As I´ve mentioned elsewhere I´m getting a new computer, and right now I´m designing a new desk for it (that´s one of the things I do at one of my jobs, furniture design); and I was wondering about installing the PC case in the back, bellow the desk out of sight and putting the CD and DVD (and 3.5" disk too) drives at a more accesible location, that way I don´t get a large case eating up space on the desk, and the noise level would be lower (3 or 4 fans at 3 AM can be very, very unnerving)
So, is there any problem with that? I mean, wouldn´t be a problem with EM interference on the longer drive cables or something?
Now that I think of it I´d need some USB extensions too…
You can’t do it with standard IDE CD/DVD drives or 3.5" floppy disks. There are severe restrictions on the length of the cables for these drives. You can make longer cables but you will find that they work poorly, if at all.
You need to use something like USB, Firewire, or SCSI if you want long cables that actually work properly.
Is the computer for home or work? If you don’t want a PC case in your way, you have basically two options: an external CD drive (expensive), or an SFF (small form factor) case. Shuttle is perhaps the market leader in that segment, and you can buy systems using their components online or, I believe, from Best Buy. I built a machine for my parents using a SFF case, and I’m quite satisfied with the results.
I’d say ignore the existing CD and floppy drives in the system and use an external CD-RW/DVD drive on a daily basis. You can also get an external USB floppy drive (for about $50), but I use floppy discs so rarely that I almost never need it. I think you could crawl behind the desks for the few times you do need it.
Yes. IDE cables are very sensitive to cable length. If the cables that came with the motherboard are too short, you have a problem. 18" (457mm) is the official maximum length for reliable operation.
Use a firewire connection. I bought an external enclose for CD/DVD/HDs that was USB 2 and slapped a hard drive in it, and instantly was reminded what a 28.8K internet connection was like. The transfer rates from an internal HD to the external one were glacial at best. USB 2 is 480 MPS and Firewire 2 is about double that (and yes, I did have it plugged into a USB 2 port on my machine).
by a usb2/firewire external 5.25 enclosure and run the usb cable back to the machine. The connection should be more then sufficient for disk drives.
as for tuckerfan, I have no idea what his definition of glacial is, but I have a 2.5 harddrive in an usb 2.0 enclosure and transfer rates are about 1/2 - 1 gig / minute. Thats plenty fast for me. It’s not internal hd to internal hd, but it works pretty fast for anything i’m going to use an external HD for.
Better yet, ditch the case altogether and spider your components through the desk.
Sounds like my old USB 1.1 connection. You sure you have usb 2.0?
Also theres usb 2.0 FULL Speed and usb 2.0 MAX speed. I can’t remember which is which, but one of them is really just usb 1.1 renamed, the other is the true 480 mbs/sec.
Umm… just so you don’t get disappointed, external drives are neat, and I use them regularly, but most external CDs, and about about half of external hard drives use small cooling fans in the enclosure chassis that are every bit as loud as case fans. You can easily find external USB/Firewire hard drives that are fanless (Western Digital makes some very nice units). I dont know about fanless USB external CD drives. IIRC I think Iomega made some USB slimline CDRWs a while ago that did not have a fan.
You do have a problem them. My USB 2.0 HP 3.16 Ghz ZD7000 notebook and 260 gig USB 2.0 7100 RPM WD combo external drive moves 3900 files comprising 2.17 gigs in approx 18-20 minutes from he notebook to the external drive just using basic copy>paste in XP.
… Never mind - I just saw that you’re talking about a 2.5" drive in an external enclosure. 2.5 drives are bit pokey and most are running at 4200 PRM vs 7200 for newer 3.5 externals. They also tend to have tiny buffers that are easily swamped by large individual files. I imagine your 400 meg file brings it to it’s knees. It’s not the USB 2.0 in your case, it’s just the drive.
Well… then you do have a problem. A USB 2.0 to USB 2.0 drive to drive connection usually moves (real world) at much faster speed than your’re experiencing per my initial description. Also Firewire’s theoretical max is is around 400 MPS and USB 2.0’s is 480 MPS .
Firewire 2, though I think is much faster. And thanks to your link, I think I see what my problem was. IIRC, I had the drive connected to a USB 2 hub, and not straight into the USB 2 port on my machine.
Bolding mine. Actually most laptop drives have 16-32 meg buffers, this is 2-4x the size of performance harddrives(8 megs) and 8x-16x of plainjane 3.5 drives(2 megs). This is done in order to save power.
tuckerfan
hows that harddrive working for your friend?
oh, check the box for your usb 2.0 card and hub. As I said before, there is a difference between usb 2.0 fullspeed and usb 2.0 max speed.
Actually in perusing the Newegg notebook drive listings as a reasonably accurate indicator of retail drives, most notebook drives (about 50%) in the 20-30 gig cohort only have 2 meg buffers. The newer large, higher performance notebook 40 and 60 gig drives do have 8 and 16 meg buffers, but are mainly for the newer big drives.
I do think you for the heads up re the 8-16 meg buffers. I di not realize some notebook drives were using extra-large buffers of this size.