[SATLUG] External Hard Drive

[Don Wright]

On Thu, 1 Mar 2007 16:16:12 -0600, "Seth Sanchez"
<theoneghost at gmail.com> wrote:

>Does anyone know any specific qualifications I need to look for in an
>external drive? Would I just need some drivers or a specific kernel? I'm
>looking around but I want to make sure it will work. I'm using kernel 2.6.11


What's important to you? Fast, cheap, reliable - pick any two.

Yes, most USB external drives will work with most versions of Linux, but
even USB2 is pretty slow. The super-portable USB-powered drives are very
slow compared to regular IDE/SATA. High-speed FireWire/IEEE1394
interfaces may need special chipset support; I haven't tried those.
(Plain FireWire is about the same as USB2.) External SCSI is fast and
well supported in Linux, but pricey. External SATA is the coming thing
but finding a supported E-SATA controller may be hard. (I know recent
Intel chipsets are poorly supported right now.) And then there are the
network storage solutions like the Buffalo LinkStation that connect over
a LAN: faster but more $ and more administration.

Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer cherce.   --Don

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