32 GB memory stick

[Ed Cryer]

From the part of Char's post you didn't quote:
"When I say tossed out, I mean I dropped off a big box of stuff at a
local computer shop. One person's junk is another's treasure."

But I agree about 1 TB to 500 GB being too small to be of use.

Maybe I need to start recording more video or something

How to fill up unused space on HDs.

1. Rip lots of audio CDs to 392Kbs MP3 format or FLAC.
2. Copy all video DVDs, convert them to other formats for iPad and the like.
3. Collect pictures from all over the Net.
4. Never empty caches and the Recycle Bin.
5. Retain lots & lots of backups and system images.
6. Convert all your old VCRs to digital.
7. Install a TV card, record everything.
8. Get a digital camera, visit a new town every weekend, take zillions
of pics in best quality format, upload to the HD.


And if that doesn't work, do what my sister does with her laptop. I'm
not too sure just how she does it but she regularly fills up the HD with
Skype conversations.

Ed

 

[Ken Blake]

From the part of Char's post you didn't quote:
"When I say tossed out, I mean I dropped off a big box of stuff at a
local computer shop. One person's junk is another's treasure."

Thanks. Not only didn't I quote it, I didn't even see it. I read too
fast.

 

[Ken Blake]

Meaning I agree with Ken...

Thanks for the clarification. It wasn't clear what you meant.

 

[Ken Blake]

What I meant was, a typical motherboard only has 4-8 SATA ports unless
you add a controller card.

Yes, but a controller card is inexpensive and easy to add. Or you can
put drives in external cases.

For my own systems, I can't see wasting a
precious (because they're so limited in number) port on a small drive.
My current minimum usable size is 2TB, and I tend to fill them
quickly.

What you call "small" is very different from what most of us call
"small."

And if you fill 2TB drives quickly, you are very unusual. You must
have lots of videos or large photo files.

I'm very different; I have three drives here:

1. A 120GB SSD, about half full

2. A 650GB HD, a little less than half full

2. A 650GB HD, almost empty

It's a total of about 400GB.

I don't have anything smaller installed at the moment in any
of my systems. I'm sure I'll look back at this moment a few years from
now and wonder what I was doing messing around with those tiny 2TB
drives, but that's how it goes.

Unquestionably, that's how it goes. We'll all be doing something
similar, even if the numbers are a little different.

 

[Char Jackson]

Yes, but a controller card is inexpensive and easy to add. Or you can
put drives in external cases.

The controller I use costs $116 (shipped) from Newegg.
<http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101358>
I cringe a bit at calling it inexpensive. There are certainly plenty
of less expensive controllers, but none that I've found that offer 8
SATA ports like this one.

And since I've exhausted both the 8 Mobo SATA ports as well as the 8
SATA ports made available by the add-on controller, the rest of the
drives are either in external cases or installed in networked
computers and shared so that they can be used by the main system.

 

[Char Jackson]

In message <[email protected]>, Char Jackson

What do you fill them quickly _with_? Uncompressed HD video perhaps?

Someone else made a list of possible suspects in this thread. I
suspect it would be slightly different for everyone.

And when you _have_ filled them, what do you do with them: unplug them
and archive them?

Um, no, that would make them inaccessible.

 

[Stephen Wolstenholme]

Someone else made a list of possible suspects in this thread. I
suspect it would be slightly different for everyone.

The difference is that some people are junk collectors

Steve

--
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[Ken Blake]

The controller I use costs $116 (shipped) from Newegg.
<http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101358>
I cringe a bit at calling it inexpensive. There are certainly plenty
of less expensive controllers, but none that I've found that offer 8
SATA ports like this one.

No, I don't call that inexpensive either. I've bought a SATA
controller only once, recently, to add two 1.5TB SATA drives to my WHS
machine (it had been IDE only before I added the controller), and it
was inexpensive. It was 4 ports and I paid something around $20 for it
from Amazon.com.

