External USB hard disk questions

[FragrantHead]

Has anyone used an external USB2-based hard disk in general and with the X300 in particular?

Is the disk visible to DOS-based backup and disk-cloning applications, such as Ghost?

Could you boot from such a disk, if you wanted to?

What sort of real-life transfer speeds are you getting?

I am currently using the Ultrabay cradle with my old T30, which gives real-life transfer speeds in excess of 1GB per minute with Ghost under DOS, e.g. it will back up a full 60GB to 100GB disk in about an hour. Would an external USB solution perform as well?

By the way, I know flash transfer rates are generally not up to the raw transfer speeds of conventional disks yet, but that's another discussion. If it's possible to divorce the issue, then for the purpose of this post I'm only interested in the impact of switching from the internal PATA/SATA Ultrabay cradle to USB.

[mgo]

Has anyone used an external USB2-based hard disk in general and with the X300 in particular?

Is the disk visible to DOS-based backup and disk-cloning applications, such as Ghost?

Could you boot from such a disk, if you wanted to?

What sort of real-life transfer speeds are you getting?

I am currently using the Ultrabay cradle with my old T30, which gives real-life transfer speeds in excess of 1GB per minute with Ghost under DOS, e.g. it will back up a full 60GB to 100GB disk in about an hour. Would an external USB solution perform as well?

By the way, I know flash transfer rates are generally not up to the raw transfer speeds of conventional disks yet, but that's another discussion. If it's possible to divorce the issue, then for the purpose of this post I'm only interested in the impact of switching from the internal PATA/SATA Ultrabay cradle to USB.

USB 2 with both the 3 1/2 inch and smaller 2 1/2 inch drives has proven very satisfactory for me for a number of years.

I don't have any numbers to support my statement but I would say that USB 2 is very much comparable to an ultra bay drive. (I use both and do not really notice any difference in transfer rates)

I use an external USB drive for my Acronis images which does use some sort of DOS-like operating system when one uses their boot disk for recovery or imaging.

One caution: there is some talk that the USB interface will sometimes cause a file to not be transferred, but there is little on the internet to support this. To compensate I use a copy program that includes a verify phase which seems to eliminate the problem with only a small decrease in backup speed.

The ONLY times I have personally seen this problem is with MS Excel files.

[FragrantHead]

Thanks. So what machine do you have? A Thinkpad, I take it? I believe there is some variation among (laptop) BIOSs in general as to whether they support USB drives from a DOS environment and/or booting from such a device. Anyone have experience with an X300 in this regard?

[mgo]

Thanks. So what machine do you have? A Thinkpad, I take it? I believe there is some variation among (laptop) BIOSs in general as to whether they support USB drives from a DOS environment and/or booting from such a device. Anyone have experience with an X300 in this regard?

T60 and R50p are the machines I own. The do not boot from a USB drive that I am aware of. With my Acronis imaging program, I boot from a CD which then goes and gets the previously saved image from a USB external drive.

I have no experience with the X300 unit.

[2cdneh]

I bought a WD 250gb 2.5" external usb drive. I use it for large MS SQL databases that I do not have room for on my 64gb drive, and for image backups using Acronis, and for music and other large files.

It is fast enough for most uses, but in SQL I notice it is a lot slower than the internal SSD drive. I have not tried to boot from it.

It is very small, powered from the USB with a single cable (the Maxtor drive needs 2 USB ports, the second one for extra power) and comes with a nice carrying case.

CostCo has them in stock at a good price.