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More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: KingSparta on March 09, 2004, 12:24:54 pm

Title: Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: KingSparta on March 09, 2004, 12:24:54 pm: Today I Got A New Maxtor OneTouch Drive.

I got the model That Has Both FireWire\USB 2.0/1.1 300Gig Drive

Very Simple To Setup, You Plug-It In.

It does come with software, and has one button on the front that can be used to backup (I guess thats why they call it "OneTouch Drive"). The Button Has A Cute Blue Light In It And The Case Is Made Of Metal. Metal Maybe To Displace Some Heat Better Than The Early Plastic Cases That My Two Maxtor 160 Gig FireWire Drives Are In.

I am going to use this to back up my Old Time Radio MP3 files.

It Shows Up As 279 Gigs

I Bought The Drives From Gateway, Best Buy Did Not Have Them.

Sub Total: $344.95
Est. Tax: $25.20
Est. Shipping & Handling: $15.00 (Next Day)
Discount: $0.00
Cart Total: $385.15
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: Deivit on March 09, 2004, 12:41:26 pm: I bought one exactly as yours last November. Works like a charm. I use the firewire connection instead of the USB 2.0, since I think it's faster.

Part of my music collection is stored in this firewire drive and MC plays it flawlessly.

I think you've made a good buy, King.

I paid €350.00 which is around US$ 425.00 in November.

-----
Listening to: 'The Journey' from 'FallingStars* Vol. 01' by 'Cyrus Chestnut & James Carter' on Media Center 10
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: DocLotus on March 09, 2004, 12:43:13 pm: Yeh, Maxtor makes great drives.

I have eight of them & never had a single problem with any of them.
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: KingSparta on March 09, 2004, 12:49:22 pm: I think The USB 2.0 Is A Tad Faster (Someone Told Me That Once).

Glad Your Having Good Luck With It.

I Lost About 40Gigs Of Files That I Did Have Backed Up On Another Drive, So No Real Loss Of Data, Just A Pain Trying to Get It Back The Way it Should Be.

I will Be Copying All The Files From A 200 Gig Drive To The 300 Gig Drive And Then Re-Formating The 200 Gig Drive (I Will Feel Better). I Am Not Happy With The 200 Gig Drive (This 200 Gig Drive Is A Replacement Drive Gateway Sent Me Last Nov Or So) Since The Other Drive Was Running Like A Horse With 3 Legs With A Black Smith Hammering On The Horse Shoes At The Same Time.
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: Matt on March 09, 2004, 12:50:31 pm: It's mind boggling.

I remember getting my first hard drive which was like 40 MB and wondering how I could ever fill it up.

Now something we carry in our pocket could store all the music we'll hear in our life.
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: Bartabedian on March 09, 2004, 12:55:13 pm: I had two of the original "plastic case" 80G firewire drives. They were actually ATA100 drives with a 1394 interface at the hub of the case. Mostly they worked well, my two issues were:

With MC tagging, the drives were painfully slow, and would at times cause the second problem to arise which was:

Overheating, yea, the old plastic case ones were known for this, and as tempting as it is, don't stack them unless they are in a nice cool place.
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: KingSparta on March 09, 2004, 12:55:40 pm: I Hear You.

I had a 5 meg drive 3 foot long about 2 feet high maybe 100 lbs or so, alot of Iron.

now I carry a USB 250 Meg Memory Stick No Bigger Than A Lighter (I think they go to 1 gig now).
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: LonWar on March 09, 2004, 01:43:51 pm: I have a 250gb one... I think it's a great drive...
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: DocLotus on March 09, 2004, 02:00:06 pm: The first hard drive for an IBM compatible, around 1982 or 83, was a full height (3.25" high by 5.75" wide) monster with eight disk & 16 heads. It was all of a whopping 5 MB. The disk rotated at a rate of 1,800 RPM. The throughput was so slow that you probably could not load Windows on it today (even if it was large enough). Average access time was something like 220 ms. It cost only $1,800.00... discounted.

