External 500GB Hard Drive

Pic from akihabaranews.com

500GB with USB cable built-in. I have no idea why everyone else use this design.  Hate looking for USB cable.

Here is another 500GB hard drive (with USB cable built-in) which announced about a year ago.

Link

Book Shaped External Hard Drive

Pic from aving.net

Link

Western Digital VelociRaptor Reviewed

extremetech managed to score couple of review units and did extensive benchmarks. Very impressive performance.

Link.

New hard drive from Western Digital

Pic from wdc.com

It's 300GB, SATA 3.0 Gbit/s, and 10,000RPM hard drive with 16MB cache. No, it's not a 3.5 inch hard drive on the 5.25 mounting frame but a 2.5 inch hard drive on the 3.5 inch mounting frame.

Link via engadget.com.

Buffalo's new 500GB external hard drive

Never mind the cool build-in cable design but the question is: where did they get 500GB 2.5" hard drive? I thought 320GB was the largest capacity for 2.5" hard drive.

Pic from buffalo.jp

You can buy one for 53,000 yen ($500 USD) from here.

Via akihabaranews.com.

Event ID 51: An error was detected on device ... during a paging operation.

Event ID 51 An error was detected on device \device\hardisk#\# during a paging operation.

I've had quite a few of these problems before. I've lost one hard drive and, in the most recent ocurrance, ability to use new Apple keyboard on the Windows machine. I guess it was probably bad karma to use Apple hardware on the Microsoft OS.

The problem caused when the cached data were unable to write to the disk. Here are a few scenarios that could cause Event ID 51:

• Software issue. I've had problem with Windows 2000 and earlier version of Windows XP. But the problem is gone after moving to Windows XP sp2. Try to disable cache, optimized for quick removal mode.
  
• Problem with hard drive. I've lost one drive right after the drive warranty expired. I didn't noticed Event ID 51 and other drive errors were filling up event viewer until the warranty expired. The drive died soon after but I was able to backup the data.
• Check for manufacture service page. There might be known issue with drive.

It could also be:

• Chipsets and driver for USB, IDE, SATA, etc.
  
• Cable
  

I still don't know why the Event ID 51 happens when I connect the new Apple keyboard. No other USB devices causes this: USB MO external drive, other USB hard drive, USB printer. But somehow the Apple keyboard is messing up with my four drives USB enclosure.

Sandisk SSD vs Seagate HD

Pic from notebookreview.com

notebookreview has a comparable review of SanDisk SSD and hard drive. Just as I suspected, the write speed is way slower for a hard drive but everything else sorta make up for it. That is if money and capacity is not issue. How hard to put those flash chips in RAID so it has usable write speed.

My motherboard gone bad?

I thought the problem was in the 4-drives USB enclosures but apparently not. I've hooked up another USB drives on the system, but it still giving me the same problem. I'm starting to think USB controller in the motherboard is gone bad. Maybe USB driver?

Event ID 51: Need new backup system

Scary error message on my USB hard drives where all my backup files reside.

Since this error suddenly appeared on all four hard drives on the 4-drives USB enclosure, I'm guessing the problem is actually on the IDE-to-USB board not the hard drives.

An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\D during a paging operation.
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk2\D during a paging operation.
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk3\D during a paging operation.
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk4\D during a paging operation.

Since a 500GB hard drive is actually cheaper than a 4-drives USB enclosure and larger than the four drives combined, I guess I'm getting one soon.

Update:My Motherboard gone bad?

LaCie external hard drive with biometric security

Pic from www.lacie.com

I was looking for FAQ entry for when you lost the finger. But the closest match I found was:

What happens if the fingerprint sensor is damaged? Just return the d2 SAFE drive to the factory and use the data from one of your backups in the meantime. (You did do a backup, right?)

Are they saying if you're a hacker, don't try to forge the finger print to access the data, but try backups?

I like to use finger print reader to computer login but I'll stick with TrueCrypt for sensitive and irreplaceable data.

Link

Rant: Backup and me

I've been looking for (almost being obsessed of finding) reliable and faster performance solution for data storage for years after recorderable CD crashed and burned important documents and all my school papers all the way from high school. Having used MO for years, its performance and its requirement to swap disk for large data were not practical as using hard drive as backup media. It's okay to backup small files to MO disk but was pain if I need to backup more than a gigabyte of data. I usually had to start copying process and leaved the computer overnight. It was that slow.

For me, a hard drive is the only choice for backup solution. I used RAID 1 for backuping data the most of last two years or so. Crashed the RAID due to faulty hard drive a few times and had to go throw painful rebuilding process. Onboard RAID just sucks. Having RAID on main computer caused a accidental deletion of its file system. Had to go throw painful recovery process and fixed the problem by removing writing permission on RAID, only to administrator account. And early this year, my power supply just gave up, unable to supply the power to RAID. Few years old 400Watts power supply no longer supply the system that needs about 360Watts. I'm using external hard drive for backup now, no RAID, no redundant backup.

Now I have too many hard drives (most of them is at end of its age) but no solid backup system. Only two hard drives which I used in RAID are little less than a year old and bigger than the rest of the hard drive combined. I have no idea whether I need to move to new backup solution. Maybe I need to consider using notebook hard drive for RAID system to save power. Or deleting some of files before backing a folder.

Samsung released hybrid hard drive to OEM

I guess I can find one soon on newegg.

Via engadget

Fastest hard drive?

Fujitsu sez "Fujitsu Introduces World's First 2.5" 7,200 RPM 3.0Gb/s Serial ATA Hard Disk Drive".

Pic from www.fujitsu.com

It's capable of 300MB/s but everyone's been saying that for their hard drive for year.

Link via Gizmodo

Why can't I find more external hard drive enclosure with built-in power supply?

Why can't I find more external hard drive enclosure with built-in power supply? Need external hard drive enclosure but there is only few enclosures with built-in power supply. I don't want to carry power brick!

Dual hard drive silent mounting kit

If you like data storage like me, you will like this one. And nothing wrong with dual anything too.

Link via Gizmodo

2.5 inch hard drive with 15,000 RPM

Seagate announced 2.5 inch hard drive with 15,000 RPM. They already sells 10,000 RPM version, which is targeted for enterprise data centers with limited cooling and power. Massive number of hard drives generates a lot of heat and requires more electric power. The new version will provides faster IO, but still probably lock the speed of the 3.5 inch counter part.