Seagate External 160 gig USB Hard Drive

Jeff Strouse · Post by **Jeff Strouse** » 6 Dec 2006 8:37 pm

My computer hard drive is full, so I just bought one of these Seagates to keep my music collection on, and was surprised at how easy it was to plug in and use.

I plugged it in, and immediately dragged a 30 gig music folder over to it. It took about 4 hours to transfer it all (I don't have a high speed USB port). But, it seems to be working well.

I have a few questions if someone can help (they are probably stupid ones, but

1. Do I need to turn the power button on the external drive on and off when I turn my comnputer on and off? Or, do I just leave it on all the time?

2. It says it's a 160 gig drive, however, the drive read 148 when I plugged it in. Where's the 12 gigs of space?

3. When I plugged it in, my system said I should add a Hi-speed USB Host Controller to obtain maxium performance. However, it seems to be working fine. I'm trying to spend as little as possible on this system, which is about 5-6 yrs old now....I'm trying to get as much mileage as I can out of it.

4. The guy at Best Buy said the good thing about these drives is that I can unplug it, and take it to another computer. I don't really forsee myself neededing to do this, but if I did, could the data be damaged during transport?

5. My file system is NTFS, however, this drive is showing FAT32. Could that cause any problems or will it be compatible?

Thanks for any help!

Earnest Bovine · Post by **Earnest Bovine** » 6 Dec 2006 10:08 pm

Four hours sounds kind of slow. MAybe you could use that high-speed USB.

Jeff Strouse · Post by **Jeff Strouse** » 6 Dec 2006 10:22 pm

I thought so, too...but now that I have bulk on there, I'll only be transferring a few hundred megabytes at a time over to the drive. Could the slow speed cause any corruption in data? I'm sure I'll be getting a new computer within a year. Adding the external drive gives me more time...

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 6 Dec 2006 10:35 pm

External hard drives require a certain amount of capacity for their filing table and operating system instructions. Also, who is to say what constitutes 160 GB anyway? Hard drive manufacturers often use a different definition of a mega or giga byte than the Windows operating system does. Some use 1024, others 1048 as a multiplier, while others may use a decimal count for mega or giga bytes (1000). If the drive works and you can save and retrieve files to and from it, be thankful.

It's like coming in to a dark house at night. When you throw the light switch you don't care how the electricity is rated for delivery through the power lines; you only care that the lights come on.

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Mitch Drumm · Post by **Mitch Drumm** » 6 Dec 2006 10:37 pm

Jeff:

The missing 12 gigs is completely normal. I have a 200 gig drive whose formatted capacity is 186 gigs.It's mostly due to the fact that there are 2 ways of calculating a gigabyte. From a marketing perspective, the manufacturers figure it is advantageous to use the method that provides the largest number, rather than the formatted capacity.

Check your existing hard drive. Its capacity probably isn't a nice round number like 160 either.

Drives can be damaged by shock, so I would be careful when handling it, particularly when it is running. The best thing you can do is to back up your music to DVDs occasionally anyway.

I am not aware of any data file compatibility issues between NTFS and FAT 32. I have transferred tens of thousands of files between the two over the years with no problems.

I would wonder about the heat buildup in those external drives. Does it have any cooling?? I have always used internal backup hard drives with a cooling fan blowing directly on the drive. Find out if you can monitor the temperature and compare it to the temp on your internal HD. Free programs like Speedfan can monitor internal drives, but I don't know how they work with externals.

[This message was edited by Mitch Drumm on 06 December 2006 at 10:40 PM.][This message was edited by Mitch Drumm on 06 December 2006 at 10:42 PM.]

Bob Martin · Post by **Bob Martin** » 6 Dec 2006 10:55 pm

I've had at least 4 or 5 pretty big external fire wire/USB2 drives hooked up for years and they've never over heated. 2 of them are build your own housing and the other 2 or 3 are bought from the store already enclosed. 1 of them has a mini fan built in inside the case and the rest just have vents and none have ever failed. So I'd say you'll be ok.

Bob

Jeff Strouse · Post by **Jeff Strouse** » 6 Dec 2006 11:02 pm

I have the drive currently sitting on top of my computer tower. Since both are generating electric fields, is that a bad idea?

Dave Potter · Post by **Dave Potter** » 7 Dec 2006 4:38 am

Assuming the drive is USB 2.0 capable, and it probably is, how about $9 to bring your system up to USB 2.0 (or a few bucks more if you don't like going on the cheap

)? If you've got an empty PCI slot, these things are "plug and play". And, I saw several other configurations, such as ones that fit into an empty floppy drive slot in your PC case, if that works better for you.

The drive *is* portable; you can move it to whatever PC you want, and it'll be recognized. Just use ordinary care handling it; don't drop it.

Heat should not be an issue. If it were, the mfgrs would address it, but most external drives I've seen don't have cooling built-in. Nor do internal drives, for that matter. I'm not saying cooling's a bad thing, I've got 6 fans in my PC case, including the PSU, but for HDs, they're not the highest priority.

NTFS is preferred over FAT32 as a file system, for several reasons. There are inexpensive software utilities that can change it if you decide to do that.

I have a 300GB external drive I use for various archiving stuff, like the images I make of my root drive. I normally leave it plugged in, but powered down unless I need to use it - what's the point of keeping it spinning, or even in standby, if it's not required? If you want to switch the drive off with the system running, you'll want to click the "safe to remove device" icon in your system tray prior to doing that.

BTW, if your root drive is "full", I recommend moving some of what's on it to the new drive. Windows needs some "headroom" there for various things, and without enough empty space, it can really affect overall system performance. Then, when you've done that, defrag it.

Electromagnetic fields aren't a factor. What needs to be shielded, is.[This message was edited by Dave Potter on 07 December 2006 at 05:45 AM.]

Ray Minich · Post by **Ray Minich** » 7 Dec 2006 9:43 am

Radio Shack has a 3 port USB2.0/3 port IEEE-1394 card for $19.95. I just bought 5 of 'em.