Need new removable storage drive: DVD or Tape?

Here's my problem: I have a tuner card so I record a lot of TV shows on my PC so I use up the space pretty fast. I used to put the files larger than 1GB on two 15/30GB ADR tapes that I used for movies and backed up my PC to 2 other ADR tapes but now my 4 tapes as well as my hard drive are full, so I cant backup anymore and I'm out of space.

I can either get a DVD writer but at only 4.7GB/disk it's pretty useless especially since I'm used to 15GB/disk. This would take me about 20 DVDs just to move my movie files, then I would be able to make a full backup of my other files to 2 or 3 tapes, which is still a lot of tapes for a full backup.

Or I can get a tape drive with at least 30GB uncompressed and use 1-2 tapes for my video files and 1 tape to backup (it would have to be a drive supported by 1Safe or with drivers that allow drive letter access so I can watch movies right from the tape like I do now).

I'm leaning towards a Sony AIT tape drive rather than a DVD writer since in less than a year there will be 9.4GB (dual layer) recordable DVDs and I dont feel like having my movies spread out on 20 DVDs that I have to juggle each time I want to find a movie. I can also sell my current tape drive and tapes for at least $150 US if I get a new tape drive.

Which option would you think is best?

I want to pay $500 US max. for a tape drive with at least 30GB uncompressed, I dont mind getting it used. Is AIT the most cost effective? I was very impressed that the 35/90GB tapes are only $39, thats cheaper than the 15/30GB tapes I use now! New AIT drives seem to be about $100-150 above my budget, is it worth saving for a few weeks and get a new $600-700 AIT drive? It seems pretty expensive to me since I'm a student but I desperately need a large removable storage drive.

Thanks

Have you thought about compressing the files more with something like divx?

I've got hundreds of videos, it would take days to convert them all, and I have a 72" XGA screen so I dont want to sacrifice any quality, they already arent recorded at a very high bitrate. Plus I'm missing at least 40GB in space. I really need a removable storage drive.

Hello,
IMHO
Tape Vs. DVD-R

Tape
Pros: Good Gb/$ Ratio, Can Hold up High amount of Data
Cons: Slow, Tape Drive Expensive

DVD
Pro: FAST, Reliable (Not Influenced By EM or Heat/Humidity), Drive is Cheaper
Cons: Expensive Media, Small amount of DATA.


I think You can do two things:
1. Reduce your data size
2. Try thinking about Larger HDD (HDD's offer best Data Per $ ratio).
With 500$ you can buy something like 3-4 120GB Seagate (or any other) HDD.

Just Make upi your mind:
Backup/Archive = Tape
Removable Media = DVD
Mass Storage Device / Removable Media (Yes I have External USB case) = HDD


Cheers,
Gabriel

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Originally Posted by Gabriel

Hello,

2. Try thinking about Larger HDD (HDD's offer best Data Per $ ratio).
With 500$ you can buy something like 3-4 120GB Seagate (or any other) HDD.

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this is a really good point. I just looked and 120GB drives are $78 at newegg. purchase 4 of these along with a raid controller card (probably about $25-$40) and set up a RAID 0+1 and you've got 240GB of additional storage that is faster to access than a single drive and redundant because it's mirrored. . . . and you haven't spent $400.

I can't see playing anything off tape directly. . . you'd have to restore first then play. and I could see lot's of dvds being a bit of a pain, though if properly indexed and stored it really wouldn't be bad.

I like the hard drive idea.

newegg also has samsung 160GB Hard Drives with 3 year warranty for $99.

...& you can of course make it all removable by buying hard disk caddys which are about $10-15 each ...

p.s buy sata not pata ;), think 'future proof' (the cost of a sata controller card is about the same as an additional ide/pata one- from $30 upwards)

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I can't see playing anything off tape directly. . . you'd have to restore first then play.

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I can do this with my current tape drive using 1Safe backup software, it allows drive letter access to tape drives so you can open and save files to tape from any software just like if it was a hard drive, this is what made me buy my last tape drive since it adds a tremendous amount of functionality.

