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LaCie Releases 500GB Add On Drives

Glewtion writes "LaCie has release their "Big Disk" - a large capacity FireWire case (400 / 500GB) with decent specs. The only thing they're not clear on is the fact that there are two drives in the case...but that only seems logical. Looks like it's only available in Europe though, so here's a link to a French Hardware site's description of it (translation courtesy of Google). Pretty cool for a portable MP3 collection. Here's the LaCie page." What's not apparant is that this case has two drives in it apparantly. Very Slick.

393 comments

  1. And, in case you didn't notice... by srw · · Score: 5, Funny

    they're not clear about the fact there are two drives in the case!

    1. Re:And, in case you didn't notice... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I marked it informative because I didn't know it had 2 hard drives in the case! Wouldn't you?

    2. Re:And, in case you didn't notice... by CableModemSniper · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Post anon from a different computer, get a new ip or post under an alternative account next time

      --
      Why not fork?
    3. Re:And, in case you didn't notice... by Henry+V+.009 · · Score: 0, Redundant

      Apparently, slashdot is apparently no longer content with repeating stories, it is now repeating itself within the story itself now. Apparently. It's repeating itself.

    4. Re:And, in case you didn't notice... by mobets · · Score: 1, Funny

      would somebody please mod the parent post as redundant

      --

      It was me, I did it, I moved your cheese
    5. Re:And, in case you didn't notice... by Iguanaphobic · · Score: 2

      I didn't know that either until I read the links. Then it was very apparent that it had two hard drives. Reading, what a gift.'

      --
      Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
    6. Re:And, in case you didn't notice... by augustz · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      Just lost my mod points...

    7. Re:And, in case you didn't notice... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, all you need to do is download a different browser, and login and post from that. You can have multiple logins running simultaneously this way

    8. Re:And, in case you didn't notice... by bo0push3r · · Score: 1

      What I need to know is how many drives the thing has in it!

    9. Re:And, in case you didn't notice... by n9hmg · · Score: 1
      Even from the Google translation, I don't see why it must be mentioned twice that this statement
      Out of standard, considering each one of these storage units integrates two hard disks and a bridge FW/RAID, it is possible to configure them in RAID 1 (Mirroring) or RAID 0 (Stripping).
      is too difficult to understand. On the other hand, nowhere on LaCie's site could I find even the raid capability noted, which would have implied multiple discrete devices.
    10. Re:And, in case you didn't notice... by sharkey · · Score: 3, Funny

      RAID 0 (Stripping)

      Ooooo, take it off, baby! Work those spindles! Oh yeah, oh yeah.

      --

      --
      "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
    11. Re:And, in case you didn't notice... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For proper aesthetics, it really needs to be (+5, redundant)

      Is that possible? maybe 5 underrated mods and one redundant mod would do it...

    12. Re:And, in case you didn't notice... by Henry+V+.009 · · Score: 2

      Redundant=4 Funny=2

      Hehehe. I think we have a good measurement of the average slashdot moderator right here.

  2. Redundancy... by Radi-0-head · · Score: 5, Funny

    So is this disk as redundant as the editor's comments?

    1. Re:Redundancy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, it's as redundant as yours.

    2. Re:Redundancy... by glenebob · · Score: 4, Funny

      It may not be apparant, but apparantly so.

    3. Re:Redundancy... by G-funk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or mp3???

      Well by my quick calculations based on my own mp3 collection (a measly 11gb and 169 hours), 500gib is about 320 days playback non-stop for an mp3 collection, and although there are people who just collect mp3s like they're matchbox cars, I find it hard to believe anybody can identify 320 days worth of music they actually like.

      --
      Send lawyers, guns, and money!
    4. Re:Redundancy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it may not be apparant, it may only by apparent.

    5. Re:Redundancy... by fusiongyro · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Maybe it's not for Mp3s. I'm interested in converting my audio collection to FLAC format so I don't have to tolerate loss of quality. If I do that, I computed that my puny 15 GB colletion would take up about 100 GB, maybe more. And so I have room to grow, I'd want to have more like 300 or 400 GB of free space to do this.

      I've been planning on buying a RAID set up to accomplish this. RAID, as you all know, uses more than one disk. You all know, apparantly, that the R in RAID is for redundancy. I'm not being redundant, I hope. RAID would give me the room for this, as you all know, by using one disk.

      Apparantly.

