[lionel marechal]

I Use the mybook Western Digital external drives, and they have an interesting feature for me, they stop spinning by themselves after 10 mn of inactivity. This way, I do not have to do it my self if I am not using them for some time. True if you want to use them (me with Itunes) when they are 'down', it takes several second to restart but I do not mind. I prefer them not spinning when I am not using them.
Lionel

 

[hempcamp]

I have a 400GB WD Caviar SE16 I got from Fry's a few months ago. I usually get Seagate but I heard so much about how quiet the WD drives are that I decided to try it out in my G5.

Now I've not a MacBook, so I moved the WD drive to a Mercury Elite enclosure made by OtherWorld Computing. It's quiet, cool, and future-proof (eSATA, FW800, FW400, and USB2).

Highly recommended.

--Chris

 

[Happy Camper]

Current HDs are coming down in price because new technologies will make a 10fold jump in capacity. Ipod sized tera drives. Technology is my hero. Now if we can just get better codecs for digital music.

I agree with others that 250 gb is really too small for a multi format storage device. Using multiples of drives would allow faster access though. You could keep music on one, video on another, pics on yet another. This way, you don't have to have the other units on line when not using that format. I would think this would free up resources and be more energy effecient.

Also keep in mind the need for a backup. If a single drive dies, there goes your collection or all the time to reload your cds. If you have purchased tunes from download, will the vendor give you another copy should your drive crash? My guess is no. So, two drives will be needed unless you DVD backup your files. Dual drives would be more convenient.

IMHO

 

[leqin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by onvn /img/forum/go_quote.gif Anyone had experiences with the LaCie?

Yep sure have - got 2 off of those babies - ones a 250 and the other is a 500 and they both run absolutely silent and have been 100% reliable + they look drop dead gorgeous

 

[Wodgy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lionel marechal /img/forum/go_quote.gif I Use the mybook Western Digital external drives, and they have an interesting feature for me, they stop spinning by themselves after 10 mn of inactivity. This way, I do not have to do it my self if I am not using them for some time. True if you want to use them (me with Itunes) when they are 'down', it takes several second to restart but I do not mind. I prefer them not spinning when I am not using them. Lionel

This is what I was referring to when I mentioned that some enclosures spin down drives after a period of inactivity. It's a nice feature to have to reduce the noise level in your home, and it's particularly handy for noisy drives.

 

[justin2net]

anything but maxtor. you could get a samsung drive and use the utility included to set the speed down, then put it in a external enclosure.

 

[smeggy]

I have a Western Digital mybook ext 500GB drive and it's pretty good though not silent as it has a fan inside. The drive itself is quiet but the fan is a little noisy. I'm thinking of doing some surgery and mebbe adding a heatsink instead of the fan.

 

[Dragon Rider]

Does the fan keep going after 10 min. when you are just listening to music from it vs. say copying or editing files?

 

[eyeteeth]

I brought a Western Digital My Book ext 500GB drive home today also. Its price was comparable to the 500GB Seagate with enclosure and just seemed easier to deal with. I'm not aware of a fan inside and when I was researching options I'm sure I read that there is no fan. I can't tell of its noise level by ear because it's beside my really noisy PC. (Oldish noisy PC in den wireless to Squeezebox and speaker set up in living room). Installation was as easy as advertised-plug 'n play. I didn't like that it uses FAT32 but understood that they were going for maximum compatibility across OS's. I debated if I should have formatted it for NTFS but given that this drive will be music only and not wanting to monkey around with what had been a problem free addition, I've proceeded with file transferring (as we speak). (Also, every 4+ gigs of EAC ripped and converted to FLAC get burned to DVD. I don't want to do this again!)

 

[eyeteeth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by eyeteeth /img/forum/go_quote.gif I can't tell of its noise level by ear because it's beside my really noisy PC. (Oldish noisy PC in den wireless to Squeezebox and speaker set up in living room).

The reason I asked about noise levels earlier is that eventually this external will connect to a laptop out in the living room...maybe. I want the option anyway.

 

[milkpowder]

Currently using a USB 2.0 320GB WD MyBook. It can be slightly noisy when it spins up but even with my wide-open HE60, the noise never intrudes upon my listening.

 

[regal]

Is a usb HDD noticably slower than an internal SATA?

 

[Wodgy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by regal /img/forum/go_quote.gif Is a usb HDD noticably slower than an internal SATA?

Depends on what you're using it for. As a music library it's fine; you won't notice it. It is quite a bit slower though. You can get better speed with an external drive by going to Firewire; I get roughly twice the throughput with Firewire 400 as I do with USB 2.0 (same drive). Firewire 800 and now eSATA are less common but both are faster than most single drives (i.e. you won't notice a slowdown).

 

[pedxing]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wodgy /img/forum/go_quote.gif Depends on what you're using it for. As a music library it's fine; you won't notice it. It is quite a bit slower though. You can get better speed with an external drive by going to Firewire; I get roughly twice the throughput with Firewire 400 as I do with USB 2.0 (same drive). Firewire 800 and now eSATA are less common but both are faster than most single drives (i.e. you won't notice a slowdown).

I can't get double the speed with my firewire 400. what enclosure are you using?

 

[Wodgy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pedxing /img/forum/go_quote.gif I can't get double the speed with my firewire 400. what enclosure are you using?

The one I have uses the Oxford 911 chipset. Here's the numbers I get:
USB
Sequential12.58
Uncached Write30.6518.82 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write31.2517.68 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read4.441.30 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read35.4717.83 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random26.11
Uncached Write9.641.02 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write46.9015.01 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read71.150.50 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read71.3213.23 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Firewire
Sequential57.79
Uncached Write59.2236.36 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write57.7532.68 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read45.1013.20 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read77.9039.15 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random33.76
Uncached Write11.591.23 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write82.3026.35 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read91.920.65 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read109.5820.33 MB/sec [256K blocks]