I mean, the externals have the added cost of the enclosure & power supply, right? But inside, isn't it the same hard drive? And with the internal, it requires quite a bit more work to get it up & running.
Is it that the internal is a more "bulletproof", longer lifespan, etc. hard drive? Because the external seems to be incredibly portable/convenient. Shouldn't convenience/dummy proof cost more?
Well a lot of times you don't know what brand or type hard drive is in the external enclosure. That said I had a 8 TB external drive and when it stopped working I took it apart (it was huge) and it had 4 hard drives and used some kind of striping to make it the full usable size. I removed the drives and repurposed them in several PCs and they worked fine. They were not as fast as the internal drives but they were large disks. I suspect that the board died due to heat.
Edit Also some external drives have boards that disable the ability to install them as internals. I have also ran into that. They all have the same drive ID and are not recognized by the PC. This could also explain the price difference.
[This message has been edited by Jake_Dragon (edited 12-05-2018).]
I mean, the externals have the added cost of the enclosure & power supply, right? But inside, isn't it the same hard drive? And with the internal, it requires quite a bit more work to get it up & running.
Is it that the internal is a more "bulletproof", longer lifespan, etc. hard drive? Because the external seems to be incredibly portable/convenient. Shouldn't convenience/dummy proof cost more?
Why isn't the internal cheaper?
Often no to many point here. May look same inside external drives but often have different speeds and electronics. Even 2.5" drives are different in external units. Many have boards directly plug into USB 2 or 3 so don't need a board to put SATA Drive on USB. They made far less of these vs laptop internal units and that can affect drive price even before adding just a case. Most small USB haven't had PSU in years because USB 2 and 3 provides enough power.
internal drives have many features as external units too like parking the heads on ramps off the disk(s) completely, not on the disk(s) as old drives did.
Internal drives have different Warranties that affect the price. Example: WD Blue is cheaper then WD Black or Red partly for this reason. Blue drives often have less cache, slower spin speed, slower head access time and not programed to work in NAS/Servers w/ RAID. Basically, Blue is cheap for most consumer systems. Black is for "prosumer" types needs higher performance and NAS uses. Red is Enterprise level for Business Servers etc. Red drives are made to spin at full power (often spin @ 10,000+ RPM) 24/7/365 for many years unlike most Blue and Black drives will park and shut down to save power to meet EPA Energy Star etc. (Is/was WD Green w/ slower spin speed to save even more power. Green 3.5" spin at 5400rpm or less.)
------------------ Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. (Jurassic Park)
Originally posted by theogre: Often no to many point here. May look same inside external drives but often have different speeds and electronics. Even 2.5" drives are different in external units. Many have boards directly plug into USB 2 or 3 so don't need a board to put SATA Drive on USB. They made far less of these vs laptop internal units and that can affect drive price even before adding just a case. Most small USB haven't had PSU in years because USB 2 and 3 provides enough power.
internal drives have many features as external units too like parking the heads on ramps off the disk(s) completely, not on the disk(s) as old drives did.
Internal drives have different Warranties that affect the price. Example: WD Blue is cheaper then WD Black or Red partly for this reason. Blue drives often have less cache, slower spin speed, slower head access time and not programed to work in NAS/Servers w/ RAID. Basically, Blue is cheap for most consumer systems. Black is for "prosumer" types needs higher performance and NAS uses. Red is Enterprise level for Business Servers etc. Red drives are made to spin at full power 24/7/365 for many years unlike most Blue and Black drives will park and shut down to save power to meet EPA Energy Star etc. (Is/was WD Green w/ slower spin speed to save even more power. Green 3.5" spin at 5400rpm or less.)
Man, I was so hoping you would respond! Have appreciated your insight for years!
Thanx!
[This message has been edited by Boondawg (edited 12-05-2018).]
I see "Surveillance", "Storage", "Enterprise", etc., drives. I want to store movies indefinitely, and view occasionally. Do you have a recommendation for what is best for long-term storage with occasional viewing?
