[ale] My Next Computer

[Emil P. Man]

Pete Hardie wrote:

>On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 12:44:16 -0500, Greg Freemyer
><greg.freemyer at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Hey Pete,
>> Warning to all, FAT32 in the 2.4 kernels from SUSE 8.1 were buggy if
>>you went past 137 GB.  (I don't know if that is a device, or partition
>>issue.  I tested a 250GB disk with a single 250GB partition.  Worked
>>fine until I put too much data on it.)
>>
>>The 2.6 kernel from SUSE 9.2 seems to work fine in my testing.
>>    
>>
>
>I tend to use RedHat, but I'll look for the issue anyway.
>
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>  
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>>I have one machine with a new Intel P4 MB.  It has a boot from USB
>>entry in the bios.  If I have it enabled, the boot process stops if I
>>have a thumb-drive in the USB port.  (i.e. The thumb-drive appears to
>>be the preferred boot media.)
>>
>>I have not tried putting a MBR, etc. on the thumb drive, but I assume
>>it would work.
>>    
>>
>
>Promising news!
>
>  
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>>A bigger issue is that USB 2.0 is slow compared with ATA, and SATA
>>will be even faster, so why tie yourself to such a slow technology:
>>
>>    usb 2.0 = 480 mbit/sec = 50 MB/sec = slow
>>    ATA/100 = 100 MB/sec = okay, and very common
>>    ATA/133 = 133 MB/sec = good, but the end of the PATA line
>>    SATA/150 = 150 MB/sec = Today's starting point for SATA performance.
>>    SATA/600 = 600 MB/sec = the potential future of SATA drives
>>
>>Admittedly, all of the above are theoretical burst speeds, but
>>real-world speeds are a function of the above.
>>    
>>
>
>Good point, and one to consider.  I'm not sure how much effect this
>will have on my home use machine - if I can cut the cost of the
>upgrade to mobo+video+RAM, I moght be able to fill the board with RAM
>and cut the amount of swapping enough to make it reasonable.
>
>  
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>>What we do for all of our "movable" PATA drives is use a disk carrier.
>> The ICY-Dock carriers are about $50 each.  With them I can quickly
>>move disks around and I still get the native PATA speed.  Since
>>hot-swap is not supported on most ATA controllers, we do power down
>>the PCs during disk moves.
>>
>>SATA cables can be upto 1 meter long, but I don't know if you can get
>>external SATA boxes similar to the USB-2 external boxes?
>>    
>>
>
>I'm clueless about SATA - does it allow hot-swapping?
>
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>  
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Depending on the drive, and on the controller, yes hot-swapping is 
possible...