A few simple external hard drive questions...

[Sh!n]

Hey everyone, I've just recently purchased a new 150 gig External Harddrive (the specs of it are in my profile, it's a generic HD though) from ebay, it works fine and run perfectly. It's a great piece of machinary, but alas, I have a few questions as I'm somewhat a newbie when it comes to externals in general, so here it goes:

- How apt are these externals to failing? My PC is almost 3 years old, should I be more concerned about the internals or this new sucker?

- I'm looking to store movies, music, documents, and pictures on it, but I was wondering if I could possibly run games on it as well? I doubt it's a good idea, but was just curious.

- How long should/can I leave it on? I always have my computer running, the HD itself never really gets hot at all, but is this dangerous?

Thanks guys! That's it for now...

 

[PanicX]

- How apt are these externals to failing? My PC is almost 3 years old, should I be more concerned about the internals or this new sucker?

Definitely not less likely to fail than an internal, as these are infact internal drives sitting in an external enclosure. The problem is that being external, these drive are more likely to be knocked over, jossled during travel and dropped more than a drive in a PC, so the risk of damage is greater.

- I'm looking to store movies, music, documents, and pictures on it, but I was wondering if I could possibly run games on it as well? I doubt it's a good idea, but was just curious.

Tetris? Really this depends on your connection, a drive connect through USB 1.1 is not going to transfer well. If you can connect through USB2.0 or Firewire800 you might stand a chance to play off them.

- How long should/can I leave it on? I always have my computer running, the HD itself never really gets hot at all, but is this dangerous?

The external harddrive has the same lifetime hour limit as an internal one. Should be fine to leave it on.

 

[Samstoned]

my rule of electronics devices
when new leave on for 1-2 week,hardware takes a beating when turned on and off.
the av. life of internal drives ,as I see it, is about 4 years.

the usb device well what is the drive inside?
in most cases you should get plenty of life from it
try not to over write the same area of drive
make the file system ext2 if on xp or W$K
keep it cool,most externals don't cool properly

 

[Sh!n]

Thanks so much guys, it's appreciated.

 

[delafoo]

USB 2.0 and firewire SUCK for running apps off of.

I had a LaCie USB 2.0 250GB external, and was able to run apps off of it, but slowly, and with much processor consumption.

I just upgraded to the new LaCie external SATA which runs a bit faster than my internal... and it runs everthing without a hitch.

bb