I know I could get bigger hard drives in raid 0 (I already have a raid 0 40gb*2 80gb total) but I want to have a backup copy of every file since before I got my tape drive I got a virus that deleted all my c: 3 times in 3 years, but now since I have my tape drive I can easily restore all my data whever I loose files due to any reason.

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DVD
Pro: FAST, Reliable

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I dont agree with this, sure the access time is way faster, but the tape drive is more than twice the speed once it finds the file on the tape. I dont mind waiting 1-2 minutes for a 2 hour movie to start playing while the drive finds it on the tape. Also DVDs can get scratched easily and Im pretty sure the error rate is much much less on tape drives than DVDs.

Does anyonw have a Sony AIT? About how long does it take to fully fast foward/rewind a tape (in other words, whats the longest I'd have to wait for it to find a file)? My current tape drive can take maybe 5 minutes if I want a file thats at the end of the tape, but the sony uses a shorter tape and 3 tiems faster FF/REW speed so it must be pretty fast.

Thanks

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Originally Posted by ClickHere2Surf.com

I can do this with my current tape drive using 1Safe backup software, it allows drive letter access to tape drives so you can open and save files to tape from any software, this is what made me buy my mlast tape drive since it adds a tremendous amount of functionality.

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I know tape applications give drive letter access but I've been less than impressed with their performance as far as seek times read speed etc. maybe things are faster now then when I had experience with this stuff. but I highyl doubt it comes anywhere close to the speed of a hard drive or DVD-R.

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Originally Posted by ClickHere2Surf.com

I know I could get bigger hard drives in raid 0 (I already have a raid 0 40gb*2 80gb total) but I want to have a backup copy of every file since before I got my tape drive I got a virus that deleted all my c: 3 times in 3 years, but now since I have my tape drive I can easily restore all my data whever I loose files due to any reason.

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which is why if you read the post I reccomended raid 0+1 which is a stripe and a mirror of that stripe giving you both increased speed and also redundancy with mirrored backups. and as far as viruses / OS corruptions etc. your files would be on a seperate volume completely away from your OS.

I'd probably even go so far as to build a meagerly powered linux box to run all this as NAS connected via 100mps cat5 . . . but that's just me

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Originally Posted by ClickHere2Surf.com

Does anyonw have a Sony AIT? About how long does it take to fully fast foward/rewind a tape (in other words, whats the longest I'd have to wait for it to find a file)? My current tape drive can take maybe 5 minutes if I want a file thats at the end of the tape, but the sony uses a shorter tape and 3 tiems faster FF/REW speed so it must be pretty fast.

Thanks

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even at 3X faster than five minutes that's still 1.66 minutes. far longer than I'd be willing to wait. my network drive of mp3s takes about 10-15 seconds to open up (sometimes not always) through explorer over the network and I think that's too long.

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but I highyl doubt it comes anywhere close to the speed of a hard drive or DVD-R.

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The fastest DVD-RWs are currently only 2x for DVD-RW, or about 2.5MB/Sec, the sony tape drive im looking at is 4mbps to 10.4mbps. Sure it might take 40 seconds to find the file vs a fraction of a second with the DVD, but I would use it for movie files in the 1-6GB range, so waiting a few seconds for it to start playing a movie is acceptable.

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which is why if you read the post I reccomended raid 0+1 which is a stripe and a mirror of that stripe giving you both increased speed and also redundancy with mirrored backups. and as far as viruses / OS corruptions etc. your files would be on a seperate volume completely away from your OS.

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A RAID 1 wont protect from viruses, it will just duplicate the damage on the backup, all it would protect from is a hard drive crash, and tape drives are a seperate volume away from the system.

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even at 3X faster than five minutes that's still 1.66 minutes. far longer than I'd be willing to wait. my network drive of mp3s takes about 10-15 seconds to open up (sometimes not always) through explorer over the network and I think that's too long.

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Of course if this was for 2-5 minute mp3s it would be totally unacceptable to wait a up to minute betweeneach track, but this would be for 2 hour movies, I can wait 2 minutes for it to find the movie, it lets me time to make the popcorn :D, after that the movie would play just like from any other fast drive.