And since I've exhausted both the 8 Mobo SATA ports as well as the 8
SATA ports made available by the add-on controller,

16 ports exhausted? You have many more drives on a single computer
than the enormous majority of computer owners. Including CD/DVD
drives, 16 drives is more than I have on *all* the computers in my
house put together--4 on my computer, 2 on my wife's, 4 on the WHS
machine, 2 on a laptop and 1 on the netbook. That's a total of 13.

 

[Paul]

The controller I use costs $116 (shipped) from Newegg.
<http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101358>
I cringe a bit at calling it inexpensive. There are certainly plenty
of less expensive controllers, but none that I've found that offer 8
SATA ports like this one.

And since I've exhausted both the 8 Mobo SATA ports as well as the 8
SATA ports made available by the add-on controller, the rest of the
drives are either in external cases or installed in networked
computers and shared so that they can be used by the main system.

For capacity (but not necessarily speedy) expansion, you can
use port multiplier boxes. They're still too expensive ($20 per port),
but offer a way to expand if you're run out of other, practical options.
You need the right kind of SATA port to work with it as well, and
initially these might have been sold with a SIL3132 based card.
(The SIL3132 software, supports way more disks than the two ports
on the chip alone would suggest.)

http://www.sataport.com/

AFAIK, SATA addressing allows a fanout of 15, while the boxes (and the chip
inside) is limited to five disks. I have no idea whether they can be
cascaded or not. And at $100 a box, I doubt we'll ever find out.
I still haven't run into someone who owns one.

Silicon Image also has 1:2 chips, which apparently can be cascaded, because
they don't use port multiplier protocol. The chip does an "emulation" to hide
the two drives on the other side. Those chips are sometimes used in dual drive
enclosures with a single ESATA port. The chips have also been used on some
Asus motherboards from several years ago, and used that way, are quite
annoying.

Paul

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <[email protected]>, Char Jackson

My current minimum usable size is 2TB, and I tend to fill them
quickly. I don't have anything smaller installed at the moment in any

[]
What do you fill them quickly _with_? Uncompressed HD video perhaps?

Someone else made a list of possible suspects in this thread. I
suspect it would be slightly different for everyone.

Which is it in your case?

Um, no, that would make them inaccessible.

So what _do_ you do?

 

[Char Jackson]

For capacity (but not necessarily speedy) expansion, you can
use port multiplier boxes. They're still too expensive ($20 per port),
but offer a way to expand if you're run out of other, practical options.

<snip good info>

Thanks, Paul. The way I'm headed is to just build a second server one
of these days. My current server can only properly mount 15 3.5"
drives, so the 16th drive is a 2.5" unit (not SSD) mounted in a PCI
slot. I'm not only out of SATA ports on that system, I'm also out of
places to install more internal drives. I have 4 external drives
connected at the moment via USB, but that's slow and ugly and
therefore only a temp solution until I shake off enough laziness to
build a second system. At that point it will also make sense to rack
both of them properly.

 

[Char Jackson]

In message <[email protected]>, Char Jackson

My current minimum usable size is 2TB, and I tend to fill them
quickly. I don't have anything smaller installed at the moment in any []
What do you fill them quickly _with_? Uncompressed HD video perhaps?

Someone else made a list of possible suspects in this thread. I
suspect it would be slightly different for everyone.

Which is it in your case?

Video is the biggest space hog.

So what _do_ you do?

I make sure they stay accessible, of course. The server has 16
internal drives and 4 external drives at the moment, so those are
obviously online and available. A half dozen more drives are currently
installed in other systems on the LAN and shared, so in effect they
are accessible, too. The only drive that's usually offline is one that
contains some full image backups, but most of the backups are done to
other drives that are always available.

Is that pretty much what you do?

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

On Sat, 5 Nov 2011 21:55:40 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"


Video is the biggest space hog.


I make sure they stay accessible, of course. The server has 16
internal drives and 4 external drives at the moment, so those are
obviously online and available. A half dozen more drives are currently
installed in other systems on the LAN and shared, so in effect they
are accessible, too. The only drive that's usually offline is one that
contains some full image backups, but most of the backups are done to
other drives that are always available.

