Basic HD questions.

[protokatie]

I know my way around the hardrive sphere pretty well, but I have seen some pretty conflicting info esp refering to newer technologies regarding HD's. So, please opine (with additional info) about these:

1. Is it actually "bad" to hook up external HD's on a USB hub? The HD's I have have their own external power (therefor do not need USB power) and most of my HD's that may need to be on a hub will be putting out data in the 200 to 300 KB/sec rate (for video streaming over the network). I know that if I needed heavy traffic a hubbed HD wouldn't be a good idea due to bandwidth restrictions, but is a hub perfectly servicable for my needs?

2. Start-up wear. I have my external HD's spin down after 5 minutes of non-use. I know the old myth that it is "always better to have the computer on all the time" but this was an old myth. Is it currently better to do this now or not? Most of my drive access is in a "batch mode" (IE while watching a movie) and afterwards does not have any real reason to be spinning. Also my backup drives spin up once a day to do their thing. I can see both sides of the argument, but since the backup drive gets about 10 minutes of use a day, and the primary get maybe 2 hours of use a day, I find it hard to justify that they would be better off spinning all the time.

3. Defrag. This applies to the OS HD on my fileserver, as well as the OS HD on my Livingroom Computer. Both are reset rarely (esp the file server), and both have atleast 80% free space, but no matter how many times I run M$ defrag I cannot get the fragmentation level below 22% (file frag). Is this a "feature" of XP? Before I did the whole "home file server thing" I never had this problem before... Ideas?

[ChadTower]

I use IDE drives on a cheap USB hub as my media "SAN" and it works perfectly well.  Haven't had one die yet.  USB 2.0 is plenty fast enough to cover 300kb/sec and then some. 

[HaRuMaN]

Go Solid State...

[ChadTower]

BTW, the real reason you're not getting any answers is that you're waaaaaaaay overthinking this.  Unless you plan to run a commercial server putting out dozens of transactions a minute there's just no need to think down to that level. 

[Thenasty]

I only turn my EXT HD's (3 of it) when I need to Duplicate the MASTER HD that contains DATA's that need backing up. After Duplicating the Master, I shut it off.
So my SLAVE EXT HD Backup, gets turn on only when I aquire enough DATA stored in MASTER to duplicate. Sometimes it takes week to a month before the SLAVE(s) gets turn on.

No Need to have EXT HD in my case to be ON all the time. I believe it saves Wear and Tear.

[RayB]

My external HD in an enclosure runs VERY HOT. So I only ever turn it on when needed.  Also, some HD adapters require that you go through the whole "click the tray icon to remove USB device" annoyance in order to ensure disk writing is properly completed before you power down or disconnect it. That's another issue to think about.

I would buy something designed for the use you want, and then feel content you don't have to worry about all this nit picky tech limits.

[Dr Zero]

I dont like HDD on a usb hub powered or otherwise  I have had some issues with data and the drive not being there some times.

I tried another hub same issue some enclosures I dont think like being on hubs 

Its easy enough to add USB ports if you need to or now you could just add external SATA ports and it moves data faster than USB

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.10308
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.9683
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=AG-352SESE&cat=CSE

[ChadTower]

Yeah, that is definitely a better option than a hub, if your enclosure doesn't like hubs.  I haven't had that issue with drive enclosures but have had it with other devices. 

[Grasshopper]

I've got a combined e-sata/usb2 enclosure. It gives you the best of both worlds.

link

[hypernova]

I thought this was for hi-def, rather than HDD.

[protokatie]

I have been using 2 external HDs for 7 months now with no problems. Now that I just added 2 additional HD's (external) I am having MAJOR problems. I am using all four onboard USB ports and the file server is now really really unstable. Explorer crashes all the time. When I knock it down to any 2 HD's the system is stable again.

Could this be due to having too many external HDs on one USB controller? Would adding a USB PCI card fix this? Any ideas?

[Dr Zero]

I have been using 2 external HDs for 7 months now with no problems. Now that I just added 2 additional HD's (external) I am having MAJOR problems. I am using all four onboard USB ports and the file server is now really really unstable. Explorer crashes all the time. When I knock it down to any 2 HD's the system is stable again.

Could this be due to having too many external HDs on one USB controller? Would adding a USB PCI card fix this? Any ideas?

Could be too much strain so yeah another USB card might help the cards are pretty inexpensive also.

I dont know about where you live but out here in the country we dont have computer parts stores so I get my cards from Newegg or Amazon usually.