How many of you have more than 2 external drives attached to your system?
I have 4 ,storage , backups, video and pic editing, and just text , music and comics.
How many of you have moved your dvd to "a" or "b" drive?
originally old floppy drives?
Mines B drive.
I don't have any FDD or ODD installed any more. Haven't had a FDD equipped MB for many years now and only floppy disk I have is in my old Atari 1040ST.
I switched to external USB3 CD/DVD only to have access to my old disks and occasionally write a disk or two for friends.
Apart from a M.2 NVMe SSD on the MB I have two 3.5" and three 5" removable bays for SSDs and HDDs of which one is empty so I can insert normal HDDs meant for backup, much faster connection (SATA 3) and no adapters to worry about.
Other than that, I have an USB3 adapter to connect several other small (120GB) SSDs since they are pretty cheap nowadays and much faster than most USB3/3.1 2..5" HDDs.
Hi there
sometimes on a laptop I attach 3 USB HDD's for a short while -- usually the self powered passport type ones -- If I attach 3 then I use a powered USB 3 Hub. I often though attach a single or 2 SSD's via USB3-->SATA connectors for taking backups, playing multi-media stored on the device or running VM's.
Have a very rarely used Samsung USB3 DVD writer just in case I need to rip CD/DVD/ Blu Ray or create those for people.
On Servers ( I use HP Proliant Microservers) I have 4 Bay HDD's - not hot swappable though -- however I can use if necessary for booting alternate OS'es or Fast copying larger disks (e.g > 2TB). These also can be used with 2.5 inch adapters for SSD's etc. as well as standard HDD's. The HDD's just pop out of the caddies easily - just open front door so swapping HDD's not a problem -- however these older servers don't support Hot swappable HDD's though.
Here's image of the server out of its case (you don't need to remove case to change the HDD's though.
Cheers
Jimbo
Why do you need so many external drives. I have none on my main computer as I use a NAS to back everything up.
1 is for temp storage 2 tera, backups include drive images for my nextbook hybrid,toshiba laptop, 2 acers and a home made gigabyte puter with win 10 preview on it.
the video drive is the work disk which hold about 50 gigs right now, sometimes with multiple copies of the videos I'm editing.
as for dvd b drive, I did it for my amusement of having 2 drive letters not in use:)
just went to computer management and change the drive letter.
It would probably be wise not to leave your backup permanently connected. Ransomware for example.
Hi there
Agreed
It's pointless having backups permanently connected to Machine --if they get infected then they are worse than useless.
I actually don't think there's any problems with many external HDD's but the number you need concurrently especially on a laptop shouldn't need to be a huge number. I have had 3 very occasionally on a laptop - particularly when I'm comparing VM's (or software running on VM's) but that's exception rather than rule.
BTW those that use NAS systems - don't forget NAS should be backed up regularly too - using devices not permanently attached. I backup changed /new data from NAS to 2 identical external HDD's . The Backup writes concurrently to 2 HDD's -- I like to have duplicate copies in case 1 HDD fails. Data e.g Music only needs to really be backed up once and then just backup new / changed files. Backup strategy for NAS though is a whole different topic.
Cheers
jimbo
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