WD Green and others will do that... Green drives are good for second drives for most users because doesn't eat much power or make heat even at full speed. Even then Most of time most "data drives" on a PC goes to sleep and stay off and only the "C" drive stays on most of time. Even C drive often go to sleep when not use the PC even if PC never sleeps etc. (I have 5 drives in the PC and 4 are sleeping most of time.)
Playing movies music and other things doesn't need a fast spin drive. Even movies on DVD and Bluray, the player spins slow watching the movie vs high speed to use the menu or access data on it in a PC.
Don't bother using SSD. Movies Music and even Pictures can fill any disk you have and doesn't need high speed to play/view. Even old drives w/ old SATA 1 and 2 are fast enough to store those. (Newer cameras easily eat 5MB and more per pic depending on camera settings.) Heck... Most Old "IDE" (PATA) drives are fast enough but new MoBo don't have ports to run them.
If you what permanent storage. Need a backup plan or two... Most HD last for years, many even decades, but any HD or SSD can fail in the blink of a eye. I have a simple NAS w/ 1 drive (Example: WD's "My Cloud" drives) and USB3 unit to make two copies of important data. Most USB3 drives work work on USB2 ports but slow down because of power and data speed. I don't bother using software to auto backup everything. I just have copies for My Doc's etc and even then don't backup crap that won't use again.
Note that All PC hardware likes cooling Not just the CPU and others w/ heat sinks. What to kill a disk? Then run them over 120°F. Even higher the disk will work but often have a very short life. Every internal disk has SMART and report Drive Temp. Access temp report thru many tools like free hwmonitor. Most External Drive may have SMART too but maybe hidden by hardware etc so may not show in monitor software. (Try plugging in external units before running monitors.) In my PC have front fans and 1 blows thru the HD bays... I never see above 110°F on a drive. Right now Max is 90° but room is 60's°F
[This message has been edited by theogre (edited 12-06-2018).]
I have used many different things over the years, but the “best” experience I have had is our current network storage solution- the Drobo.
Just put drives in, turn it on, install the software, let it update its firmware, create a few shares, assign permissions, Toss data onto it, and rest easy. It’s great for those who don’t know how to set up a raid or are tired of one part failing or not working as it should with the other hardware. Or their controller board dies due to heat issues.
I’ve dealt with several different companies’ NAS, and almost all of them had one major issue or another- the main one is that each would work great until it hit the wall- “oops, you can only have 2000 directories “ or the permissions would get screwed up, or the shares would “go away”, the device would drop off the network, or other seriously annoying issues.
The Drobo has been solid, the others I have used at various jobs have been solid for years. There was one low-end model which I believe had issues, not sure.
I’m tremendously happy with it- the WD offerings have been HUGE dissapointments, just awful. “Want to bring them to a field with a baseball bat office space” awful. the other ones were so bad, I don’t even remember their names at this point.
I’m sure they are issues with Drobo , but I have yet to experience them.
The dashboard’s great.
(Hope I never re-visit this thread with a “OMG, Drobo is “the suck”! “ update!)
I have used many different things over the years, but the “best” experience I have had is our current network storage solution- the Drobo.
Man, how I want one! This really is the way to go!
Old drives (I have a closet full of old archived keepers) can be plugged in with the new drives. It spreads it across the newer drives in the enclosure, so when that old drive fails, you still have the original image for retrieval. Lots of benefits to this setup!
Just grab first example above. I have an older WD My Book NAS and no problems. I never bothered w/ streaming from it much but seems to work ok w/ factory install streaming.
Most times my NAS in on w/ drive asleep and be that for years now. Might wake up 1 - 2 times a month.
Many times all Windows PC have issues w/ net shares except from full Win Servers. Like many would share a drive etc from any version Windows then let share machine go to sleep and never get a clue why share cause problems on other machines or worse have Word and others open and loose data because share machine is asleep or off.
Plus Most NAS Printers etc have DHCP and many problems for it. DHCP w/o Revering the IP then Servers Printer and everything else can get a new address w/o warning and all Windows PC often barfs on that. Most SoHo routers have a way to use DHCP Reservation but every router has it's own Admin interface so hard to say how to do in general terms. Nice thing w/ DHCP Reservation is you don't need a static IP setup in each net printer etc.