Anyway, access time isnt a problem, I'd like to know if anyone has used sony AITs and would you recommend them? Are there any other drives that are 30GB uncompressed but around $500, dont tell me to search on google I looked for hours yesterday and cant seem to find any drives below $600-700. I dont mind getting it used, are there sites besides ebay that would sell used ones?

Thanks

Oh, another thing, these Sony AITs seem to have a compression CPU onboard to handlethe compression, I think the drive I have does it by software, and since most of my files are already compressed (mpeg) it actually makes them 30%-40% bigger. Would the sony be actually able to compress mpeg files with its better comrpession algorithms (I know it wouldnt be by much since its already hgihly compressed)?

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Originally Posted by ClickHere2Surf.com

....I'd like to know if anyone has used sony AITs and would you recommend them?...

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We did Used Sony AIT Drives in My company as a Backup Device. YES it was FAST (Using SCSI), YES It is a reliable media.
- BUT -
As far as that goes They are far more expensive (Both Media and Drive) and Pain in the A$$ to fix. Eventually we kicked the AIT and brought DLT Drives instead.
Try Thinking on HDD as A Removable Media Device.
Keep all your files on the HDD which is not Connected to any computer and Stored in a safe place (Not hot and no EM). This Still seems to me as the best sollution for you.

I sure hope I helped you and not confus-ed { :devil: } you more,
Gabriel

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They are far more expensive (Both Media and Drive)

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I found the media to be very cheap at $39/35GB native, my current tapes are the same price for 15GB.

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Pain in the A$$ to fix

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What do you mean by fix? If they are reliable why would they need fixing?

Wouldnt a HD be complelety killed if it was accidentaly dropped? I have dropped my ADR tapes a few times and never had a problem. I'd preferr dropping a $39 tape that will survive the drop then dropping a $100 harddrive that will turn into a paper weight.

Also, arent tape drives much more reliable? I dont know if I mentioned it but it will obviously be used as a daily backup too, not only to store movies.

get the tape drive. your mind is obviously made up . . . . I'm sure it'll be great.

have fun.

PS even reliable stuff breaks sometimes . . . so if you buy it save some extra money and buy it new with a warranty.

I can think of better ways to spend $600-$700 . . . . but . . . it's not my money. . . .

I would get it used for $300-400, I wouldnt pay $600-700 on a 35GB tape drive.

Id still like to know if there are cheaper (comparing MSRPs) drives with 30GB native capacity. Also, are there other backup programs than 1Safe that assign a drive letter to tape drives?

Thanks

Again, I said Reliable MEDIA not reliable Tape Drive. Two of our AIT tapes started Tearing the Tape Media. it cost something like 300$ to fix.
Secondly - I never Dropped an HDD in my Entire Life. Let alone HDDs "park" the Magnetic head so Even if you dropped the HDD most chances the Data on the disc can still be salvaged. Currently I have W.D. 6/4 Gb sitting in My Motorcycle trunk that I use as a removable media for the last 3 years. never had any problems.
Don't forget that Tapes are more suspectable to EM and Environmental conditions.
I don't think you should backup your entire drive Daily - a Incremental/Diffrential Strategy is wiser in your case.

Signing off (my girlfriend is waiting...),
Gabriel

I didnt mean a fully daily backup, I normally do a full backup then incremental untl the tape is full and then start again.

2 of how many drives failed? 2 of 2 and 2 of 100 isnt the same, after how long and how many uses per week did they fail?

I also calculated that with a 230m (9055ft) tape and 160ips FF/REW speed, the longest possible time it would take to find a file is 57 seconds, which is much faster than my current drive. Not to mention the transfer rate is 4-10 times faster once it found the file.

Thanks

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Originally Posted by ClickHere2Surf.com

The fastest DVD-RWs are currently only 2x for DVD-RW, or about 2.5MB/Sec..

