In the past few weeks, I’ve gained 505GB of storage. Yay!
- 4GB: Kingston DataTraveler USB key ($49)
- 1GB: Orange iPod shuffle ($84)
- 500GB: I/OMagic GigaBank external hard drive ($149)
At first, I thought the external drive wasn’t compatible with OS X because I just couldn’t mount the drive. It worked after I formatted it to HFS+ rather than the default FAT32, so I did a little digging to see what the problem was. It turns out that OS X can’t read FAT32 filesystems larger than 137GB, so the 500GB drive was obviously not going to work. I wouldn’t mind simply leaving the entire drive in HFS+, except it means that it wouldn’t work on Windows or Linux without extra software.
So, I decided to partition it up:
- 100GB FAT32: for Windows/Linux compatibility
- 80GB HFS+: for backups of my PowerBook
- 320GB HFS+: for general storage
I figure this is the best solution, as it still gives me lots of room for storage while maintaining full OS compatibility. I’ve got tons of room to store all my videos now! It kinda makes me wish I didn’t delete so much stuff though.
I hate FAT32’s file size restriction [4 GBs] as I cannot back-up anything larger than that to disk.
As for compatibility, HFS+ can be dealt with on Windows via MacDrive and on Linux via the tools they have. Only thing I had problems with was writing to HFS+ over NFS [I was sharing the drive off my Linux box and trying to write to it with my Mac] but otherwise, nothing major.
But - I envy you. =) If not anything else, I don’t have a dedicated drive for my backups [gasp!]
It’s true, I could get MacDrive to use HFS+ on Windows, except I’d need to remember to keep a copy of it around whenever I need to transfer something to a friend’s Windows box.
Also, I don’t think that the HFS+ module is built into most Linux kernels (I could be wrong about this) and building kernel modules on any Linux box I wanted to transfer files to would be a bit of a pain.
I figure that I never need to transfer more than 100GB of data to a Windows/Linux machine at any given time, so I should probably be okay. It’s true that the 4GB file size limit is crappy though …
Haha, yeah, I’ve been lucky and have never suffered a system crash before, but I figure I should probably start backing up now before it’s too late! The 500GB drive is really quite a steal, if you’ve got a bit of spare cash, it may be a good investment.
I’ve got a promise from a friend to bring me up a 2.5″ drive from China so that I can really use it in ‘portable’ mode with my 40GB iBook. I don’t want to always be dependent on power outlets - and I can’t store all tens of GBs of sound banks, samples and loops on my internal.
And you’re right with all the above, I was mostly thinking of sharing across a mixed home network. My 350 drive is split down the middle in FAT32 [music partition, dangerously close to being full] and ext2 for ‘misc’ stuff. So I shouldn’t be that high and mighty against FAT32. I just wish more people would actually support ZFS, that’s supposed to be the next big thing.
As for crashes, never had a really bad one - but I have to take my iBook into servicing and being the paranoid type I want to back it up and wipe it clean [35-pass Gutmann delete.] Yeah, uber-paranoid-geek =)
Cheers!
“HTTP Error 505 - HTTP version not supported”
But I guess this is more like HTTP Error 413:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/ladies/6792/
p.s. Hi Alex! Enjoying MDA?
Ah, black HAS always been my favourite colour =P
@San: would this be Mr. Benjamin’s S.O. [apologies if not, first thing that popped to mind]
At any rate, yes, I am quite enjoying the large amounts of unsupervised work I do for’em =) Don’t know if Stew’s blog falls under the “usual assignments” category though…
I wanted to say, I guess I know where your huge spending is coming form you techy you! XP
hehe, sorry I bailed on msn again. It’s so strange, I just couldn’t msg you! BTW that song was awesome! At first I was wondering who sang it but then I heard your voice more clearly! It’s really good Stewie!!! You are such a great singer! See what being in music and in those plays do to you! If only I could excel that much! XP