Re: large external drive OK?
- From: "Jo-Anne Naples" <naples@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 31 May 2008 17:42:42 -0500
Thank you, Paul!
As you probably saw in one of my responses, I do have USB2. JS says,
however, that I need to check my system to see if it has 48bit LBA. I
haven't worked out exactly how to do that yet. I just asked him for more
info.
Are you saying, though, that what matters is the external hard drive itself
rather than what's in my computer?
Jo-Anne
"Paul" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:g1sada$vsu$1@xxxxxxxxxxx
Jo-Anne Naples wrote:
I have a 5-year-old Dell desktop computer running Windows XP SP3. I want
to buy my first external hard drive and have my eye on an Iomega 500 GB
drive. One of the reviewers of this drive at Amazon said that it wouldn't
work with her older computer, which is about the same age as mine. The
reviewer asked at a local computer store and was told that in general the
large external drives don't work with older computers. (My internal drive
is only 50 GB, as I recall.)
Is that indeed the case?
Thank you!
Jo-Anne
USB2 enclosures should be backward compatible with USB 1.1 ports on an
older computer. Since the enclosure is supplied by Iomega and you're not
building the enclosure from parts at home, Iomega will have ensured
that the controller chip inside the enclosure, is compatible with
48bit LBA. There have been some USB enclosure chips, which don't support
large hard drives (and the size limits are weird numbers, not consistent
with a 28bit LBA 137GB limitation, either). But since you're buying a
pre-made
external disk product, the manufacturer will have checked that.
Operating in USB 1.1 mode will be slow, no doubt about that. The
transfer rate with such a port, would be 1MB/sec or so.
I have read of a couple USB devices, where the claim is, they
will only run in USB2 mode. I have trouble believing that, but
mention that purely as a data point. There is some Apple product,
where the manufacturer documentation makes that claim. In
general, I would not expect that to be the case with USB external
enclosures.
If your computer does have USB 1.1 ports on the back, then as
the other two posters suggested, purchase a USB2 PCI add-in
card.
This card claims to use a NEC uPD720101 and is $10. It should
work via the drivers Microsoft has already included in the
service packs. (Some drivers might be needed for older OSes
like Win98.) You can get about 30MB/sec transfer rate over
USB2, at least based on some benchmarks on Tomshardware for
different USB enclosures.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815124008
Paul
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: large external drive OK?
- From: Paul
- Re: large external drive OK?
- Prev by Date: Re: large external drive OK?
- Next by Date: Re: Seagate FreeAgent Ext Drive
- Previous by thread: Re: large external drive OK?
- Next by thread: Re: large external drive OK?
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
