[X4U] Seagate External Drives Info

[revDAVE]

On 6/16/2006 2:26 PM, "Philip J Robar" <pjrobar at areyoureallythatstupid.org>
wrote:

> I supposed it's not inconceivable that Seagate external drives have
> different firmware than the same drive when sold as an internal
> drive. And since you'd probably have to open the case (thereby
> voiding your warranty) and install the drive in a PC to use the
> Seagate setup software it's probably more trouble than most people
> are willing to go through to deal with this - even if the firmware
> would let you.
> 


> 
> Phil

I am sorry Phil - but I just saw this e-mail - way late...


Anyway, the best information that I got directly from the Seagate Tech
people - was that this problematic design is not in the drive itself - but
in the electronics in the external case... basically it was a deliberate
plan to extend the life of the drive - since they decided not to put a fan
inside.


> I'm curious as to why you think this is a problem for Macs as opposed
> to any other computer.
> 

Some Tech person had implied that Windows XP has some sort of special disk
cache operation whereas if it is waiting for a drive like this to boot-up -
that it will store the of  information elsewhere temporarily - or something
like that - that for the end user - will prevent what I saw on the Macintosh
- which amounts to the  spinning beach ball holding up all computer
operations  while the drive boots-up...

Personally - I have no idea of what this person said was true or not ... But
that's why I brought it up.

> One work around would be to have cron run a shell script that simply
> touches a file on the external drive every few minutes. The web is
> loaded with articles on OS X and the cron facility. CronniX is a free
> GUI wrapper for cron.  Use it to create a job like the following:
> 
> */4 * * * * /usr/bin/touch /Volumes/"Your HD name here"/.keepAlive
> 
> This would access the disk every 4 minutes. Change the 4 to the
> interval of your choice.
> 

This  sounds like a great solution to the problem.  Personally I have never
worked with chron or shell scripts - but it sounds like a great idea ... I
will check into this - thanks.

Again - sorry for the delay in responding to this e-mail

--
Thanks - RevDave
CoolCat at hosting4days.com
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