What? Why? Nutshell version... Mainly because Most Devices have Host Names but you don't have local way to manage that... IOW No Local DNS (or even WINs) on HoSo nets because Most, if not All, SoHo routers just passes DNS from you ISP and don't add local machines. Many devices have UPnP on the local net but often doesn't work. Many Admins have UPnP disabled on everything they can because often doesn't work and big security problem too. So Windows and others have a hard time match Host Names to IP locally and if a device changes IP for any reason, many clients won't look and just flip an error.
WD Black = Speed/high end use, extended warranty. WD Blue = General use. WD Green = Energy saving for backups or other less frequent use. WD Red = Some energy saving, continual use, extended warranty, ideal for RAID.
Man, how I want one! This really is the way to go!
Old drives (I have a closet full of old archived keepers) can be plugged in with the new drives. It spreads it across the newer drives in the enclosure, so when that old drive fails, you still have the original image for retrieval. Lots of benefits to this setup!
Can I afford it? Nope.
But worth every dang penny in my opinion!
THAT'S why I love it - I currently have a few dependable drives in there and I've been going though dozens of old drives and just been slurping them into an "unsorted" folder (subfolders: Drive 1, Drive 2, drive 3, etc.) Then I move the data where it belongs and can finally breate a bit easier. Also I can share the family photo album as "read only" and not hafta worry that things will get deleted...
It's cool to build and run your own NAS, but that's not where I am right now. I've done that kinda stuff... Done a bunch of those silly things... for now I just need my data reliably copied over and *slowly* organized. Then maybe...more with the silly things...
Ebay has some of the older models for about half the price of the new ones...
I would consider the number of drives you currently have(and how many you want to use in the Drobo), and roughly how much storage you want, and check the web for folks reviews/ complaints. You don’t want to spend a few hundred dollars and then discover your Drobo doesn’t work with the newer dashboard versions or something. Also, might not want used hardware to be keeping important data safe.
I have the DN2, the 5 drive version. I bought it at Microcenter and price matched it to Amazon, and had a 5 buck coupon.
had a few drives that were partitioned funky, so I wiped them cia an external prior to inserting them in the Drobo.
I would stick with a new one, I have several flaky old NASes, and wouldn’t want to sell them...
Got it, but unfortunately, the company/manufacturer doesn't support this "Legacy" product. For the DRO4D-D, no dashboard, no firmware updates, no nothing. Even the website links to this model flashes the website homepage, then disappears.
I've been able to gather some assorted files & miscellaneous software, but it's hit or miss on whether any of it'll work. Might have just wasted $65 bucks...
[This message has been edited by Boondawg (edited 12-09-2018).]
Have any more info regarding the exact model you have?
Is it a direct USB or a network connection?
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Model DRO4D-D - bill@longhauser.com - 10-19-2015 08:50 PM
Hello,
I am trying to find a user manual for this model and have an account now and the device is registered. But it looks like nothing at all is available anymore. Any suggestions for accessing the needed support documentation and software? Thanks!
Actually I can be more specific -- I just want to reset this Gen 2 Drobo to factory with RAID 5. And update firmware/format. All data is backed up elsewhere. So basically I want to wipe it and bring it to a current version blank state.
Thanks all!
RE: Model DRO4D-D - don - 10-20-2015 12:22 AM
If the rear of the unit has 2x Firewire 800 port, and 1x USB 2.0 port.. then is a Drobo Gen2. This is a old model.
Performing a RESET on the Drobo will basically reset it to factory default (fresh start) BUT do note that all existing data will be WIPE-OUT! So be sure to back-up any existing data.
You can perform a PIN-Hole reset following the steps listed here:
Performing a RESET on the Drobo will basically reset it to factory default (fresh start) BUT do note that all existing data will be WIPE-OUT! So be sure to back-up any existing data.
You can perform a PIN-Hole reset following the steps listed here:
"If the rear of the unit has 2x Firewire 800 port, and 1x USB 2.0 port.. then is a Drobo Gen2. This is a old model."
That's me.
I have found a lot of the stuff you posted. Still need to check out the firmware link you included, as I found a working Dashboard, just not a firmware update. So this might just be the ticket! Good stuff! Thanx!
