[Spridgets] OT - External hard drives

[David Lieb]

> While I would hate to disagree with David, I have to. The My Pasport
> drive is a 2.5" drive that is designed for a laptop. Hence it is a
> portable drive and built to withstand movement and slight shaking up.
> THe My Book drive is a desktop drive and designed to be put on a
> desktop and left there. It is heavier and not really designed for
> portability.

I thought that was what the List was for during the winter... to see how 
many different opinions can exist on any one subject ;-)

Anyhow, it is sort of like seatbelts and airbags and rollbars... IF you know 
what accident you are going to have next and when it is going
to happen, it is easy to use the best restraints for it. If someone is
going to barrel into the front of my car at 60mph, I am going to
want to have airbags. If I am going to bump a smallish rock in the
middle of the Tail of the Dragon with the crossmember of a 1995
Miata, I do NOT want airbags (they will deploy, break the
windshield, obscure your vision and test your pucker power. Fortunately, 
that is a lesson I can learn from someone else's experience ;-)

There are normal events that the smaller drives will shrug off that
could take out the larger drives. And vice versa. There are other
things that reverse the situation. If neither one experiences any
trauma, the larger drive will tend to live longer. OTOH, every
drive's life is different and they all have moving parts, so they
can all be considered to be timebombs just waiting to ruin
your life.
David Lieb