[Glenn]

But spiders can be worse than bots.