And once again, this serves as a valuable lesson to other consumers out there: What ever you buy, where ever you buy it, always choose TheDigitalAlchemist for all your free Technical Support needs! Their motto: "In Your Service A Lifetime Is Never Enough!"
Thanx pal! I ordered a proper power supply for it, as the other one seemed...sketchy. Be here in 2 days.
I'll keep you posted.
I really want the Drobo 5N2.
$549.00 is not incredibly horrible. $384.00 without the network connection (Drobo 5C).
The question is, does Santa think I am worthy of a spot on the good list... I'm screwed.
[This message has been edited by Boondawg (edited 12-12-2018).]
That’s the one I recently got. I think the “dead” one I have is the one you currently have.
I tossed in a few 5T and 4T drives, (I have two-drive failure protection and about 12 T storage). I’ve been slowly sitting through old drives and tossing data around. I’ve been happy with it so far. It’s been working well.
I have a LOT of old data, some is precious, much is useless. Sort like what’s in my brain.
I have a LOT of old data, some is precious, much is useless. Sort like what’s in my brain.
Some of mine is video of every musical guest to appear on the 1972-1980 TV show "The Midnight Special":
1972 Argent John Denver Cass Elliot Harry Chapin David Clayton The Everly Brothers The Isley Brothers Helen Reddy Linda Ronstadt War
1973 Al Green Alvin Lee Anne Murray The Association Badfinger The Bee Gees Ben E. King Billy Paul Billy Preston Black Oak Arkansas Blood, Sweat & Tears Bloodstone Bo Diddley Bobby Day Bobby Darin Bobby Womack Brewer & Shipley The Byrds Canned Heat Charlie Rich Chubby Checker The Coasters Commander Cody The Committee Conway Twitty Country Joe McDonald The Crusaders Curtis Mayfield David Bowie Del Shannon The Del-Vikings Dionne Warwick Dobie Gray The Doobie Brothers Don McLean The Doobie Brothers Doug Kershaw Dr. John Earl Scruggs Edgar Winter Group Electric Light Orchestra Fleetwood Mac Focus Foghat Genesis George Jones Gladys Knight & the Pips The Grass Roots Harry Chapin Helen Reddy Henry Mancini The Hollies Hoyt Axton Ike & Tina Turner The Impressions Jerry Lee Lewis Jim Croce Joe Walsh Johnny Rivers Johnny Mathis Johnny Nash Johnny Paycheck Johnny Winter Jose Feliciano Kenny Rogers and The First Edition King Crimson King Harvest Kris Kristofferson Little Anthony & The Imperials Linda Ronstadt Loggins & Messina Lou Rawls Loretta Lynn Mac Davis Marty Robbins Melissa Manchester The Miracles Monty Python Nitty Gritty Dirt Band The O'Jays Paul Anka Paul Williams Rare Earth The Penguins The Raspberries Ray Charles Rita Coolidge Savoy Brown Seals & Crofts The Searchers Sha Na Na The Shirelles Skeeter Davis The Skyliners Slade The Spinners Smokey Robinson The Staple Singers The Statler Brothers Steely Dan Steve Miller Band The Stylistics Tanya Tucker Taj Mahal Tammy Wynette Todd Rundgren Tom T. Hall Tower of Power T. Rex War Waylon Jennings Wilson Pickett Wishbone Ash Vicki Lawrence
1974 Aerosmith Barry White Bill Withers Bonnie Tyler Brownsville Station Charlie Rich Chic Curtis Mayfield David Essex Dobie Gray Eddie Kendricks Edgar Winter Group Edwin Starr Freddie Prinze Genesis Gladys Knight B.B. King Gladys Knight & the Pips Golden Earring Gordon Lightfoot The Guess Who Hot Tuna Humble Pie Ike & Tina Turner James Brown Kool And The Gang Leo Sayer Loggins and Messina Lynn Anderson The Main Ingredient Maria Muldaur Marvin Gaye Montrose Neil Sedaka The New York Dolls The O'Jays Ohio Players Olivia Newton-John The Spinners Redbone Robert Palmer Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan Sly & the Family Stone The Stylistics Todd Rundgren War
