[Tech]: The Tale of External Drives
So a bit of background. PC is a custom-made desktop PC (duh) that was upgraded in 2009 and running WinXP SP3. I never made the jump to Vista and was contemplating another hardware upgrade before it can be upgraded to Win7.
One of the reason I was waiting for the hardware overhaul is that PC has this quirk of suddenly restarting by itself which can lead to a reboot loop that is quite annoying. Seeing that the problem started before the 2009 upgrade and still occurred even after the new parts was just installed, that ruled out some of the more probable causes such as motherboard/RAM connection. I figured this time, I might as well consolidate the data on my older hard drives and replace them with bigger capacity ones on the off chance that the older drives may be causing the issue. That will also mean I have less hard drives to keep track off too ^^.
Anyway, I first started with an internal 3TB drive . At first, I did managed to get WinXP to detect it but after a reformat, I couldn't get it to work grr. Luckily I haven't transferred anything yet to it though.
After a while, I really need more space though and by that time the prices of external drives has dropped that the price difference with the same capacity internal drives is not so high. I splurged on a WD My Book 3TB . At that time I was also mainly using my laptop after both PC and Mini had issues so having an external drive works for transferring stuff between the new laptop and PC (when it was working). But even the new drive filled up fast *sheepish.
Around a month ago, the inevitable happened and PC stopped working. I don't really mind much coz I have to face the fact that I was using it less now and sometimes only because I still have something that can't easily be done on a Win 64bit version (ie flashing Android roms/N900 firmware). But what to do about my stuff on the hard drives?
So I revisited an idea I first encountered in 2010. so now I am a (proud?) owner of a Probox Drive Bay ^^. I can now use the internal 3TB drive that I can't use before and a plus point is I still have space for more drives.. oops . Out of the older drives I have, I will probably just find a way to connect them to move the data to the bigger drives and finally retiring them as was initially planned.
Even if or when I replace PC, I can easily connect the current drives as single connection for all of the drives that installed in the Drive Bay as it will use a single USB 3.0 port or eSata connection.
I am so enjoying that the USB 3.0 transfer speed for My Book and the Drive Bay is so fast ^^
One of the reason I was waiting for the hardware overhaul is that PC has this quirk of suddenly restarting by itself which can lead to a reboot loop that is quite annoying. Seeing that the problem started before the 2009 upgrade and still occurred even after the new parts was just installed, that ruled out some of the more probable causes such as motherboard/RAM connection. I figured this time, I might as well consolidate the data on my older hard drives and replace them with bigger capacity ones on the off chance that the older drives may be causing the issue. That will also mean I have less hard drives to keep track off too ^^.
Anyway, I first started with an internal 3TB drive . At first, I did managed to get WinXP to detect it but after a reformat, I couldn't get it to work grr. Luckily I haven't transferred anything yet to it though.
After a while, I really need more space though and by that time the prices of external drives has dropped that the price difference with the same capacity internal drives is not so high. I splurged on a WD My Book 3TB . At that time I was also mainly using my laptop after both PC and Mini had issues so having an external drive works for transferring stuff between the new laptop and PC (when it was working). But even the new drive filled up fast *sheepish.
Around a month ago, the inevitable happened and PC stopped working. I don't really mind much coz I have to face the fact that I was using it less now and sometimes only because I still have something that can't easily be done on a Win 64bit version (ie flashing Android roms/N900 firmware). But what to do about my stuff on the hard drives?
So I revisited an idea I first encountered in 2010. so now I am a (proud?) owner of a Probox Drive Bay ^^. I can now use the internal 3TB drive that I can't use before and a plus point is I still have space for more drives.. oops . Out of the older drives I have, I will probably just find a way to connect them to move the data to the bigger drives and finally retiring them as was initially planned.
Even if or when I replace PC, I can easily connect the current drives as single connection for all of the drives that installed in the Drive Bay as it will use a single USB 3.0 port or eSata connection.
I am so enjoying that the USB 3.0 transfer speed for My Book and the Drive Bay is so fast ^^