If that was not bad enough, you had to manually set up the drive in the BIOS as they had no automatic detection as do today's drives. That was a real mess & not for the faint of heart.

Today's 3.25" HD's have one or two disk, 2 - 4 heads, are 1" high, 3.25" wide, are up to 120 - 300 MB, rotate at 7,200 or 10,000 RPM, average access time of less then 9 ms & cost less then $200.00. Plus, all drives now (for the last 10 years or so) have automatic BIOS detection done with a unique drive identifier chip in each drive model that tells the BIOS what the setting should be for that model drive... a real life saver indeed.

The last Maxtor 120 GB, 7200 RPM, 8 MB cache drive I bought cost only $93.00.

If Seagate has their way, the next big deal in HD's will be a gradual switch away from the 3.5" format to the 2.5" drives.

They are already trying to convince the server industry to switch as the 2.5" drive has a lot of advantages over the 3.5" format, mainly speed. There is a limit of around 12,000 - 15,000 sustained RPM for 3.5" drives before the disk shatters from centrifugal force & general disk failure due to fractures in the plater. 2.5" drives can sustain much higher speeds due to the smaller mass of the platter.

With the high aerial densities of today's disk & about 10X densities to come, the 2.5" format seems like the next logical transition for computers. The combination of much higher aerial densities along with 2 -3 times the disk speed will provide drives 4 - 6 times faster then what we now have.

And, there is more to come in the near future.

Man oh man, how I LOVE technology ;D
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: Jaguu on March 09, 2004, 03:53:26 pm: King,

just wondering - if your main pc breaks (motherboard, cpu, memory, controller failure etc), how long will it take you to be online again. What is your total off-line time?

What did you do to minimize that off-line time?

I had to replace the motherboard of my main pc recently and due to various circumstances the pc was in repair for more than two weeks! Fortunately my backup pc took over right away and I could continue working without interruption!
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: KingSparta on March 09, 2004, 05:13:28 pm: Quote
just wondering - if your main pc breaks (motherboard, cpu, memory, controller failure etc), how long will it take you to be online again.

I don't think of bad things like that, but my wife would not be able to play solitaire if it did.
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: gpvillamil on March 09, 2004, 05:23:45 pm: Norton Ghost is your friend for rapidly getting up and running. If you do any tinkering with your system, use Ghost to take snapshots of working configurations so you can rollback easily.
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: KingSparta on March 09, 2004, 05:26:37 pm: I don't like Norton Ghost, mostly because it boots into PC DOS to do it's thing
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: LonWar on March 09, 2004, 06:45:04 pm: Quote from: gpvillamil on March 09, 2004, 05:23:45 pm
Norton Ghost is your friend for rapidly getting up and running. If you do any tinkering with your system, use Ghost to take snapshots of working configurations so you can rollback easily.

With Ghost you can't back up parts of your system, It's either all or none.

I'm running Ghost now, Till I find something better...
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: Buellie on March 09, 2004, 07:58:23 pm: Next Time You Need To Buy A Hard Drive
Check Out
www.outpost.com
Your 300 Gig One Touch Sells For $306.00
I've Bought 10 Hard Drives From Them Guys
Great Service So Far And I Just Bought Another
160 Gig Western Digital After Rebate $100.00
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: KingSparta on March 09, 2004, 08:04:36 pm: I did not mind spending the extra few $'s I know with gateway i would get it. I did see the drive cheeper at a few places but not by much.
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: skidoo on March 09, 2004, 08:53:58 pm: Quote from: KingSparta on March 09, 2004, 12:55:40 pm
I Hear You.

I had a 5 meg drive 3 foot long about 2 feet high maybe 100 lbs or so, alot of Iron.

now I carry a USB 250 Meg Memory Stick No Bigger Than A Lighter (I think they go to 1 gig now).

