FreeAgent Products

[tmelinaraab]

I've just purchased and am awaiting delivery of a FreeAgent Pro 750 (ST307504FPA1E3-RK). The FA-Pro 750 will be attached primarily to my Dell Latitude D/Dock docking station housing a Latitude D420 laptop that runs WinXP-Pro. I plan to use the FA-Pro 750 for (1) automated backup of my laptop's internal 80GB hard drive AND (2) as flexible external storage.

Question #1. Must I partition the FA-Pro 750 into two logical drives to allow both uses? If partitioning is not a requirement, is there are performance or reliability gain in partitioning?

Question #2. My docking station has USB 2.0 ports, but no built-in IEEE 1394 firewire port or eSATA port. (The Latitude D420 does have a IEEE 1394 firewire port, but that it inaccessible when docked.) The docking station does have an open expansion slot for a half-height PCI card. What performance gain can I expect if I install a firewire or eSATA card in the expansion slot over USB 2.0?

[MR4JS]

FireWire is faster than USB 2 because it uses a Peer to Peer protocol instead of a Master Slave. You will only benefit from eSATA when both disks use it. So the drive in your PC and the FreeAgent Pro should both use it or you will see no speed benefit over FireWire of USB 2.

http://www.usb-ware.com/firewire-vs-usb.htm

[TRoss]

Question #1. Must I partition the FA-Pro 750 into two logical drives to allow both uses? If partitioning is not a requirement, is there are performance or reliability gain in partitioning?

No. The 1394/USB bus is much slower than the drive itself.  Typically I would leave it as one partition.

Question #2. My docking station has USB 2.0 ports, but no built-in IEEE 1394 firewire port or eSATA port. (The Latitude D420 does have a IEEE 1394 firewire port, but that it inaccessible when docked.) The docking station does have an open expansion slot for a half-height PCI card. What performance gain can I expect if I install a firewire or eSATA card in the expansion slot over USB 2.0?

The ESATA would of course be the faster of the three. With firewire and USB being negligible. If you are just using it for flexible storage I would just stick with the USB.

[tmelinaraab]

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MR4JS wrote:

You will only benefit from eSATA when both disks use it. So the drive in your PC and the FreeAgent Pro should both use it or you will see no speed benefit over FireWire of USB 2.

Thank for that info. The Intel 945GMS chipset in the Latitude D420 supports SATA, but not eSATA, so it appears that feature of the FA Pro won't be of use in this application. Thankfully, I didn't buy it with the intention of using eSATA. I just wanted to know what options I have.

[tmelinaraab]

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TRoss wrote:

Question #1. Must I partition the FA-Pro 750 into two logical drives to allow both uses? If partitioning is not a requirement, is there are performance or reliability gain in partitioning?

No. The 1394/USB bus is much slower than the drive itself. Typically I would leave it as one partition.

Thanks for your reply. I take from your reply that you see no problem with using the same partition for automated backup and flexible storage. Should I just set up two separate directories for those two purposes? [Does anyone use the term "directory" anymore or just "folder"? I guess I showing my age. ;-)]

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TRoss wrote:

Question #2. My docking station has USB 2.0 ports, but no built-in IEEE 1394 firewire port or eSATA port. (The Latitude D420 does have a IEEE 1394 firewire port, but that it inaccessible when docked.) The docking station does have an open expansion slot for a half-height PCI card. What performance gain can I expect if I install a firewire or eSATA card in the expansion slot over USB 2.0?

The ESATA would of course be the faster of the three. With firewire and USB being negligible. If you are just using it for flexible storage I would just stick with the USB.

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Given the trouble it'd take to use Firewire with the laptop docked, I believe I'll just stick with USB, then. That had been my intention all along. I went with the FA Pro not for the bells and whistles but because I wanted a reliable external drive. I've tried drives installed in a couple of generic USB enclosures but haven't been able to rely on the connection on a daily basis.