[Lilux-help] external hard drive enclosure

[Eric Dondelinger]

Hi Jay,

thanks for your reply!

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004, Jay Christnach wrote:

> For usb you can find the specs for the mass storage class here:
> http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass_docs
> I hope you like to read standards :-)

I had hoped for a relatively short answer, but if it's
got to be... ;-)

> They certainly have reserved enough bits in the protocol to allow for
> huge LBA-numbers. Maybe the commands are even transported transparently,
> so the adressable size would only depend on the driver software.

Well, some people here at the office meanwhile told me
that they think (!= know) that the protocol is translated
transparently, i.e. the bridge chip doesn't even need to
know about disk size etc., so no trouble there apparently.

I guess I'll just have to order things in a shop where, just
in case, I can exchange the disk or enclosure.

While I'm at it - what's the current status regarding hard
disks (large IDE drives, i.e. >> 120GB) - which are ok, which
are not? The criteria are mainly reliability, speed isn't as
important for this application.

Over the years, it seems about everybody had bad series
of drives:
- Seagate "sie geht oder sie geht nicht"
- Quantum - the fireballs of 2-3GB did get broken easily
- IBM can't remember the exact series that was bad
- ...
How about Maxtor, Samsung, Western Digital, etc. etc.?

i.e. I'm perfectly willing to buy Seagate again if their
current series are ok.

Greetings & TIA, Eric