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  1. Member Frank-0-Video's Avatar
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    Greetings .....

    I have a desktop PC running Win XP-32 with a 465-gb drive. For text, word and PDF documents, as well as various still images (JPEG, GIF, BMP, etc.), there's plenty of free space. But when you start saving lots of movie files (FLV, MP4, MPEG, MOV, etc.) as well as big-sized DVD image files (most of them 4.5-gigs in size), the free space can get chewed up unless you have another drive handy to transfer off all those big files.

    Already I do have another drive -- an external USB-powered 640-gb Western Digital Elements unit which has served me very well. However with some anticipated video archiving work due to start soon, I'm beginning to think that I might need another big external drive to help ease the load.

    I'm aware that WIN XP-32 may not support many of those super-big terabyte drives. So, I'd like for any of you out there to recommend the biggest size drive(s) that XP can handle without a lot of hassle or extra software. Your recommendations should include brand names.

    Thanx-A-Lot, Frank-0-Video
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  2. A Two Terrabyte HDD is what you should look for.
    Make sure to format it as NTFS, so you won't have to break up your large movie files.

    A number of 2 TB HDDs are AF (Advanced Format).
    Be on the lookout for that, and try to avoid them if you can, because most AF Drives require using third party software to format them properly in XP x32.

    Although, if you have a Vista PC (With the latest Service Pack and updates)
    or a Win 7 PC (With the latest Service Pack and updates)
    You can just use one of them to format your HDD (to ntfs) and can skip needing any third party HDD Formatting software,
    and it should work just fine with your XP Machine.
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    A lot of people use these big external drives. At that size, I'd use them basically for storage. It hurts to imagine what it would feel like to have a problem and lose 1 or 2 TB of data, all at the same time. Painful.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 23rd Mar 2014 at 12:13.
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  4. Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
    It hurts to imagine what it would feel like to have a problem and lose 1 or 2 TB of data, all at the same time. Painful.
    Just like with any other storage -- you should have backups.
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    Yep. All the way. But 1 TB or more, that's a lot to hassle with. I limit mine to 500 GB. But that's just me. And some of it's on DVD/DL as well. Possibly when I start archiving HD, I might have to change my ways. So far I had to fix one 350-GB drive problem. Took up a whole afternoon .
    Last edited by sanlyn; 23rd Mar 2014 at 12:13.
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  6. Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
    But 1 TB or more, that's a lot to hassle with.
    Just drag and drop. Or XCOPY at the command line. 500 DVDs is less hassle?

    If you need lots of storage buy drives by the cost per GB. The lowest cost is 3 TB drives now. It makes no sense to buy 500 GB drives.
    Last edited by jagabo; 15th Oct 2012 at 10:04.
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    Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
    A lot of people use these big external drives. At that size, I'd use them basically for storage. It hurts to imagine what it would feel like to have a problem and lose 1 or 2 TB of data, all at the same time. Painful.
    I have NEVER had a home disk drive ever reach the point that I couldn't get data off of it. I've had disk drives that refused to boot, both under Windows and Mac OS X, but all the data on them could be retrieved. You can always buy some extra drives, temporarily connect one of them, backup files to it, and remove it correctly to keep it safe. I've even worked on friend's computers and been able to get data off very old disk drives for them when the computer itself went dead. I know that disk drives can actually get physically damaged, but my experience is that this rarely happens. In my case I think a lot of my problems were caused by not having my computers connected to UPS devices and since I started using UPS devices I have not had even one case of a drive that wouldn't boot. Unfortunately where I live is subject to brown outs and I think that losing power temporarily is the real cause of the disk drive problems I had in the past.
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    The only archives I transfer to 2nd backup DVD are original AVI captures. Intermediate, final work files, most originals, and authored stuff are double-backed on HDD. Yeah, I have a lot of both around. That drive problem took a while because i had to find the 2nd backup first. It takes a long time to Xcopy 350GB. I used an old DriveImage 2002 instead, straight uncompressed copy.

    That 320 (excuse me, I said 350, but it's 320) was a rather old drive, one of the first of its kind on the market but very low use time. Newer drives and the later small USB's are likely more reliable.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 23rd Mar 2014 at 12:13.
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  9. Originally Posted by Frank-0-Video View Post
    I'm aware that WIN XP-32 may not support many of those super-big terabyte drives. So, I'd like for any of you out there to recommend the biggest size drive(s) that XP can handle without a lot of hassle or extra software. Your recommendations should include brand names.
    Thanx-A-Lot, Frank-0-Video
    2TB is kind of the limit for XP, but it also kind of only applies to internal drives. If it's a USB drive, then capacities over 2TB are fine. The SATA to USB conversion basically overcomes the 2TB drive size limitation. I've used a friend's 3TB USB drive with my XP computer. However.....

    The above assumes the USB drive comes pre-formatted (which it will). If you have to repartition/reformat it for some reason, you'd probably need to borrow a Win7 PC to do it, unless the drive manufacturers have formatting utilities which can be used with XP. Chances are they do.