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Yeah to write (btw drives out definately that do 2.4x & new ones doing 4x) but reading is typically in the x8 or even x16 range. If you were writing to DVD I'd use burn once disks (<$1) & just make two copies to allow for any scratches mishandling etc later, which of course you can do at 8x, & if you hang on about two months I confidently predict 16x coming soon ...

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I also calculated that with a 230m (9055ft) tape and 160ips FF/REW speed, the longest possible time it would take to find a file is 57 seconds, which is much faster than my current drive. Not to mention the transfer rate is 4-10 times faster once it found the file.

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Huh ? your tape is faster than an eide drive, well its f. good then ! If you mean your current tape ,well say that :p ...

Just as a bye the buy what happens with vobs ? They are supposedly only allowed to be 1gig (dvd convention) so my tape drive is busy playing my movie, then it takes 57 seconds to find the next bit ... very high quality ! Or are these all converted to big fat mpegs ?

I dunno how many of these topics I've replied to, but Kato seems to have it !

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Originally Posted by Kato, & very astute too IMHO

..get the tape drive. your mind is obviously made up ...

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Despite the horror stories hard disks can often be resilient especially once inside a caddy .. I have a 40 gig drive thats been dropped down the stairs, dropped I dunno how many times in various car parks & generally been 'abused' for about 18 months & still works fine.

You seem anyway to take backup pretty seriously ! :D

Why did you ask for opinions if your mind is made up to get the tape drive? The NAS storage idea is the best performance/$$ ratio. Yes tape devices are tried and true but they are an old and dating technology.

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Huh ? your tape is faster than an eide drive, well its f. good then ! If you mean your current tape ,well say that

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Of course I was comparing it to my current tape drive.

If I put movies on it yes I will convert them to mpeg or any other format that would support streaming from the internet (which has audio & video recorded "side by side" in the file) because when I try to play a divx on my current tape drive, it plays 5 seconds, FFs/REWs 5 minutes, plays 5 seconds, and so on. But on the other hand, the Sony's so fast it could transfer an entire movie to my HD in less than 5 minutes if I want to format non streaming formats.

I've looked at removable hard drives and they seemed much more expensive than the tape drive, but I guess you mean standard IDE drives in a removable case? Anyway I found someone willing to sell me a Sony SDX-420C for $300 and free shipping so I'm gonna get it.

But I found HP AIT 35GB tapes at a store that ships them for much less than the stores that have sony tapes, I'm assuming HP tapes would work in it, right? After all they invented those AIT tapes.

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You seem anyway to take backup pretty seriously !

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After having 3 viruses in 3 consecutive years wiping out my entire c:, yes I do, thats what made me get my first tape drive :D And seeing how well they do for digital video playback adds a HUGE amount of use to it.

Thanks

sounds like you should put some of that money and energy into some reliable antivirus software.

if your software allows drive letter access to your tape drive, how is it any safer from viruses than a hard drive?

I had a reliable and updated AV each time I got a virus, AVs are useless if they are new unknown viruses like was unfortunatly the case those 3 times. Since then I disable real time scan on my AV and set it to scan once a week, its not worth the loss in performance if its only gonna protect from harmless viruses (compared to those that corrupt your entire HD).

The tape is safer because I leave one backup out of the drive all the time.

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Originally Posted by ClickHere2Surf.com

I had a reliable and updated AV each time I got a virus, AVs are useless if they are new unknown viruses like was unfortunatly the case those 3 times. Since then I disable real time scan on my AV and set it to scan once a week, its not worth the loss in performance if its only gonna protect from harmless viruses (compared to those that corrupt your entire HD).

The tape is safer because I leave one backup out of the drive all the time.

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Um yeth your not thuppothed to open the atachmenths or clik on ok when that window popths up when your downloading your p@rn. ;) :D

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Originally Posted by Gollo

Um yeth your not thuppothed to open the atachmenths or clik on ok when that window popths up when your downloading your p@rn. ;) :D

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yeah and it's always a good idea to disable real time protection and just scan once a week. . .. . .becaue why take the performance hit and be protected from thousands of virus that your definitions can identify when there might be a new one that isn't in your definitions file. https://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2005/03/1.gif
there's some solid thinkinghttps://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2005/03/1.gif

I also find it humerous that he'd disable real time protection because it hinders performance but will wait upwards of a minute for a tape drive to find a video file . . . . maybe with real time protection disabled it will only take 59 seconds though. . . . . plus theres popcorn to make anywayhttps://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2005/03/1.gifhttps://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2005/03/1.gif

Since I did daily backups to tape I figured if I got a virus I'd just restore to the date before since my backup software keeps each version of each file so I can restore to a specific date.

