USB CD-RW chassis, extending its life?

[gcutler]

I have an old External USB CD-RW drive 4x/2x/8x. Something messed up on the CD-RW part anyway and it is too slow besides and it has been sitting in a closet. I'm assuming that I can open up the chassis and put a regular hard drive in there (making my own USB hard drive).

Anyone know if this will work, would I need any special drivers with XP or just plug it in and the drive would be recognized?

[James_F]

Not sure, but USB isn't exactly the best way to use a hard drive. It should work on XP or Win2k without any drivers.

[Bogy]

It may or may not be "painfully slow." It all depends what you want to use it for. I've got an old parallel Zip drive that I occasionally use to bring files to work. That is painfully slow. :D It would have to be faster than that. I wouldn't want to use it all the time, but it wouldn't be so bad to store files that you don't use a lot.

[Neil Derryberry]

I don't think USB 1.1 is that bad... try it and see how it works.

I do agree with Zac though... firewire or usb 2.0 is the way to go.

[gcutler]

Don't forget this this was a CD-RW, and I used it for a long time, so the slowness if pretty much well know. I was just figuring that having a moveable 40GB drive in the chassis, for the cost of a regular 40GB drive $60-$80 might add some functionalty without spending $200-300 for the privledge of the out of the box solution.

Zac, You never owned and rarely used a Zip? Weren't you endlessly defending the 750MB Zip drive solution when we were all saying it had missed it's time since using a 700MB CD-RW was infinitely more popular and cheaper.

[Bogy]

The Zip is not so much slowed by the cable connection, but by the access speed of the drive. I don't remember the rpm of the zip, and I'm not going to spend time looking for it. The Zip had an access time somewhere between a floppy and a HD. Certainly nowhere near the access time of a current 7200 RPM HD. Yes, the USB may act as a bottleneck, but its not the only factor.

[gcutler]

Originally posted by Zac
Yes, and I still will because there are situations where a large, removable medium that can be accessed in clusters is required. The choice is ZIP or packet-writing CDRW software. Givin what happened when I tried packet CDRW software, as well as the horror stories of other, I'll still defend ZIP as having a purpose. I'm just not personally in a position where I need it.

But my point was you were defending a product you had little experience with and never had owned (For the sake of this argument, the Zip 100, 250 and 750 are just bigger versions of each other with similar functionality). That puts your argument on weaker ground, and more theorhetical than practical. Your experience with CDRW software is valid, but your support of the Zip is less than compelling. Those of us who have dealt with both the CDRW and Zip in long term usage were pretty much unanimous in prefering the CD-RW (or making alot of 25 cent CD-Rs instead)

Oh my Zip 100 in my Dell 1GHz just chewed up 3 cartridges, I'm ready to decomission all my Zip drives, you know anyone who wants 2 Parallel Ext and 2 Scsi Int Zip 100s and 1 USB Zip 250. I also have a Jaz 1GB SCSI sitting there doing nothing :D

[Neil Derryberry]

I love my bernoulli 230.

[James_F]

Don't even start with your Winchester drives. :D

[Bogy]

Hey, I've got this extra 340 meg drive laying here. Ya think I could use it as the main drive on my new XP machine? :D

[gcutler]

More like DR-DOS

[Bogy]

Actually, I have the 340 meg drive on this computer. (Not as the main drive.) I use it as a backup for certain files that I have spent the last 12 years of my ministry developing. They are on three other hard drives, on 2 partitions on one of those drives, and a zip disk, stored in two different locations. I just realized that I haven't ever burned them to a CD. Well, I'll have to take care of that. I'm not paranoid about these files or anything, I'd just hate to start over again.

[gcutler]

Originally posted by Zac
Na gcutler, you can make Linux work well on a 340MB drive (no X server though. Well I guess you could pull off maybe XFree86 and Gnome or KDE, but you'd have no room for any other software). Probably could get Linux 2.4, XFree86 4, a less chunky window manager (like IceWM), networking utilities, and Mozilla to fit on 340MB. So, it could be a part of a nice little internet box:)

I have an 800MB and an 8GB drive sitting in my "Junk Drawer", so I consider 340MB Passe' :p

I have never really had a need for a big drive, my 80 GB drive would sit only 20% full, but since I started doing the DVD stuff where any active project of 2 hours would use up 30GB+, I now am sitting at 70-90% utilization of my 80GB drive. So I quickly swapped out those 800MB and 8GB :D.

[gcutler]

Originally posted by Bogy
Actually, I have the 340 meg drive on this computer. (Not as the main drive.) I use it as a backup for certain files that I have spent the last 12 years of my ministry developing. They are on three other hard drives, on 2 partitions on one of those drives, and a zip disk, stored in two different locations. I just realized that I haven't ever burned them to a CD. Well, I'll have to take care of that. I'm not paranoid about these files or anything, I'd just hate to start over again.

Gotta burn 5 CD-Rs with the data. Put one in your local bank safe deposit vault. One in a fireproof lock box. Open up a safe deposit box 2 states over and put one in there. One around your neck on a chain and one randomly mailed to Austrailia with $100 bill in the envelope for them to keep it safe.

Otherwise you're not being paranoid about the data :D