Re: About USB hard drives and errors

On 20100411_005025, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
Paul E Condon put forth on 4/10/2010 11:41 PM:

So, the fact that my WD drives don't play well with S.M.A.R.T doesn't
make them special, and I should not spend much, if any, time looking
for a USB solution. What other options are there for external HD?

You're got 3 USB hard drives already, and you're throwing them out and
looking for another solution, just because they don't do S.M.A.R.T? If
neither USB nor firewire do smart, you choices are very limited.

Well, the sad story is that I don't really want to do S.M.A.R.T. I was
experiencing disk errors on the drives which caused something in the
kernel to throw a fit. When this happened, the only recovery I could
find was to reboot. This is slow and not really a way to learn how to
fix the problem. So I ask for advice on this list. I work down the
list of suggestions, not having much success, and arrive at
smartctl. But now we know that that doesn't work for reasons that I
might have known if I had read the whole of wikipedia and had total
recall --- but I hadn't and I don't.

Since my last post, I have succeeded in doing a successful, error
free, backup to each of the disks. One notable fact about all the
errors is that after reboot it would appear that no data was lost and
the backup could be resumed from where it advanced to just before the
crash. The only thing that I can think that I did differently in these
new successful runs is that I did not sit at the computer and
watch. Can software detect being watched? I think not, but ...

My reading about eSATA gives me suspicion that it has its own poorly
documented problems. I'm not convinced that I cannot make USB work
without S.M.A.R.T, but I really don't have any good ideas as to
how. And now, without errors happening fairly frequently, I doubt that
I will be able to test and debug any approach that I dream up.


The only other realistic option I know of is eSATA, but a quick scan of
Newegg shows only 6 devices total, 2 DVR expander drives and 4 eSATA RAID
enclosures. I have no idea if the DVR expander drives will work with a
standard PC setup. They "should". The two DVR drives are both 1TB and both
just under $130 USD, one Iomega and one Western Digital:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822186175
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136384

Are you planning on connecting this drive to a laptop or desktop? To
multiple computers or just one computer?

This is for a LAN of desktop systems, three computers in all. One
computer acts as a collector of backups from the itself and the other
two, and is responsible for getting the files onto an external drive
in a timely way.

All of the computers are hand-me-downs. None have eSATA capability. So
far I have not convinced myself that spending money would help solve
the problem. Perhaps in a few years, computers with eSATA will start
showing up in dumpsters. Maybe I should just wait.

--
Paul E Condon
pecondon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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