External devices

[Guess]

Can anybody give me the benefit of their personal experiences.

I have generally used USB adapter/cases for periperals that can no longer fit in my box because all the slots are used. On two occassions I have had problems with a 160GB disk (two different disks) in two different adapters. One did not work at all so I swapped it for the 40GB disk and threw the 40GB disk at the local PC repair shop hoping he could find a home for it and maybe make him a few baht. The second one is more of a problem. I bought a new USB adapter and plugged it in to the USB port. Eventaually I got it formatted and even wrote data to it . Problem is it fails to be recognised more than it does. I am now in the position of having to do something else as I have no way of backing up all my data and music other than using stacks of DVDs and loads of spare time.

I have considered RAID and IDE PCI card but only have a slot for one more drive in my Server. My workstation is an old IBM so nothing can be done there. I am trying to avoid buying a new workstation.

Has anybody any suggestions on a solution for this.

I would even consider a second hand machine. The minimum spec would have to be:

Upright base cabinet with four full height bays.
2.0 GHZ Intel processor.
256MB memory with spare slot.
CD Reader.

The new cost of all this would be about 13,000 baht. I would expect to pay about five or six for a three to four year old one.

[buksida]

I have always used external hard disks for backup since I lost a bunch of data on DVD backups a few years back.

Hard disks are the most reliable (providing you dont drop them!). I have two in the machine itself (120+160) and two for backup and music storage (250+300).

Not sure why you're using so many USB ports, I have six on a 2 year old mainboard and always two spare. Many of the newer external hard disk units also have a firewire connection which is a lot faster than USB for transfering large volumes of data.

Also your problems may be USB related and not disk related, maybe bad ports on the mainboard.

[Guess]

Almost certainly the problems are USB related as when I put the disk into the box in place of an existing disk it works fine.

I have two USB 2.0 ports at the back of the machine. One is connected to 4 way hub and the other to the ADSL modem. I have two USB 1.0 connectors at the fromt one is connected to the printer and the other to the camera.

I first thought the hub was the problem and disconnected it and then found I still had the same problem.

On the mother board I have two IDE cables one for two harddisks and the other for two floppies. I understand that they can not be mixed. I am therfore using all possible IDE ports. I do have a couple of PCI slots spare and was thingking along the lines of getting a PCI/IDE card and connecting two or more disks to it. This would solve all my problems.

I am afraid that if I buy a new USB adapter that I will be throwing good money after bad. Firewire is also an option but I know little about it and what its limitations are. What do I need to buy to convert to Firewire.

[buksida]

In order to avoid anymore USB grief you have the following options:

1) PCI IDE card: simple to install and will increase your IDE capacity from 4 to 6. May have heat problems if the case is small.

2) External CD/DVD RW unit: this will free up your internal secondary IDE port allowing two more hard disks to be added.

3) PCI Firewire card: again simple to install however you need to have an external firewire capable hard disk case (a little more expensive than the standard USB 2 ones).

4) Secondary machine: not really worth the expense of building another box just to store hard drives.

5) New mainboard: one that has 8 USB 2.0 ports, firewire and SATA built in ... however you're likely to need a new CPU also so not really an economically viable option.