[opensuse] external disk compatibility
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I'm looking for an external USB disk >= 500 GB to be used with both Linux and M$ for backups. Are there any good sites to check out, or any known compatibility issues like the freeagent problem? My google-foo isn't working well today. Thanks, Dave -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 10:04 AM, Dave Howorth <dhoworth@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
I'm looking for an external USB disk >= 500 GB to be used with both Linux and M$ for backups. Are there any good sites to check out, or any known compatibility issues like the freeagent problem? My google-foo isn't working well today.
Are you worried about the hardware? integrated encryption? or the backup software that often comes with an external drive? I just use externals for basic external storage and I've never had a problem. And I've had dozens of different manufacturers external USB drives hooked up to my systems. USB seems very vanilla and not to require tweaks for different manufacturers. My first hand experience primarily tops out at 1 TB, but I can't see why there would be an issue all the way to 2 TB. But 2 TB is a natural limit of some kind, so drives bigger than that may be problematic for a while. I haven't seen any reports about them yet. Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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Greg Freemyer wrote:
I just use externals for basic external storage and I've never had a problem. And I've had dozens of different manufacturers external USB drives hooked up to my systems. USB seems very vanilla and not to require tweaks for different manufacturers.
I have recently experienced a Hitachi notebook drive that will not work in external USB cases. The external case has been verified good with a couple of other drives and the drive shown to fail in another case. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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* James Knott <james.knott@rogers.com> [08-11-10 11:51]:
I have recently experienced a Hitachi notebook drive that will not work in external USB cases. The external case has been verified good with a couple of other drives and the drive shown to fail in another case.
I have an external usb case with is only functional for me with < 250gb drives... -- Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA HOG # US1244711 http://wahoo.no-ip.org Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2 Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://counter.li.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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Patrick Shanahan wrote:
* James Knott<james.knott@rogers.com> [08-11-10 11:51]:
I have recently experienced a Hitachi notebook drive that will not work in external USB cases. The external case has been verified good with a couple of other drives and the drive shown to fail in another case.
I have an external usb case with is only functional for me with< 250gb drives...
The drive I'm having problems with is only 40 GB. It was the original drive in my ThinkPad R31. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 11:50 AM, James Knott <james.knott@rogers.com> wrote:
Greg Freemyer wrote:
I just use externals for basic external storage and I've never had a problem. And I've had dozens of different manufacturers external USB drives hooked up to my systems. USB seems very vanilla and not to require tweaks for different manufacturers.
I have recently experienced a Hitachi notebook drive that will not work in external USB cases. The external case has been verified good with a couple of other drives and the drive shown to fail in another case.
I call user error! Laptop drives by design often pull more power than a single USB port can provide. Thus external laptop carriers typically come with a custom USB cable with 3 connectors. You have to plug 2 of the connectors into your PC in order to get enough power. Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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Greg Freemyer wrote:
Laptop drives by design often pull more power than a single USB port can provide. My external case came with one of those special cables that plug into 2 USB ports. I also tried it with a separate power supply that's capable of 2 amps. As I mentioned, that case has no problem working with 2 other drives.
I let a friend try it and here's what he had to say: "It appears, as you've already concluded, that the Hitachi drive doesn't like IDE to USB converters. Your enclosure uses an Alcor chipset and mine uses one made by Moai, so the problem is not chipset specific. Viewing the output of a dmesg command on my Ubuntu system shows many I/O errors (the same with both enclosures). E.g.: [ 2903.007484] Info fld=0x0 [ 2903.007487] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb]<<vendor>> ASC=0xff ASCQ=0xffASC=0xff <<vendor>> ASCQ=0xff [ 2903.007505] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 [ 2903.007518] end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0 [ 2903.008574] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Device not ready [ 2903.008582] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE [ 2903.008588] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : Not Ready [current] [ 2903.008595] Info fld=0x0 [ 2903.008598] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb]<<vendor>> ASC=0xff ASCQ=0xffASC=0xff <<vendor>> ASCQ=0xff [ 2903.008612] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 [ 2903.008624] end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0 [ 2903.009572] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Device not ready [ 2903.009580] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE [ 2903.009586] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense Key : Not Ready [current] [ 2903.009593] Info fld=0x0 [ 2903.009596] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb]<<vendor>> ASC=0xff ASCQ=0xffASC=0xff <<vendor>> ASCQ=0xff [ 2903.009608] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 08 00 [ 2903.009620] end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 4096" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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Quoting James Knott <james.knott@rogers.com>:
Laptop drives by design often pull more power than a single USB port can provide. My external case came with one of those special cables that plug into 2 USB ports. I also tried it with a separate power supply
Greg Freemyer wrote: that's capable of 2 amps. As I mentioned, that case has no problem working with 2 other drives.