1975 ABBA Aretha Franklin Ray Charles Barry Manilow The Bee Gees Captain & Tennille Dolly Parton Earth Wind and Fire Electric Light Orchestra Frankie Valli Fleetwood Mac Glen Campbell Helen Reddy The Hollies KC and the Sunshine Band KISS Kraftwerk Labelle Leo Sayer Linda Ronstadt Minnie Riperton Natalie Cole Neil Sedaka Ohio Players Olivia Newton-John Orleans Peter Frampton Rod Stewart Roxy Music Todd Rundgren
1976 Aretha Franklin Bill Haley & His Comets Diana Ross - "Love Hangover" Donna Summer Electric Light Orchestra Elton John Electric Light Orchestra England Dan and John Ford Coley Eric Carmen Fleetwood Mac Gary Wright George Benson Heart Helen Reddy Hot Chocolate Janis Ian Joan Baez LaBelle Minnie Riperton The Miracles Michael Murphey Peter Frampton Ray Charles Spinners Starbuck Tom Jones Walter Murphy and The Big Apple Band
1977 Andrew Gold Andy Gibb Bonnie Raitt Bread Dave Mason Eddie Rabbit Electric Light Orchestra Emmylou Harris The Emotions James Brown Jennifer Warnes Johnny Rivers Journey Leo Sayer Little Feat Lou Rawls Manfred Mann's Earth Band Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis, Jr. Marvin Gaye Player Sanford-Townsend Band Thelma Houston Van Morrison Weather Report
1978 AC/DC Aerosmith Ambrosia Andy Gibb Billy Preston The Cars Cheap Trick Chic Chuck Mangione Crystal Gayle Dan Hill David Bowie Dolly Parton Donna Summer Eddie Money Electric Light Orchestra The Emotions Evelyn Champagne King Exile Four Tops George Benson Hall & Oates KC and the Sunshine Band Leo Sayer Nick Lowe Peaches & Herb Player REO Speedwagon Rick James Robert Palmer Ronnie Montrose Starland Vocal Band Sylvester Ted Nugent The O'Jays Sammy Hagar Thin Lizzy Todd Rundgren Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers The Trammps Village People Yvonne Elliman
1979 Alice Cooper Amii Stewart The Babys The Beach Boys Bonnie Pointer Blondie The Cars The Charlie Daniels Band The Commodores Crystal Gayle Dolly Parton Gloria Gaynor Grace Jones Journey KC and the Sunshine Band Minnie Riperton Nick Gilder Peaches & Herb The Pointer Sisters Rick James Rupert Holmes The Three Degrees The Jacksons Tina Turner Todd Rundgren Village People
1980 America Billy Preston Christopher Cross David Bowie Eddie Rabbitt Frankie Valli & Commodores Gladys Knight & the Pips Hall & Oates Leo Sayer Olivia Newton-John Randy Jones REO Speedwagon Roy Orbison The Spinners Dr. Hook Prince
Plugged in the brand new power supply, nothing. No lit power light on the Drobo.
Look for a power switch on Drobo, nothing. Read manual, sez it powers up when you plug it in.
Good connections, light on power supply dimly lit. Unplug power supply from back of Drobo, light on power supply gets brighter. Plug back in, gets dim.
Feels like a cooked board, to me.
Lol! So much for Christmas. That dudes naughty/nice list is a mo'fo'!
That wonderful Wife of mine got me a late Christmas present based on the fact she knew I got ripped-off on that OfferUp deal!:
Seagate Expansion 8TB Desktop External Hard Drive USB 3.0
So I guess now I can decide if I want to archive to it as is, take it apart and hard mount it into my system, or use it hot-swappable in the Drobo). "Shucking" the enclosure is pretty straight-forward. The drive inside is probably a white label, but sometimes they've been known to be a Blue label!
A Video On How To Remove The Enclosure For Internal Use:
P.S. Before I even hook it up i've already used up a projected 6TB!
[This message has been edited by Boondawg (edited 12-31-2018).]
