Staples (the office supplies chain) are selling a 250GB external USB2 drive at the moment for 100 GBP (this one - http://www.ciboxcorp.com/web01/anglais/produits/neron.htm ) - at least my local Cambridge branch is :)
It comes with an external PSU,USB2 cable, the box itself is not much bigger than a bare 3.5" drive, and has a Seagate 250GB/7200rpm/8MByte cache drive inside.
Haven't done much real work with it yet, but it measures at about 25MB/s read, 30MB/s write using the ATTO disk benchmarking tool on my AMD/SiS desktop PC.
Tony
Nice one Tony - keep us posted, though, please.
Bob
They also seem to be selling a 2.5" drive rated at 250Gb fro £139, do they make 2.5" disk that size yet?
http://www.staples.co.uk/ENG/Catalog/cat_results.asp?txtSearch=250GB+
They also seem to be selling a 2.5" drive rated at 250Gb fro £139, do they make 2.5" disk that size yet?http://www.staples.co.uk/ENG/Catalog/cat_results.asp?txtSearch=250GB+
Largest i can find are 100GB
They also seem to be selling a 2.5" drive rated at 250Gb fro £139, do they make 2.5" disk that size yet?
I don't think so either - suspect it's a misprint i.e. it's really a 3.5" drive.
Tony
P.S. According to the device manager, the drive inside my USB2 box is one of these - http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/marketing/detail/0,1081,628,00.html
Just experimented with playing three DV files simultaneously in Vegas from the external box (after re-formatting it as NTFS) - didn't seem noticeably different in performance to doing from one of the internal drives, so quite pleased with it so far - I bought it mostly for off-line storage anyway so I wasn't expecting it to be particularly fast.
Thanks Tony!
For reasons that are too boring to explain, while I was up town yesterday, I went to London's Tottenham Court Road (a place that has loads of computer and AV shops) thinking to buy a 250GByte (or bigger) IDE hard disk if I could get one at a price not much more expensive than those I'd seen on the net.
Biggest I could find was 160GByte!
I didn't even know they still made tiddlers like that!
;)
Bob C
TEAC HD-35PUK-250 3.5" 250 GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive
http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/102880/art/teac/hd-35puk-250-3-5-250-gb-u.html?itag=4578
I bought one this afternoon - comes formatted as FAT32. Xp can't format it to NTFS, am I missing something here
I bought one this afternoon - comes formatted as FAT32. Xp can't format it to NTFS, am I missing something here
Replies like this one can often give the wrong impression, so apologies if I'm already telling you stuff you know.
1/ Right-click on My Computer and choose Manage
2/ Click on the Disk Management option (near bottom left on the new window that will open up)
3/ Make 100 per cent sure you select the correct drive in the righthand pane of that new window and choose Format.
4/ Double-check that you have indeed picked the correct drive and follow the format dialogue through, choosing NTFS when the option is offered.
If this doesn't work, then there may be an option to Delete Partition that you may have to choose before Format.
Please let us know how you get on.
Bob C
I got a message stating that the drive was currently in use, did I want to force the format. After I responded yes the format started.
I had unsuccessfully been trying to format with from a right click menu on the drive in My Computer - should have thought of Disk Management...
Many thanks for your quick assistance Bob - DVdoctor scores again :). There is no support on the Cibox web site by the way (and Staples hadn't a clue).
Hedley,
I guess that "force the format" message will have meant that you had the drive open in another window.
Bob
Hedley,I guess that "force the format" message will have meant that you had the drive open in another window.
Bob
Thanks again