Are you plugging the drive directly into the computer or going through a hub? I found errors going through the hub and no errors going direct. However, this was a hub that I left unpowered because it worked, at least for the mouse and printer. I am now trying an experiment, powering the hub and plugging the drive into it. So far (twice), no errors, but this is with a different laptop. Somewhere, perhaps my own experience, I found that the particular errors encountered indicated a bad cable. In the previous instance it was a IDE drive that required the 80 conductor cable. The first cable claimed be standards compliant. A Belkin cable that cost 3 times as much solved the problem. In this instance, removing the USB hub solved the "cable" problem. HTH, Jeffrey -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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Jeffrey L. Taylor wrote:
Are you plugging the drive directly into the computer or going through a hub?
I don't even have a hub. All USB connections are direct to the computer. It was tried on two different computers here, as well as at a friends. I even tried with a separate power supply. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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Op 11-08-10 19:03, James Knott schreef:
Jeffrey L. Taylor wrote:
Are you plugging the drive directly into the computer or going through a hub?
I don't even have a hub. All USB connections are direct to the computer. It was tried on two different computers here, as well as at a friends. I even tried with a separate power supply.
I have two Trekstor usb drives with separate powersupply which work without any complication. A IIFreecom with integrated powersupply must be plugged in after startup of my laptop. On my desktop, an e-Machine of Acer I cannot plug in with any reaction. André den Oudsten -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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On 08/11/2010 05:58 PM, Greg Freemyer wrote:
On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 11:50 AM, James Knott <james.knott@rogers.com> wrote:
Greg Freemyer wrote:
I just use externals for basic external storage and I've never had a problem. And I've had dozens of different manufacturers external USB drives hooked up to my systems. USB seems very vanilla and not to require tweaks for different manufacturers.
I have recently experienced a Hitachi notebook drive that will not work in external USB cases. The external case has been verified good with a couple of other drives and the drive shown to fail in another case.
I call user error!
Laptop drives by design often pull more power than a single USB port can provide.
Thus external laptop carriers typically come with a custom USB cable with 3 connectors. You have to plug 2 of the connectors into your PC in order to get enough power.
Greg
My solution to this problem was usb hub with its own power supply. Use only one drive per hub. No need to plug in the second power cable. The printer can share any hub and some sticks. I run two extternal drives, one per each hub. One my suse system the other for backup with partitions for vat32 and linux. Been doing this for 4 years on my Fujitsu/Siemens laptop.. Hope this help. Johan -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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* Greg Freemyer (greg.freemyer@gmail.com) [20100811 17:38]:
USB seems very vanilla and not to require tweaks for different manufacturers.
I prefer eSATA over USB (2.0) because it's so much faster. The only problem is that when specifying eSATA they neglected power so you allways need a separate power supply for the disk. Philipp -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 16:04, Dave Howorth wrote:
I'm looking for an external USB disk >= 500 GB to be used with both Linux and M$ for backups. Are there any good sites to check out, or any known compatibility issues like the freeagent problem? My google-foo isn't working well today.
One of the simplest ways to set aside your concerns is to just buy an empty USB case from some manufacturer like.. CoolBox (but any USB drive case will do) and drop in an empty hard drive. No proprietary OneClick software lurking anywhere... no software that auto installs when you plug into a Windows machine etc etc. That said, I second what Greg said... I've used all kinds of USB external drives with my Linux installs and never had an issue.. just plugged them in and they worked (talking in the last couple of years here.. a few years ago there were issues, but not anymore... not that I've heard of anyway). C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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C wrote:
One of the simplest ways to set aside your concerns is to just buy an empty USB case from some manufacturer As I mentioned in another note, I have a Hitachi drive that will not work in external USB cases, with either Linux or Windows. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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I wrote:
I'm looking for an external USB disk >= 500 GB to be used with both Linux and M$ for backups. Are there any good sites to check out, or any known compatibility issues like the freeagent problem? My google-foo isn't working well today.