      So like, I need a lot of space. And this looks cool (though it might not be obvious). :)

      --
      Daniel

    6. Re:Redundancy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the .ape format is the most popular for lossless compression at this point - at least on the newsgroups .. and irc ..

      theres a thread on how to get it to work in Linux here:
      http://www.monkeysaudio.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/Ya BB.cgi? board=Developers&action=display&num=1018832394

    7. Re:Redundancy... by aero6dof · · Score: 3, Funny

      Remember to re-post this comment next week when the story is repeated.

    8. Re:Redundancy... by matt-fu · · Score: 3, Informative

      I find it hard to believe anybody can identify 320 days worth of music they actually like.

      Yeah, that's a lot of music. Over 7000 albums worth of music, in fact. I think that at the 500 gig point though, you're storing more than just mp3s. You're storing DivXes, ISOs, old email, etc. I built a 240G server a few months ago and I've been really surprised at how much space I've taken up on it just from being sloppy about what I keep around and what I don't.

      Another thing to consider is that if you have 500G worth of storage you can actually store your music as wavs instead of putting up with mp3s, which is a nice thing if you are seriously backing up your CD collection.

    9. Re:Redundancy... by StuffYourReligion · · Score: 0, Redundant

      So I take it that no one is feeling feisty and mean-spirited enough to mod #4816268 down as... (oh, I dare not say it!)...um, ok, I'll say it... REDUNDANT?

      --
      I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious. --Albert Einstein
    10. Re:Redundancy... by pVoid · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Hey dude,

      I don't know about you, and I'm not trying to be snob or stylish or anything, but if I go to HMV, 40% of the Jazz collection attracts my attention. That's a whole floor of CDs probably 500 days worth of music.

      And that's *only* jazz.

    11. Re:Redundancy... by G-funk · · Score: 2

      Yeah you're right, i forgot about stuff like jazz... I was thinking more rock/techno/hip-hop/rnb where 90% of what's released is utter shit...

      --
      Send lawyers, guns, and money!
    12. Re:Redundancy... by jonathan_ingram · · Score: 2

      APE and FLAC are the two main formats.

      APE is fine if you're on Windows, but it has a very unclear licence and the non-Windows version is completely unsupported/unmaintained.

      FLAC does not compress as well as APE, but decompression uses a *lot* less processing time, the format and code are both completely open, and they're integrating themselves into the Ogg framework.

      With Speex, Vorbis, and FLAC all using the Ogg framework, Ogg audio covers low bitrate voice, medium bitrate music, and high bitrate lossless archival.

    13. Re:Redundancy... by Kintanon · · Score: 2

      If you snagged like... 5 of these big ol' drives you could get damn near every work of classical music ever written, and probably store it in .WAV so you don't have to lose all of your background instruments.... Mmmmmm.....

      Kintanon

      --
      Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
    14. Re:Redundancy... by the_rev_matt · · Score: 2

      Hmmm, I've got 95g worth right now, and I haven't started in on my classical CDs/LPs or Jazz or Blues yet. Based on my rock/pop collection, I figure when all my Classical/Jazz/Blues are on there, it will be about 350g. That's not including at least 60 titles I haven't bought yet that I want (King Crimson has been releasing several albums/year lately that I haven't caught up with, and I only half about half of Zappa's catalog thus far, add to that great older albums being released on CD for the first time...).

      --
      this is getting old and so are you

      blog

    15. Re:Redundancy... by SavingPrivateNawak · · Score: 1

      I hope you're not talking about converting your 15GB of MP3 into 100GB of FLAC!!

      Would be stupid, but hey we're on /. and you weren't clear enough...

    16. Re:Redundancy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While I certainly can't identify every individual song, I'm the sort who goes by artist and not song. As such I assure you that if I ever do get all the music I want and would listen to, it would certainly take up even more than 500gigs (if in mp3 form).

      For example, while I can't name every single recording he's ever done off the top of my head, I know that anything Charlie Parker is in is worth having. Same with John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon, and a number of other jazz artists.

      Classical wise, it gets even huger. Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven of course, and add Debussy, Chopin, Shostakovitch, Berlioz, Bruch, Weber, Scarlatti, etc. etc. etc....

      There's a lot of good music out there, I'm sure I could fill 500gigs and more.

  3. Mmmmm..... by Marxist+Commentary · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Pr0n...

    Lots and lots o' pr0n...

  4. Redundant case notice is redundant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wonder how many jokes can be made of this??

    oh yeah lots of pron too

  5. Coming to Australia soon by Zeddicus_Z · · Score: 5, Informative

    We have one of these babies in the labs right now for review. According to LaCiE they'll be released in Australia (and I would assume, althought I may be wrong) and Asia/Pacific soon - probably for Xmas.