And the continuous performance of my PC isnt the same as the time it takes to load a movie I want to watch once a week.

Oh, and by the way I just bought a Sony SDX-420C for $305 with free shipping.

Thanks

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Originally Posted by ClickHere2Surf.com

Oh, and by the way I just bought a Sony SDX-420C for $305 with free shipping.

Thanks

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Good 'O' ! :devil: Maybe you'll stop asking me loads of dumb dvd burner questions, when you only ever wanted a new tape drive !!! [sigh] http://smiley.onegreatguy.net/temper.gif :D

I was honestly not sure which I wanted and didnt ever think I could get a better tape drive for only $300, but with a deal like that I couldn't pass.

Plus in less than a year when they have 9.4GB double layer DVDs that'll finally be able to copy a movie without taking out the special features and reducing the quality to make it fit on 4.7GB, so I'll wait for the new DVD writers.

Thanks

Are you planning to open a Blockbuster vidio store or just feel comforted by hording so many movies? I think it's time to take a step back and look at the logic of saving so many movies.
Solution: I once went on an interview to a company which had a large circular tape library accessed by a robotic arm which would continually go around and load tapes for data to store, read, and write.

DownBeachBreeze

My PC is my TV and VCR, I dont use those old black video tapes that are a nightmare to use and not even worth using. I have all my TV recordings on my PC all instantly accessible rather than insert and FF 15 tapes until I find what I want 5 hours later.

I dont have that many movies, its mostly 30 or 60 min TV shows but I record a a fairly high quality because I have a 72" screen so it takes about 1GB per hour of video.

And BTW I dont regret getting this tape drive at all, it works great and is amazingly fast, faster than an average DVD writer (the transfer rate, obviously not the seek time), it runs my scheduled backup every day and I did have to restore a few files a few times and did a full restore when I got my new hard drives.

If you only have one hard drive I suggest adding another high capacity hard drive set as a slave to your primary hard drive.
However, If you have two hard drives I don't think you can add even an external removable drive? Too many devices.
BTW I have an Onstream D130 15/30 GB tape drive form a warranty. The first one fell apart and broke the tape. The new one was different more expensive but I got it for free on warranty. It runs much better. However, 1Safe still does not have Window's XP complient drivers.

DownBeachBreeze


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Originally Posted by DownBeachBreeze

if you only have one hard drive I suggest adding another high capacity hard drive set as a slave to your primary hard drive.
However, If you have two hard drives I don't think you can add even an external removable drive? Too many devices...

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I seem to be running around explaining stuff to you ;) .. Clickhere is (& I hope he won't take umbridge with the following remark ? ;) as I'm trying to explain to a 'newbie' ..) a man with his own agenda ! What you or I might suggest for him, isn't always what he decides is right for him - here I think he's 'sorted' already :)

On your comment about two hard drives though, generally most motherboards have two IDE channels (where the wires connect) & each channel (wire) can support 2 drives be they hard disk or cd/dvd - ATAPI devices is the 'ubber geek' phrase - so a total of 4 .. if you want more then a simple way is to add a PCI IDE controller card (roughly say $20) which can add (usually) another 4 devices (sometimes the really cheap ones are just single rather than dual channel).

I have two 80GB SATA drives in RAID 0 for speed.

And why couldnt I add an external drive? I could if I wanted too, what do you mean by too many devices? I already have 3 IDE drives, 2 SATA drives, and over 10 usb devices connected to my PC, and USB supports 127 devices at once I beleive so I can still add over a hundred external devices, over 200 actually because I have 2 USB controllers.

