why doesnt anyone use external hard drives?

**jojor512** · 04-16-2004, 03:59 PM

Is it just becuase of price? I know everyone is worried about bumps in the road, and there are several external HDs out there with built in shock protection- my uncle has a backup drive that has been dropped sevral feet several times and it still works great- I've been looking at prices and it's about 40-50 more for an external drive with some shock protection- is there something I'm missing here? It would be worth it to me to spend the extra 50 bucks and not have to worry about my harddrive breaking...I have the feeling that there is a greater reason why people don't use them other than price, so please let me know

**lopan** · 04-16-2004, 04:05 PM

They do... I'm using a 200 gb fullsize external drive

**kiltjim** · 04-16-2004, 04:06 PM

I don't know about the rest of the forum, but I am using a portable HD. I have an 80 GB external USB 2.0 drive. I had it for my desktop, but now I sue it to transfer files back and forth from school to home, to work, to car. I don't think I could live without it. And i've had no problem with vibration so far.

**jojor512** · 04-16-2004, 04:08 PM

ok, just wanted to check, i searched and saw SO many posts about people with elaborate schemes for shock protection, and this seemed like a pretty good alternative

**cheerio** · 07-10-2004, 04:57 PM

shock protection when the drive is off, and shock protection when the drive is on are two diffrent things. If the drive is on and you hit a bump, theres a good chance of the heads bumping the disks, causing damage. Newer laptops have a nice feature where if its jolted, the heads park in a fraction of a second so it wont damage the disks. This however is not failsafe. External HDs may be fine when they are off, but when they are on they probably dont have much shock protection. its best to mount the drive vertically, that way if you hit a bump, the heads will just rock instead of hitting the disk. as for the rest i do not know yet

**Yuriy** · 07-10-2004, 05:10 PM

I'm using a 40 GB external HD connected via USB.
Only I currently have two problems:
1. My hard drive appears unusable
2. My older laptop system would not support USB

But it still looks funky

**ayclens** · 07-11-2004, 03:19 AM

Do any of you use your external HDD as your boot drive? Or just as a secondary drive with music etc on it?

**Yuriy** · 07-11-2004, 04:44 AM

Originally Posted by Jackboot

Do any of you use your external HDD as your boot drive? Or just as a secondary drive with music etc on it?

I don't. First, I doubt it's safe to do that. Second, you will need a bunch of DOS (or idunnowhat) drivers to be able to use USB (PCMCIA, Firewire, whatever) for booting. Besides, why would you want to boot from an external drive when you can just have a small internal one for your OS and the big external one for all your MP3, Video, GPS and software needs?

If I am right, to boot from an external drive you would first need to boot from a floppy with appropriate drivers. Not something I would want to go through.

**Plinkey** · 07-11-2004, 09:09 AM

Im thinking of using an external usb drive with a usb to 3.5" adapter that can be had for about $10 on ebay. People have been saying that these things are crazy fast with transfer speeds and everything. I think that I would boot from a 1gig CF drive, with the most stripped down XP that I can make. This would help with some of the heat problems that would be generated by a 3.5 HD in the computer case, and it would make the whole thing smaller. I just need to figure somehow to mount the External HD for easy access. I was thinking...on the sidewalls of the trunk, with the computer under the driver seat. Any suggestions for me?

-Plinkey