    --
    Janie took my gun...
    1. Re:Coming to Australia soon by G-funk · · Score: 2

      As an aussie, I'm wondering do you have any idea on the local price?

      --
      Send lawyers, guns, and money!
    2. Re:Coming to Australia soon by FrenZon · · Score: 3, Informative

      200GB - $1062

      400GB - $1852

      500GB - $2256

      From zytech.com.au

    3. Re:Coming to Australia soon by zbuffered · · Score: 1

      Good god, I Certainly hope that's AUD and not USD. (1USD ~= 2AUD)

      --
      Synergy is your friend
    4. Re:Coming to Australia soon by Cutriss · · Score: 2

      If you had checked the link in the story, you'd see the pricing of $899 US for the 500 GB model.

      --
      "Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
    5. Re:Coming to Australia soon by FrenZon · · Score: 2

      Actually, those prices were AUD - I had meant to reply to the other poster who was asking about AU prices, but slashdot's lynx interface was a bit naff, so I replied to the parent of that post.

  6. 500 GB... by urbazewski · · Score: 3, Interesting
    great --- I'll never have to delete another email.

    annmariabell.com

    --
    foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
    1. Re:500 GB... by TitusC3v5 · · Score: 1

      "great --- I'll never have to delete another email."

      Forget that, with that much space I can keep at LEAST a third of my porn collection readily available...

      --
      And the masses cried out, "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
  7. dept. of redundancy dept. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "'The only thing they're not clear on is the fact that there are two drives in the case...' ...
    What's not apparant (sic) is that this case has two drives in it apparantly (sic)."

    Uh huh.

    1. Re:dept. of redundancy dept. by wirelessbuzzers · · Score: 1

      Not to mention that your comment is redundant (mine too, in fact). We could win the award of redundancy award.

      --
      I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
  8. Eh. by jonny-mt · · Score: 1

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but Firewire/USB 2.0 are slower than standard ATA100, which is in turn slower than Serial ATA, which is the future of hard drive technology, and is expected to debut with drives of several hundred gigs in size, reaching a terabyte in about a year, year and a half. Hmm. Can you say "instantly obsolete"?

    1. Re:Eh. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      A year and a half is instant?? You must be a geology major.

    2. Re:Eh. by noewun · · Score: 1
      1) Firewire2 will be 100 MB/sec.

      2) I have seen wayyyyyyy to many "this technology is the future" statements to ever trust one. Until it's actually out in the world and running, it's vaporware.

      --
      I am a believer of momentum and curves.
    3. Re:Eh. by A+non+moose+cow · · Score: 2

      ...and since max sustained data rate from most hard drives is about 40MB/s, unless you are using raid it does not really make that much difference how fast your drive bus is.

    4. Re:Eh. by InfernoBlade · · Score: 1

      1) Firewire 2 (1394b) is 3.2 Gbps, which is about 320 MB/sec accounting for 10b8 encoding on the line.

      2) agreed.

    5. Re:Eh. by JebusIsLord · · Score: 5, Informative

      OK so... Serial ATA debuts at 133MB/s AFAIK, while the current ATA/6 Spec is also 133MB/s. Firewire runs at 400Mb/s, or rather 50MB/s if we are to convert. So yes, is a tad slower. HOWEVER, ATA/66 is generally considered fast enough for modern drives, since the average drive bursts slower than that. In fact, in a comparison of the 4 fastest IDE drives available at storagereview.com the western digital 200MB 7200RPM 8MB cache drive managed to win out with a sustained transfer rate of 16.4MB/s. I'm not even going to mention that IDE has a maximum cable length (32 inches i believe) that precludes its use externally, and firewire does not. So you were saying?

      --
      Jeremy
    6. Re:Eh. by Eric+Smith · · Score: 2
      IDE has a maximum cable length (32 inches i believe)
      18 inches, actually, according to the ATA standards. But just try to find ATA cables that short.
    7. Re:Eh. by jerrytcow · · Score: 2
      the western digital 200MB 7200RPM 8MB cache drive managed to win out with a sustained transfer rate of 16.4MB/s

      I think you were looking at seek times, my laptop drive gets better than 16 MB/sec. The WD 200JB gets almost 60 MB/sec transfer rate.

      Here's a review page for the WD 200 GB drive and others.

