Re: HD Backup

["Bryan J. Smith" <b.j.smith@ieee.org>]

On Sat, 2005-12-31 at 19:27 -0600, Robert G. (Doc) Savage wrote:
> If raw capacity in a small package interests you, then consider a 500GB
> EIDE drive

<anal note/not a big deal/just FYI>
EIDE is a Western Digital trademark, and really a legacy one -- pre-
UltraDMA modes.  The modern term is ATA drive.
</anal node>

> in an external USB2 enclosure. I recently picked up a Hitachi
> 7K500 drive

Just know that the Hitachi 500GB is a 5-platter drive.  The last 1" ATA
hard drive to sport 5-platters was the IBM Deskstar 75GXP.  ;->

The Seagate 7200.9 500GB uses 4-platters.

> Regarding FAT32, my 500G drive is formatted with NTFS so I can move
> stuff to/from Windows systems and requires Paragon's NTFS for Linux
> read/write driver (http://www.ntfs-linux.com/). After overcoming an
> early problem which Paragon fixed straight away, it now works perfectly.
> I do have to recompile every time I upgrade the kernel (just like
> VMware), but a script makes that almost trivial.

NTFS was _never_ designed for removable media.

There are Security ID (SID) and other ties to the Registry or Domain
Security Accounts Manager (SAM) of each NT system.  You could eventually
get a corrupted filesystem as a result of modification by files from one
system by another -- when they are non-domain workstations, or the files
are either owned by accounts not in the domain, or two different domains
(without a trust).

The workaround for this is to use Dynamic Discs (Logical Disk Manager,
LDM, Disk Label -- which appears as a slice/partition in a Basic Disc,
legacy DOS/BIOS partition table, of type 42h), which stores some basic
SID info outside the filesystem.  Of course, you can still get
permission loss as a result, but it will prevent you from getting a
corrupted filesystem.  Of course LDM disk labels can act weird when
moved across systems, because Microsoft never supported them for
removable media (let alone not portable systems like notebooks either).

I typically recommend formatting an external disk with Universal Device
Format (UDF) which is supported by just about every modern platform (I'd
format it UDF under Linux).  Although I've never tried it on a 500GB
volume, typically just sub-100GB ones.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org
http://thebs413.blogspot.com
------------------------------------------
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