I've got a few 512 MB SD cards, which are even smaller than memory sticks. And best of all, I use them in my tiny little cell phone that fits comfortably in my pocket. My tiny little cell phone that plays thousands of games, has a builtin thumbboard (little keyboard), browses the regular Internet (not just WAP) at blazing speeds, and plays MP3s and OGGs like a champ. Oh, and it's my central calendar and contact repository, and it makes great telephone calls to boot!

My first true hard disk (post-tape) was a 8 meg drive connected to an 8088 that 256 KB of RAM. Woo-hoo! That was so bleeding-edge!
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: pbreet on March 09, 2004, 11:26:30 pm: Quote from: Matt on March 09, 2004, 12:50:31 pm
It's mind boggling.

I remember getting my first hard drive which was like 40 MB and wondering how I could ever fill it up.

How old are you? My first drive was 20meg, $800 for my Commadore Amiga in 86.
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: pbreet on March 09, 2004, 11:30:23 pm: Quote from: imjustagamer on March 09, 2004, 06:45:04 pm
Quote from: gpvillamil on March 09, 2004, 05:23:45 pm
Norton Ghost is your friend for rapidly getting up and running. If you do any tinkering with your system, use Ghost to take snapshots of working configurations so you can rollback easily.

With Ghost you can't back up parts of your system, It's either all or none.

I'm running Ghost now, Till I find something better...

I think the latest versions of Ghost work in Windows.

I use Acronis TrueImage v6, (v7 really sucks....) It will image any drive from within Windows. I can 'Mount' any image file so it looks like a drive on my system to explore it or copy files from it.

And whenever I am going to do something "weird" to my system, I make sure I have a good backup image of my c: drive (os and programs only).

Using the recovery disk, I can restore my c: drive in less than 10 minutes.
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: DJMUK on March 10, 2004, 01:32:59 am: Quote from: imjustagamer on March 09, 2004, 06:45:04 pm
Quote from: gpvillamil on March 09, 2004, 05:23:45 pm
Norton Ghost is your friend for rapidly getting up and running. If you do any tinkering with your system, use Ghost to take snapshots of working configurations so you can rollback easily.

With Ghost you can't back up parts of your system, It's either all or none.

I'm running Ghost now, Till I find something better...

Have a look at www.dantz.com they have a range of backup software. I have used the 'Retrospect Professional' version for a couple of years now and find it the best of all the products I have tried. It is so flexible and has a 'disaster recovery' function.

Quote from their site:

"Retrospect Professional is designed for home and small office users who want to protect a single Windows computer and up to two additional networked Windows or Macintosh desktops and notebooks by backing them up to a Windows-based computer.

Retrospect for Windows can be extended with add-ons to finely tune the product to meet specific needs."

I believe a cut down version of this comes with the Maxtor One Touch drives.

With regard to disk imaging software I believe the only way to get a 'true' image is to do it from outside of Windows. I used to get good results with Drive Image but the 2002 and 7 versions gave me problems. I also tried Ghost and Acronis but again with some problems. My current imaging software, used for over a year now with no problems, is a DOS product which combines partition management and boot management for multi OS's. It's called BootIt NG from http://www.bootitng.com/ it may not look pretty but it does have a simalar dedicated following and support to MC.

Turning to the real subject of the thread my first Hard drive was 10mb and cost £300. My second was 300mb and cost £999. Mind you the IBM PC clone only had 32KB of RAM! How thing change!

David
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: kiwi on March 10, 2004, 01:33:26 am: My first HD was in a Compaq portable... umm... I mean luggable. It even had a built in CRT and ISA slots. The HD was 20MB... and boy was I cooking!!!

kiwi
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: KingSparta on March 10, 2004, 05:22:19 am: Quote
Have a look at www.dantz.com they have a range of backup software.