Is that pretty much what you do?

(-:! Here I have a 30G C: partition, which is about half full, and a
113G D: partition, 43.2G used - and those are after having had this PC
for some time - a few years. (Backups are to optical discs.)

When do you get the opportunity to _look at_ all that video? You seem to
spend a fair amount of time in this newsgroup, as do I, and I assume you
have other hobbies - and presumably a job, to fund all that hardware! -
so ...

[Note: I am _not_ _criticising_; whatever people choose to do with their
time and money, so long as it doesn't infringe on others, is - more or
less - OK by me. I can't see your activities affecting others, other
than keeping up the local cost of disc drives (-:! I'm just wondering
_why_ you do what you do. "Because I can" is a perfectly valid answer as
far as I'm concerned!]

 

[Stewart]

http://tinyurl.com/5t8c2zl

I bought one, and it works; or at least it has the once that I've
used it to backup my personal files.

Where's it all going to end? It's not that long ago that I bought a
1TB hard drive, and now they're up to 3TB (And no, don't tell me if
by the time you read this they've got even bigger).

Ed

I've had a 64gb USB stick for almost 3 years now. Handy little
sucker....

 

[Ed Cryer]

I've had a 64gb USB stick for almost 3 years now. Handy little
sucker....

That must have cost the earth at the time!
Look at this now;
http://tinyurl.com/c7yyao9

I paid 30 pound sterling for my 32GB one last week. It strikes me that
it would be absolutely reckless, self-indulgent luxury to get a 64GB one
now, let alone at whatever price you paid 3 years back.
Portable HDs are far, far more economically viable for data in quantity.

Just an opinion, but I still haven't won the Lottery yet.

Ed

 

[Ken Blake]

<snip good info>

Thanks, Paul. The way I'm headed is to just build a second server one
of these days. My current server can only properly mount 15 3.5"
drives, so the 16th drive is a 2.5" unit (not SSD) mounted in a PCI
slot. I'm not only out of SATA ports on that system, I'm also out of
places to install more internal drives.

That was going to be my next question--how do you have room for so
many drives. You have a *big* case!

 

[Stephen Wolstenholme]

That was going to be my next question--how do you have room for so
many drives. You have a *big* case!

Hundreds of drives can be installed in 19" racks. The company I worked
for until I retired had lots of racks with lots of shelves with
drawers full of drives. Everything was triplicated.

Steve

--
Neural network software applications, help and support.

Neural Network Software. www.npsl1.com
EasyNN-plus. Neural Networks plus. www.easynn.com
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[Dave \Crash\ Dummy]

Hundreds of drives can be installed in 19" racks. The company I
worked for until I retired had lots of racks with lots of shelves
with drawers full of drives. Everything was triplicated.

I infer that all 16 drives are in a single case, but that is not
unreasonable if the case is built for it. Normal drives can be stacked
on one inch centers.

 

[Stephen Wolstenholme]

I infer that all 16 drives are in a single case, but that is not
unreasonable if the case is built for it. Normal drives can be stacked
on one inch centers.

Yes, I was indirectly pointing out that there can be problems putting
all drives in one case. It's convenient to put all the storage in one
place but far from disaster proof. In these days all storage doesn't
even need to be in the same country!

Steve

--
Neural network software applications, help and support.

Neural Network Software. www.npsl1.com
EasyNN-plus. Neural Networks plus. www.easynn.com
SwingNN. Forecast with Neural Networks. www.swingnn.com
JustNN. Just Neural Networks. www.justnn.com

 

[Ken Blake]

Hundreds of drives can be installed in 19" racks. The company I worked
for until I retired had lots of racks with lots of shelves with
drawers full of drives. Everything was triplicated.

Yes, of course; that's certainly possible. However we are not talking
about a company here. This is an individual, and individuals very
seldom have rack-mounted systems.