Category: storage

I was reading through EverythingUSB when I came across a news item on the introduction of the FlashDisc from Memorex. Flash drives can be handy little devices, but these FlashDiscs come in capacities of 16 MB or up to 32 MB. The non-usefulness of of a flash drive that small was well summarized by the blurb on EverythingUSB:

If you are not excited by the prospect of a flash based USB drive sporting 32 MB of data storage, then you are like me and actually expect a flash drive to hold some data. 32 MB?! That's like spending $3 to buy the winning lotto ticket and then finding out the jackpot was only $5. […]

I've been pondering buying a flash drive — I’d probably buy a Lexar JumpDrive Mercury if they were selling them yet — but I’m not sure what good a 32 MB drive would be. (At that size, the files would be small enough to transfer quickly of ftp, eh?)

As mentioned on Slashdot, Maxtor is releasing new drives with 80 GB platters. With larger platters, that should mean for faster drives.

And, in an example of the I-just-washed-my-car-and-now-it’s-raining effect, I just bought a new hard drive last week (it arrived yesterday). But, I don’t feel so bad, especially as it looks that Maxtor is decreasing its warranty from the industry-standard three-years down to one.

Some people in the Slashdot comments were dissing Maxtor, but I disagree. Sure, Maxtor was a budget drive-maker 7 to 10 years ago. But, they turned themselves around in the late-90s. I bought their first 7200 rpm IDE drive (a whopping 10.2 GB at the time) in 1999, and it has worked flawlessly ever since.

So, yeah, I’d buy Maxtor again. But, in this case — at least at the time I made the purchase — Western Digital offered superior performance.

My 4x CDR drive has been broken for some time now (several months, at least). And, now that I have the means, I’d like to replace it.

I have my eye on Plextor drives, as they have an excellent reputation. Normally, I’d get SCSI for sure, but Plextor’s IDE drives are actually faster (12x for SCSI vs 40x for IDE). And, with the buffer-underrun prevention technologies today, IDE is not such a disadvantage that it used to be.

So, back to Plextor. They have a 40x CDR drive (IDE), but also a 20x CDR drive that can also read DVDs (IDE). I already have a DVD drive in my box, but DVD-read capability could still be handy for when I build my new box, as I would likely use a few of the parts from my current box. On the other hand, the “non-DVD” drive can write at 40x, which is twice as fast as the other drive (in due fairness, it only works out to a 3-minute burn vs a 4-minute burn).

At this point, I’m leaning a bit towards the 20x CDR / 12x DVD-read drive, if only for longevity :-/. Any suggestions on which I should get?

Nice, Plextor now has a 40/12/40 drive: 40X CD-R, 12X CD-RW, 40X max CD-ROM. And, it’s USB2, of all things. Ever since my Yamaha 4X SCSI died a couple weeks ago, I’ve been keeping an eye open for a replacement, and this might just be it :).