Thanks for all the answers :) Greg Freemyer wrote:
Are you worried about the hardware? integrated encryption? or the backup software that often comes with an external drive?
Mainly hardware issues. We will specifically avoid encryption. It's not me that uses these drives and I know nothing about any software that comes with them or what software is used with them. So I'd only be concerned if there was bundled software that stopped them being used. C wrote:
One of the simplest ways to set aside your concerns is to just buy an empty USB case from some manufacturer like
I don't want to do that since it involves work and responsibility for correct functioning and I'm only buying this for somebody else.
No proprietary OneClick software lurking anywhere... no software that auto installs when you plug into a Windows machine etc etc.
Sorry, I don't know what OneClick software is, and I know nothing about Windows (newer than 98 or NT4 anyway).
plugged them in and they worked (talking in the last couple of years here.. a few years ago there were issues, but not anymore... not that I've heard of anyway).
I know there was a specific automatic spin-down issue with Seagate FreeAgent drives. Does that mean it's been fixed? James Knott wrote:
I have recently experienced a Hitachi notebook drive that will not work in external USB cases. The external case has been verified good with a couple of other drives and the drive shown to fail in another case.
Interesting. Hitachi seem to come out well in 3.5" drive comparisons. But thanks for the warning. Patrick Shanahan wrote:
I have an external usb case with is only functional for me with < 250gb drives...
I've heard about problems like that, but I don't want a separate case in this instance anyway so it shouldn't be an issue. Greg Freemyer wrote:
Laptop drives by design often pull more power than a single USB port can provide.
Thus external laptop carriers typically come with a custom USB cable with 3 connectors. You have to plug 2 of the connectors into your PC in order to get enough power.
That's another interesting point. The disk will only be used in the office. All previous drives have had mains power but I see "USB powered" in a lot of ads. Having to use two USB ports might be an issue; I'll need to check. Thanks all, Dave -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 18:16, Dave Howorth wrote:
No proprietary OneClick software lurking anywhere... no software that auto installs when you plug into a Windows machine etc etc.
Sorry, I don't know what OneClick software is, and I know nothing about Windows (newer than 98 or NT4 anyway).
Some external drives have a big button on them. After you've installed some proprietary software (Windows only of course) the use can plug in the drive (or leave it plugged in) and whenever they want to do a system backup, they press the big button. Supposedly idiot proof, but I never actually tried it... so I don't know if this idiot (aka me) would be able to break it or not :-)
I know there was a specific automatic spin-down issue with Seagate FreeAgent drives. Does that mean it's been fixed?
No idea. Never bumped into this issue.
Greg Freemyer wrote:
Laptop drives by design often pull more power than a single USB port can provide.
Thus external laptop carriers typically come with a custom USB cable with 3 connectors. You have to plug 2 of the connectors into your PC in order to get enough power.
That's another interesting point. The disk will only be used in the office. All previous drives have had mains power but I see "USB powered" in a lot of ads. Having to use two USB ports might be an issue; I'll need to check.
I've got 2 small USB drives (2.5" laptop drives inside) and neither one needs the second cable unless I plug it into a Mac.. then it doesn't even turn on until the second cable is plugged in. On all normal PCs and laptops... even low power netbooks running on battery.. I've only needed a single USB cable and no external power.... so.. it's a YMMV thing I guess. C. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
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On 2010-08-11 18:25, C wrote:
On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 18:16, Dave Howorth wrote:
No proprietary OneClick software lurking anywhere... no software that auto installs when you plug into a Windows machine etc etc.
Sorry, I don't know what OneClick software is, and I know nothing about Windows (newer than 98 or NT4 anyway).
Some external drives have a big button on them. After you've installed some proprietary software (Windows only of course) the use can plug in the drive (or leave it plugged in) and whenever they want to do a system backup, they press the big button. Supposedly idiot proof, but I never actually tried it... so I don't know if this idiot (aka me) would be able to break it or not :-)
So that's what it is... yes, I have some cases with that button. I've never tried it, not knowing what it is for - even less in Linux. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 11.2 x86_64 "Emerald" GM (Elessar))
participants (10)
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A. den Oudsten
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C
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Carlos E. R.
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Dave Howorth
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Greg Freemyer
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James Knott
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Jeffrey L. Taylor
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Johan Scheepers
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Patrick Shanahan
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Philipp Thomas