The external harddrive
Because the ORPs main machine is showing signs of needing a backup real fast (hard drive write errors cropping up in the event viewer), and the ORPs laptop is stacked to the max with data that needs to live somewhere else, the ORP ordered an OK350AU2F-S hard drive enclosure and 320GB Seagate drive. The drive and the enclosure are deliberately low-end (not the nice new fancy eSata enclosure plus huge big fat SATA drive) to avoid overspending on something that won't be needed anyway.
The enclosure is made fully out of aluminum, looks slick and comes with a hard-to-disconnect power connector. The only thing the ORP wishes he'd paid more attention to is his laptops puny firewire connector, which is incompatible with the cable shipped with the drive. Adding a Firewire 6pin to 4pin adapter would have cost an extra $4, now it's a matter of exposing oneself to the terrible temptations of the local Fry's. Update - I ended up shelling out an extraordinate $15 for the Firewire cable, just because I wanted one in a hurry. The moral of the story clearly is to make sure to order anything needed upfront.
Formatting the drive requires looking it up in the disk manager and bringing the drive online first. It's absolutely quiet and not even warm to the touch.
The partitioning scheme will be 2GB whatever (probably fat16 with a bootable linux install), 150GB NTFS and 150GB ext3 or reiserfs.
The only little nag with the drive is that the status LED doesn't work (not a detriment as far as I am concerned) and, of course, that the folks at OKGEAR didn't have the foresight to assume that their customers would forget ordering a firewire 4-to-6 pin adapter and include it in the box. What where they thinking? ;)
The enclosure is made fully out of aluminum, looks slick and comes with a hard-to-disconnect power connector. The only thing the ORP wishes he'd paid more attention to is his laptops puny firewire connector, which is incompatible with the cable shipped with the drive. Adding a Firewire 6pin to 4pin adapter would have cost an extra $4, now it's a matter of exposing oneself to the terrible temptations of the local Fry's. Update - I ended up shelling out an extraordinate $15 for the Firewire cable, just because I wanted one in a hurry. The moral of the story clearly is to make sure to order anything needed upfront.
Formatting the drive requires looking it up in the disk manager and bringing the drive online first. It's absolutely quiet and not even warm to the touch.
The partitioning scheme will be 2GB whatever (probably fat16 with a bootable linux install), 150GB NTFS and 150GB ext3 or reiserfs.
The only little nag with the drive is that the status LED doesn't work (not a detriment as far as I am concerned) and, of course, that the folks at OKGEAR didn't have the foresight to assume that their customers would forget ordering a firewire 4-to-6 pin adapter and include it in the box. What where they thinking? ;)
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