That Came With The New Drive.
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: Chris Shaw on March 10, 2004, 10:49:11 am: Norton Ghost is a godsend and has saved me many times. The version I have (Ghost 2003) does need to reboot to DOS to do its thing, but you can set up what you want it to do from Windows beforehand, and the user interaction is then minimal. It doesn't even need a floppy or anything because it makes a virtual boot drive on your hard disk.

The way I set new machines up these days is to partition a big drive into a 4.7Gb partition for system and critical software and make the rest a big partition for media, games etc. That way, I can Ghost the critical stuff regularly onto the big partition and back it up onto a bootable DVD-R. It doesn't take long, and I can be up and running almost as soon as I fix the hardware.
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: bebop on March 10, 2004, 11:42:33 am: My first computer was a beauty...IBM 5150, 4.77Mhz, 8088 CPu with a huge 256 KB RAM. Cutting edge...at the time! And it sure wasn't in the smallish nor unobtrusive style, either. And so began the quest for more power, more memory, compactness and easier interface!!! My kids fondly recall learning the ins and outs back in the day with "Sticky Bears", Loderunner, and "Hitchiker's Guide to the Universe". Now, I can't wait until they get a 100 gig mp3 player out, and my kids have long ago left me in their computing skills dust. And I love my Maxtor firewire drives.
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: LonWar on March 10, 2004, 01:39:08 pm: I thought it was amazing when I got my Tape drive for the Vic 20...

Now there is technology.... ;D ::)
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: KingSparta on March 10, 2004, 02:22:42 pm: Quote from: imjustagamer on March 10, 2004, 01:39:08 pm
I thought it was amazing when I got my Tape drive for the Vic 20...

Now there is technology.... ;D ::)

I had one of them, I also had a Atari 1010 Tape Drive, It only took 15-30 mins to load a program, Sweet.
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: fex on March 10, 2004, 05:41:32 pm: This was my first PC, it was a 'portable' Televideo TPC1 from 1982.
There was no hard drive at all (like the two maxtors in the back...).

The TPC1 has 64kB RAM, 4kB graphics ROM, 8bit Zilog Z80A 4MHz, integrated 9 inch green phosphor display with graphic mode and (no joke) a mouse (!). OS is CP/M 2.2.

(http://www.fex.ch/tpc1.jpg)

I love this thing!
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: KingSparta on March 10, 2004, 05:47:28 pm: Fex

I see you have the new 5 1\4 inch floppy drives.
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: LonWar on March 10, 2004, 05:49:42 pm: Hey King, Have you tried the Danz software from your drive? I didn't even realize it came with it...

I'm loading is as we speak... Hopefully be better then Ghost....
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: fex on March 10, 2004, 05:53:17 pm: Quote from: KingSparta on March 10, 2004, 05:47:28 pm
Fex
I see you have the new 5 1\4 inch floppy drives.

You should hear the sound. Icredible, it really beeps!
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: KingSparta on March 10, 2004, 05:59:55 pm: Quote
Hey King, Have you tried the Danz software from your drive?

No I Used Freeware "Replicator" to copy all 200 gigs to the new drive.

It works very good.

http://www.karenware.com/powertools/powertools.asp
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: pipsqueak on March 12, 2004, 11:19:56 am: I use (3) Lacie external HDD's (mainly because i like the metal casing designed by porsche, and the mini rack they produce for their d2 series). Remember i run everything through a laptop - limited internal expansion options...

I used to daisy chain them via firewire, but windows XP has a known bug whereby when you shut down the PC it doesnt shut down the disks. So instead i run them via usb, which doesnt present this problem.

usb is slightly slower than firewire (usb has a higher theoretical maximum transfer speed, but lower achieved test speeds), but on playback it makes no difference. if i want to move something large i just reconnect them via firewire.
Title: Re:Today I Got A New Firewire Drive
Post by: KingSparta on March 12, 2004, 11:22:57 am: I guess thats nice to know.