OT Both my HDD's going bad at same time.

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 20 February 2009, Steven Vollom wrote:
>There is an offer on Ebay for either a Maxtor or Seagate Exterior HD for
> $70. I can't afford to lose my data,  Since I have never found a HDD that
> advertised the ability to handle Ext3, I am in a dilemma what to purchase.
>
Steven;  I have not heard of a drive that isn't usable, literally, with any 
filesystem going.. I am even using an old seacrate 1GB scsi drive with a 
TRS-80 Color computer running todays version of what used to be OS9.  The 
only problem is that the block size of the drive is fixed at 512 bytes, and 
os9 is fixed at 256 bytes per block or sector.  Since that is a truly huge 
drive for an os9/nitros9 system, its just fine that we throw away half the 
drive by using only the first 256 bytes of any sector on it.

Ext3 has zip to do with it.  You install the file system on top of whatever 
architecture the underlying block device has, and the underlying block 
structure is completely hidden.

AFAICT, this is just as valid for a USB connected device unless the USB 
adapter hardware is broken and only the windows drivers know how to work 
around it.

That is the single unknown here.

I am also using a 40GB One Touch, which has a USB interface, formatted to ext3 
with journaling enabled.  It Just Works(TM).

>This is what they say in the ad.
>
>System Requirements:
>Windows 98SE/2000/ME/2003/XP/VISTA
>MAC OS 8.6 or above  (*note - must format drive to FAT32 or MAC compatible
>format to function properly

I'll call BS on that statement, obviously written by some marketroid who 
couldn't change a light bulb with someone to hold the flashlight.

>This is a re-certified drive with a 1 year warranty.  Does anyone know that
>this drive would work with ext3 file system?  I keep hearing that Linux is
>compatible with most everything.  I need a HDD that will work well with
>Intrepid KDE4.2 OS.  I am shot of money now, so it this one will work it
> seems like a good.
>
>Steven

Can you open the box and install another drive with any confidence?  I have 2 
or 3 drives that are long in the tooth, in the 160 to 200GB size range.  They 
still worked when I pulled them for bigger drives.  Contact me off list.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
The secret of happiness is total disregard of everybody.