Anyway, I also had an OnStream 15/30 GB until I upgraded to my Sony AIT drive. The OnStream was extremely reliable but also extremely slow (1mb/sec) and only 15GB per tape meaning I would need 6 tapes for a single full backup, but if you have less than 15GB to backup the OnStream is an excellent drive, too bad they went bankrupt... twice.

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What you or I might suggest for him, isn't always what he decides is right for him - here I think he's 'sorted' already

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I am very happy with my decision, these AIT tapes are great, they are extremely small and hold an incrediable capacity for their size, I think some had suggested external hard drives, but that is more expensive per GB and more expensive in storage space (actually maybe not with high capacity drives).

I still only use the drive for backup because I still have my nCrapia chipset loaded with bugs, one of which prevents me to use my tapes with drive letter access properly to store/watch movies directly from tapes.

I can't wait to get rid of my first and last nCrapia product but I'm not saving and upgrading my mobo and cpu will cost me close to $1K because I want to go to 64bit with a good CPU that will last me a few years, I still have a 1700 and almost everything on my PC is instant thanks to my RAID 0, the only thing it's too slow for is HD video which is 6 times DVD quality (1920x1080), minimum requirements: 3ghz, but I'm sure an Athlon 2000+ would be fine as on mine it just barely lags, almost only the audio stutters (funny, I have a nCrapia sound chip, the sound lags, and an old ATI video card, and the video plays fine, my friend had one of the latest and more powerful nCrapia video cards and the video lagged even though my 3 year old ATI plays it fine).

Okay, I was wrong. I thought that you could not have more than two primary ide drives, but if you put in another card, sure. If you can attach multiple usb external hard drives why don't you do that? I have two more expansion slots I have not used. I do use the usb to expand and I do understand the usb capabilities but other that three printers, a scanner, joystick, and a webcam I don't have any other devices.
As far as the D130 adr Onsteam goes, I got a deal. I bought the first one for $60 and it fell apart. However, with the warranty I was able to get a new one. The price on the new one was over $220 and it works better so I guess they fixed it. It's the speed, capacity, and random file access that is the best part of the tape drive. Downside is they didn't make xp complient drivers.
A small tech store guy wanted me to consider a dvd/rw rewritable laser dirve for backup but not enough info has been gathered on these devices for me to consider them for backup. Cutting edge tech has it's drawbacks in that it takes time to see flaws in equipment gathered for review. However, you might look into it if you haven't already.

DownBeachBreeze

You can still have 4 IDE drives, or 2 SATAs and 4 IDEs on newer motherboards.

I dont need external drives nor do I have space for them, I have more than enough space in my internal drives and move my very large files that I dont access often on tapes which are cheaper and more reliable than hard drives, plus I need the tape drive anyway for daily backups.

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[...] and random file access that is the best part of the tape drive.

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Random access time is the worst spec of any tape drive, millions of times slower (literally) than any other drive type. A tape seek time could be 5-15 minutes on certain tape drives drives, most hard drives are less than 10 milliseconds, my tape drive has a maximum seek time of less than 1 minute which is very fast for a tape drive thanks to it's short tape lenght (754 feet or 230 meters) and very high data density.

Sorry, hit submit by mistake, I also wanted to add:

I wouldn't recommend a DVD writer for backup because:
-Optical discs are extremely unreliable and fragile compared to tape
-Ridiculously small capacity (9.4GB) not enough for most users
-Much slower write speed than most tape drives
-Not sure about this, but probably more expensive per GB than tapes
-DVD-RWs become less reliable after being re-written many times, most tape technologies can be re-written thousands and thousands of times, my Sony drive for example is rated at 30,000 re-writes, a DVD-RW would be lucky to get 100

So DVD-RW drives make a pretty poor backup solution, unless you're backing up small amounts of data that you don't mind loosing due to media failure, find another backup device.

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Originally Posted by ClickHere2Surf.com

You can still have 4 IDE drives, or 2 SATAs and 4 IDEs on newer motherboards..

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You can have as many as the manufacturer cares to build onto his board !

