Philips SPD5110CC external 250Gb hard drive / general external HDD discussion

ianonline

The Staples in-store offer on the above external hard disc drive was recently posted in the "Grabbit" forum:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=186532

The offer will soon be over (and indeed some people are having trouble getting hold of one due to them selling out quickly) so I've decided to start a separate thread as people have started posting points of a technical nature and I thought it might be useful to have some input from a technical point of view. :idea:

In particular, the reliability of the Hitachi drives used in these units has been brought into question:

Coldfinger wrote:

Well, the Hitachi drive is what used to be IBM Deskstar. This drive had a terrible reliability and used to be known as the IBM Deathstar.

See http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/6292

The problem with all hard drives is that the bigger they get, the more data you stand to lose.

There is also the question of formatting the drive, although I notice there is already a separate thread running on the whole FAT32 v NTFS issue so I'll not open up another can of worms.:p

So then, has anybody got any views ..................................:question:

viru.doshi

Usually when you buy a drive like this it should already be formatted so you can just plug & play. No harm in formatting again if you want it to be FAT32 rather then NTFS which I reckon is what it'll be formatted to.

Quick format to well, quickly format the drive - its not secure if you have sensitive data you're trying to remove tho.

Format (normal) - noticeably will take longer as the drive is larger but does a better job of erasing data.

espresso

If you are concerned about the possible reliability issues with the Hitachi drive, why not go for the 250Gb Seagate external on offer at Maplin for £86.99 until the 16 May.

:cool:

External drives are usually pre-formated FAT32, for the widest compatibility but you can easily re-format it to NTFS before use.

:eek:

amcluesent

If these external 250GB+ drives are being used to store digital pictures, videos, MP3 etc. then there are some advantages to formating using NTFS with a big cluster size (i.e. 64Kbyte).

IMHO these external drives are vulnerable to over-heating as they are jammed in a closed metal box. External cases need a fan to keep the drive within tolerable temp.

viru.doshi

I never actually looked at that product, does it not have a case fan?

ianonline

from the other thread:

foxyloxy wrote:

The case is fan cooled (doesn't run all the time) the drive itself is pretty quiet.

However, it looks like the Seagate one is NOT fan-cooled :doh:

ianonline

espresso wrote:

If you are concerned about the possible reliability issues with the Hitachi drive, why not go for the 250Gb Seagate external on offer at Maplin for £86.99 until the 16 May.

:cool:

External drives are usually pre-formated FAT32, for the widest compatibility but you can easily re-format it to NTFS before use.

:eek:

The Maplin one looks a good deal for a Seagate.

From what people have said about the Philips unit, it does come pre-formatted as FAT32 but from reading the Maplin FAQs about the Seagate it says it says the Seagate comes pre-formatted as NTFS and that "FAT32 has a Maximum of 137gb therefore it has to be NTFS". However, at least one customer has said their Seagate drive was pre-formatted as single FAT32 partition which is all a bit confusing.

steady__eddie

External drives are usually pre-formated FAT32, for the widest compatibility but you can easily re-format it to NTFS before use.

Please would you explain how to re-format it it NTFS please ?

The drop down menu in the format procedure only allows for the options of FAT32 or FAT32.

viru.doshi

steady__eddie wrote:

The drop down menu in the format procedure only allows for the options of FAT32 or FAT32.

It shows two options for FAT32??

ianonline

Does anyone have anything to say about the (un)reliability issue with Hitachi drives. They certainly do appear to have had a bad reputation in the past but a lot of the problems appear to stem from a few years back when Hitachi bought the hard drive business from IBM.

Obviously, a bad reputation can stick with a company for a long time, but you would hope that any problems would have been sorted out over time, especially as the Hitachi brand has an otherwise good reputation (IMHO) and they would not want to tarnish their good name. :think:

Anybody else have any views ??

mantisgeek

steady__eddie wrote:

External drives are usually pre-formated FAT32, for the widest compatibility but you can easily re-format it to NTFS before use.

Please would you explain how to re-format it it NTFS please ?

The drop down menu in the format procedure only allows for the options of FAT32 or FAT32.

If you select the new Philips drive in Windows Explorer and right click your mouse button, a menu should appear. One of the menu items should be "Format..." so just choose this. A dialog box will appear with various options, and the File system dropdown should allow you to choose NTFS. If only FAT32 appear, then the Operating system you are using may not support NTFS - this is the case for older versions of Windows such as Windows 95 or 98 etc. Anyway, if you can choose NTFS then do so and if you can tick the QuickFormat tick box if you wish. Clicking on start will initiate the format process.

Hope this helps.