    If you want to stick to 2TB capacities and under, make note whether the drive is an Advanced Format Drive. Although once again if it's a USB drive it'll no doubt come pre-formatted so you'll only need to worry if for some reason you delete the existing partition and repartition/format it. XP can still partition/format an AFD drive, but it'll need to be aligned properly after it's formatted.

    I've only used WD advanced format drives (I own a bunch of 2TB Green drives) but the process is very easy. Just partition and format the drive with XP as you normally would, then use the "WD Align" utility to align the drive correctly. If you do it immediately after you've partitioned/formatted the drive (before saving any files) the whole alignment process takes about 20 seconds. http://www.wdc.com/global/products/features/?id=7&language=1
    I'd assume other drive manufacturers have a similar utility, or a utility which can be used to correctly format the drive, otherwise if you have easy access to a Vista/Win7 PC.... just use it.

    I'm a little on the fence when it comes to hard drive sizes. The larger the capacity of the drive, the more data you can potentially loose if/when it dies. In my case as I'm still using XP, I've stuck to 2TB drives, as 3TB drives cost pretty much the same per GB at the moment anyway. If you can afford it, consider buying two drives if you don't want to lose your data. It's not 100% foolproof, but if you save everything to two drives instead of one you're far less likely to experience suicide-inducing data loss. I decided to double up on external drives a while back as I got fed up with also burning everything to disc.

    PS Even if you don't have USB 3 ports on your PC, buy a USB 3 external drive, not a USB 2 one. USB 3 is backwards compatible and it's much, much faster. You can literally lapse into a coma waiting for a USB 2 drive to save large files.
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    Originally Posted by hello_hello View Post

    PS Even if you don't have USB 3 ports on your PC, buy a USB 3 external drive, not a USB 2 one. USB 3 is backwards compatible and it's much, much faster. You can literally lapse into a coma waiting for a USB 2 drive to save large files.
    This is really good advice. You may not have USB 3 now, but you will eventually and when you do you'll be glad your drive enclosure supports it. Also, be sure to get an enclosure with its own power supply. Inadequate power to larger drives is more of an issue than you might think. Usually PCs/Macs can provide sufficient power, but hardware devices like DVD/BluRay players usually cannot.
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    And don't forget, get a powered enclosure with a cooling fan inside. For the big fast drives, it can prevent many problems and doesn't cost much more. My bigger drive enclosures have built-in 80mm fans. After lots of running, they don't even feel warm.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 23rd Mar 2014 at 12:13.
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  12. Member Frank-0-Video's Avatar
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    Greetings ....

    Thank you Hello Hello for your advice RE Western Digital drives. The 640-gb drive I have now is a WD Elements type, and it has served me very well two years running now.

    RE, the phrase "Advanced Format Drive" -- does that apply to any Elements drive(s) currently offered by Western Digital?

    Also, thanks to sanlyn RE the advice about an enclosure.

    BTW -- I am also looking at the 500-GB WD Passbook drives, as I do not necessarily want to invest in a bigger drive and have it not work for me.

    Thanx-A-Lot, Frank-0-Video
    Last edited by Frank-0-Video; 18th Oct 2012 at 21:44.
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  13. Originally Posted by Frank-0-Video View Post
    RE, the phrase "Advanced Format Drive" -- does that apply to any Elements drive(s) currently offered by Western Digital?
    I'd only be guessing and WD don't seem to offer specific info regarding which drives are AFD on their site. I think WD generally use their "green" drives inside USB enclosures, but that may not always be the case. The green drives are a little slower than the "blue" or "black" drives, but they're also quieter and run cooler, so heat isn't an issue inside an enclosure.

    I'd guess advanced format would be used generally for drive capacities around 2GB and up. The 2TB WD green internal drives I own are AFD, the 1TB Black drives a bought six months ago are not. If it's an AFD drive I'm sure it'll be specified in the manual.

    Actually thinking about it the above would only apply to their "Desktop" USB drives, not their "Portable" USB drives. I'm pretty sure the portable versions use 2.5" drives internally (laptop drives) which mean while having the advantage of being smaller, and probably don't require any external power supply (they run off USB power), they'll also be slower. Well if they make a USB 3 version of their portable drives it'll be slower than the USB 3 Desktop counterpart. If they're USB 2 they'll probably be the same speed, as USB 2 will be the bottleneck. I don't know anything about the portable drives or whether they're likely to be AFD.
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  14. Member Frank-0-Video's Avatar
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    Greetings Again ....

    I'm also looking at a Toshiba 750gb Canvio drive which works with USB 3.0. It seems to be getting a lot of rave customer reviews, but some of those caution about using a 2.0-connection. Can anyone offer testimony of their own??

    Thanx-A-Lot, Frank-0-Sport
    Last edited by Frank-0-Video; 19th Oct 2012 at 09:15.
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    FYI Seagate Discwizard may be used to partition drives into 2 or more partitions for drives larger larger than 2TB in order to utilize full capacity of larger drives on WinXP systems. There's also a workaround to get Discwizard to work with non Seagate/Maxtor drives. At the error "At least 1 Seagate or Maxtor drive must be present to run this program" simply press and hold the "Alt" key and type "t" then "o" for technical override, and the program runs normally from that point.
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