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Thanks!

Thanks!

You do have to jump through a few hoops to get it set up properly first, though. You can find out more info at the LinuxOrb web site.

Send an empty message to linuxorb-subscribe@tatoosh.com to subscribe.

There's also a web page at www.tatoosh.com/linuxorb/

I purchased two orb drives, and one extra disk (total of three disks). The extra disk I purchased had a sector error, but the drive supports sector remapping, so zeroing the disk will fix those problems. I returned the disk since it was only a week old. This seems to be a common problem; 3 of the 9 disks I know about have had some sort of problem; hopefully their quality control will improve over time.

The drives don't have excellent linux support. One needs windows to switch the drive from fixed to removable (or you're going to have problems treating them as removable disks). Also, they don't use a standard 'eject' IOCTL. Apparently, Castlewood are releasing the OEM manual so linux support can be written for these things.

Apart from those shortcomings, I think the drives are great. The media is convenient, and cheap (although signifigantly pricier here in Australia). The access time is noticably slower than a hard-drive, but the sustained throughput rate is excellent. (ie, I can dd if=/dev/orb very quick, but cp -axv of lots of little files is a tad slower than I'd like).

A warning, though. The place in the US I got it from was having troubles getting the media. So... buy a few extras if they're available.

Send an empty message to linuxorb-subscribe@tatoosh.com to subscribe.

There's also a web page at www.tatoosh.com/linuxorb/

I purchased two orb drives, and one extra disk (total of three disks). The extra disk I purchased had a sector error, but the drive supports sector remapping, so zeroing the disk will fix those problems. I returned the disk since it was only a week old. This seems to be a common problem; 3 of the 9 disks I know about have had some sort of problem; hopefully their quality control will improve over time.

The drives don't have excellent linux support. One needs windows to switch the drive from fixed to removable (or you're going to have problems treating them as removable disks). Also, they don't use a standard 'eject' IOCTL. Apparently, Castlewood are releasing the OEM manual so linux support can be written for these things.

Apart from those shortcomings, I think the drives are great. The media is convenient, and cheap (although signifigantly pricier here in Australia). The access time is noticably slower than a hard-drive, but the sustained throughput rate is excellent. (ie, I can dd if=/dev/orb very quick, but cp -axv of lots of little files is a tad slower than I'd like).

A warning, though. The place in the US I got it from was having troubles getting the media. So... buy a few extras if they're available.

Send an empty message to linuxorb-subscribe@tatoosh.com to subscribe.

There's also a web page at www.tatoosh.com/linuxorb/

I purchased two orb drives, and one extra disk (total of three disks). The extra disk I purchased had a sector error, but the drive supports sector remapping, so zeroing the disk will fix those problems. I returned the disk since it was only a week old. This seems to be a common problem; 3 of the 9 disks I know about have had some sort of problem; hopefully their quality control will improve over time.

The drives dont have excellent linux support. YOU need windows to switch the drive from fixed to removable (or you're going to have problems treating them as removable disks). Also, they dont use a standard 'eject' IOCTL. Apparently, Castlewood are releasing the OEM manual so linux support can be written for these things.

Apart from those shortcomings, I think the drives are great. The media is convenient, and cheap (although signifigantly pricier here in Australia). The access time is noticably slower than a hard-drive, but the sustained throughput rate is excellent. (ie, I can dd if=/dev/orb very quick, but cp -axv of lots of little files is a tad slower than I'd like).

A warning, though. The place in the US I got it from was having troubles getting the media. So.. buy a few extras if they're available.

Send an empty message to linuxorb-subscribe@tatoosh.com to subscribe.

There's also a web page at www.tatoosh.com/linuxorb/

I purchased two orb drives, and one extra disk (total of three disks). The extra disk I purchased had a sector error, but the drive supports sector remapping, so zeroing the disk will fix those problems. I returned the disk since it was only a week old. This seems to be a common problem; 3 of the 9 disks I know about have had some sort of problem; hopefully their quality control will improve over time.

The drives dont have excellent linux support. YOU need windows to switch the drive from fixed to removable (or you're going to have problems treating them as removable disks). Also, they dont use a standard 'eject' IOCTL. Apparently, Castlewood are releasing the OEM manual so linux support can be written for these things.

Apart from those shortcomings, I think the drives are great. The media is convenient, and cheap (although signifigantly pricier here in Australia). The access time is noticably slower than a hard-drive, but the sustained throughput rate is excellent. (ie, I can dd if=/dev/orb very quick, but cp -axv of lots of little files is a tad slower than I'd like).

A warning, though. The place in the US I got it from was having troubles getting the media. So.. buy a few extras if they're available.

The Castlewood Orb drive is a 2.2G removable, $199 for IDE and SCSI interface, $30 per cart. It kinda works with Linux (see www.tatoosh.com/linuxorb), I've had mixed success with mine so far.

Brian