I tortured-tested this thing every way possible, and it held on to every bit of digital information I had stored on it. I even did things the manufacturer said to never do*, and it still never failed to retain all the files it started with.
However, a note should be made about how it formats the hard drives. I have a Thermaltake BlacX External Hard Drive Docking Station (I even have the windowed WD Raptor X 150 GB hard drive) that I have been using to switch between all the archive drives I have:
I wanted to see how the Drobo spread the files across the 3 drives (the Drobo Dashboard has no option to see the actual files, only the volume) so I plugged one of the drives into the BlacX. Nothing happened. Like the drive wasn't even there.
So, the only way to ever access the information stored on the Drobo drives, is with the Drobo. You cannot just plug one (or all) of the drives into a computer and retrieve all the files you have stored on it through the Drobo. Without the Drobo, all files are lost.
To get the drive back to where you can even use it in a computer, you need to plug it in to your computer (or docking station) and go to:
Click Start>Computer Management>Disk Management.
This will display all of your drives. The new one should have a black bar above it instead of a blue one. And it should be described as Unallocated. Right-click that drive, select New Simple Volume, and follow the wizard.
You now have your drive back.
* I pulled drives while it was in "protected mode" transferring files, I killed power mid-transfer, I even purposely blue-screened the computer mid-transfer.
[This message has been edited by Boondawg (edited 01-08-2019).]
Very fast drives, not ideal for storage (more for gaming), but they are the newest from what I have available. I'm going to run these in the Drobo and then use it as a movie server.
My computer OS will run off of my internal 120GB SSD, my productivity programs will run off my internal 1TB drive, & my gaming & music will run off my internal 2TB drive. And the 9TB Drobo will keep my movie collection nice & safe!
And then everything will be archived (and regularly updated) to the Seagate 8TB Expansion external hard drive and powered down, as a redundancy.
I would say "I ain't never gonna' need any more storage space in my lifetime.", but I already said that when I got my first 40MB hard drive some years back!
* 9TB total is more space than I need, but not all of the space is usable, as part of it is reserved for automatic data protection in case a drive fails:
[This message has been edited by Boondawg (edited 01-09-2019).]
Got the "Seagate Expansion 8TB Desktop External Hard Drive" up and running. Actually, I got the "Seagate Expansion 7.27TB Desktop External Hard Drive" up and running.
I knew there would be a slight discrepancy, but dang!!
I guess the bigger the drive, the bigger the discrepancy. Here's to laughter being the best medicine!
Got the "Seagate Expansion 8TB Desktop External Hard Drive" up and running. Actually, I got the "Seagate Expansion 7.27TB Desktop External Hard Drive" up and running.
I knew there would be a slight discrepancy, but dang!!
I guess the bigger the drive, the bigger the discrepancy. Here's to laughter being the best medicine!
If C: drive is SSD... Being tight on free space can hurt life time and performance sooner. SSD is not like HD that doesn't care about writing to same areas millions of times. SSD uses all Free Space to Wear Level all data written to it. Example: You have a Doc you edit often then SSD often saves that to any Free Space, Not the same sectors like old HD.
Worse is C: drive gets Thousands to Millions of Temp Files written then deleted even few hours as you browse the internet etc. Deleted file's space is Not available right after on an SSD. Wear Leveling, Over Provisioning ("Spare" memory hidden from OS or you) and Trim helps but SSD memory "sectors" will still die sooner w/o a lot of Free Space.
If C: drive is SSD... Being tight on free space can hurt life time and performance sooner. SSD is not like HD that doesn't care about writing to same areas millions of times. SSD uses all Free Space to Wear Level all data written to it. Example: You have a Doc you edit often then SSD often saves that to any Free Space, Not the same sectors like old HD.
Worse is C: drive gets Thousands to Millions of Temp Files written then deleted even few hours as you browse the internet etc. Deleted file's space is Not available right after on an SSD. Wear Leveling, Over Provisioning ("Spare" memory hidden from OS or you) and Trim helps but SSD memory "sectors" will still die sooner w/o a lot of Free Space.
Great information! Thanx!
I think I need to in stall a new, larger, boot SSD.