Generally recently most m/b's have a twin channel ide controller (so 4 devices as above) & sata equiped boards do at the moment generally have 2 sata ports, but there is no limit at all other than practicallity & cost & such ..

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..Not sure about this, but probably more expensive per GB than tapes ..

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Tricky call that one ;) - on your estimation of 100 uses probably - but I've got a rewriteable I've been expecting to 'break' for over 6 months now & I reckon that might be well over the 1000 re-writes 'claimed' {I wish I'd been diligent enough to keep track - I wonder if there's a way to figure it out from the medium ?} (by most manufacturers) - & 30,000 rewrites on a tape ? - where's that from ? Are you sure you don't mean the unit is rated to do that & not the tapes ?

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..Ridiculously small capacity (9.4GB) not enough for most users ..

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You are having a laugh right ? .. not you aren't ;) .. I know ! :) .. you are thinking of users like you ! ;) - 10 gb (to round it up) is a hell of a lot of information (information being processed data - video streams are raw data or they might be information - that depends how you look at it - the summary of 'gone with the wind' for instance is 'over-rated' :D making that information - but the raw data stream {ie. a copy of the film} depending on what compresson you use will be much longer - & are individual frames there data or information? - imho, they are data until one missing frame or sequence lacking to make the film make sense makes them information) - I can think of 'huge' firms (so multinational type places) who have entire & critical to them databases in much less space - but from your perspective working with lots of video files it is indeed 'insufficient' ..

Its all horses for courses ! ..- I use DVD as backup, as I watch a film once & thats it so I burn it 'just in case' & then for what other backups I want its 'tons' - how many excel spreadsheets for instance can you get on that ? - bloomin' loads ! is how many ;)

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Originally Posted by confus-ed

I seem to be running around explaining stuff to you ;) .. Clickhere is (& I hope he won't take umbridge with the following remark ? generally most motherboards have two IDE channels

You mean the primary is for the hard drives.

(where the wires connect) & each channel (wire) can support 2 drives be they hard disk or

The secondary is for the cd/dvd/tape.

cd/dvd - ATAPI devices is the 'ubber geek' phrase - so a total of 4 .. if you want more then a simple way is to add a PCI IDE controller card (roughly say $20) which can add (usually) another 4 devices (sometimes the really cheap ones are just single rather than dual channel).

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Question.
However, if a add a card for another hard drive plugged into your primary then
that card could not contain any secondary devices?

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Originally Posted by ClickHere2Surf.com

I can't wait to get rid of my first and last nCrapia product but I'm not saving and upgrading my mobo and cpu will cost me close to $1K because I want to go to 64bit with a good CPU that will last me a few years, I still have a 1700 and almost everything on my PC is instant thanks to my RAID 0, the only thing it's too slow for is HD video which is 6 times DVD quality (1920x1080), minimum requirements: 3ghz, but I'm sure an Athlon 2000+ would be fine as on mine it just barely lags, almost only the audio stutters (funny, I have a nCrapia sound chip, the sound lags, and an old ATI video card, and the video plays fine, my friend had one of the latest and more powerful nCrapia video cards and the video lagged even though my 3 year old ATI plays it fine).

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If your not happy with you vidio card look up the "GFORCE FX5600XT 128MB TV 8XAGP REM CTRL VIVO DVI". It scored best with "Toms Hardware Guide" online and cost less that $100".

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DownBeachBreeze

Question.
However, if a add a card for another hard drive plugged into your primary then
that card could not contain any secondary devices?

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Can you have a look at what you wrote & re-quoted from me again ? - I can't follow quite what you are asking ..

I'll take a guess at what you meant in the meantime ;) ..

The add in PCI IDE cards I was talking about simply have another controller chip on them & one/two more connectors (nearly all controllers are dual channel but for cost reasons they might only have a single connector), but each of the connectors means another channel, which with IDE almost always means another primary & secondary available, as thats how IDE works (like scsi chaining only the maximum with ide is 2 & not 127)

So in answer to what you asked (it was the chopped up requote fooling me) - yes there's secondary devices on them as they work in principle exactly the same as any built in IDE controller on the motherboard.