    8. Re:Eh. by JebusIsLord · · Score: 2

      It appears you are right about the 60MB/sec transfer rates, but the number I quoted was 3 pages past yours and was called "legacy transfer rates". I'm not really sure what this entails though - cacheless transfers? The numbers you presented do seem more relevant. Either way its below half of what ATA/133 is capable of, and 60MB/sec is exactly what USB2.0 does theoretically.

      --
      Jeremy
    9. Re:Eh. by Perdo · · Score: 2

      Smoking the herb tonight? THe drive you linked to transfers at 56 MB/s per second. The Maxtor drives used in LaCie's housing transfer at 60 MB/s. In a striped raid array, those disks would push 90 MB/s sustained transfer.

      Buy the bare drives if you need the space. The houseing, along with firewire's limited performance, will gate the performance of these drives which otherwise could almost double the performance of the Lacie unit, at a significant discount in cost.

      --

      If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.

    10. Re:Eh. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Hmm. Can you say "instantly obsolete"?


      Let me try ... instantly obsolete ... yes I can!

    11. Re:Eh. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Smoking the herb tonight?

      IN SOVIET RUSSIA, HERB SMOKES YOU! (then you are dead).

    12. Re:Eh. by pctainto · · Score: 1

      Well, firewire cables were originally limited to 4.5 meters, yet now they can get to 10 meters... and longer with repeaters. So, firewire doesn't have a max cable length, supposedely, but, you lose so much by having a longer cable.

      --
      I think my principles are reachin' an all time low
    13. Re:Eh. by MrResistor · · Score: 2

      60MB/sec is exactly what USB2.0 does theoretically.

      Yeah, but in the real world Firewire is faster than USB2.0.

      --
      Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
    14. Re:Eh. by MrResistor · · Score: 2

      Finding them isn't the issue, you can find 18" ATA cables if you look. The problem is using them, their just too damned short! They're barely usable for one drive, and for two drives you'd need a custom (very cramped) case. That's why you don't see them at your local computer store; nobody wants them!

      If you really want a drive cable that's hard to find, though, try finding a laptop IDE cable (44-pin) that's 18", or even longer than 6" for that matter.

      --
      Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
    15. Re:Eh. by Eric+Smith · · Score: 2
      Which is, of course, why Serial ATA is spec'd for cable lengths up to 1M.

      If I had to set up a server today, using plain 'ol parallel IDE drives on a plain 'ol IDE port, I'd stick Serial ATA adapters on everything and dump the parallel cables entirely.

    16. Re:Eh. by phaserzen-x · · Score: 1

      That refers to Programmed I/O transfers, aka non-DMA. The fastest form of PIO transfers is Mode 4, which supports a maximum of 16.6MB/sec. Keep in mind though that such a drive on a USB2 bus will completely saturate it... you'll probably want that drive on it's own root hub if you use anything more than maybe a mouse and keyboard.

  9. There are two drives in the case. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are you sure? I didn't get that from the post.

  10. Please use spellcheck by I+Am+The+Owl · · Score: 1, Flamebait
    What's not apparant is that this case has two drives in it apparantly. Very Slick.

    Apparently, you are unfamiliar with spellcheck. Come on, this isn't even a contextual error. There is no apparant in the English language. I pity the loosers who pay to read this crap.

    --

    --sdem
    1. Re:Please use spellcheck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
      I pity the loosers who pay to read this crap.

      And you misspelled losers intentionally for irony, right?
    2. Re:Please use spellcheck by paul248 · · Score: 1

      I sure hope your mispelling of "loosers" was intentional. (yes, my misspelling of "misspelling" was intetional)

    3. Re:Please use spellcheck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But what about your spelling of intentional?

    4. Re:Please use spellcheck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Was it as intentional as your misspelling of "intentional"?

    5. Re:Please use spellcheck by paul248 · · Score: 1

      atcually, yes it was.

    6. Re:Please use spellcheck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      YBHT. YHL. HAND.

    7. Re:Please use spellcheck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      YHBT. YLH. HAND.

    8. Re:Please use spellcheck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey!!! Stupid motherfucker!!!! You mispelled YHBT!!!!!!! God damn, there are some non-shit-spelled-correctly motherfuckers on this Interweb.

    9. Re:Please use spellcheck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Damn your troll cuntmouth, it's YHL. Is that you, Taco? Illiterate motherfuckers.

    10. Re:Please use spellcheck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      This comment was beyond "spellecheck." It makes you wonder why someone actually paid $6Million--during the dotcom boom--for the illiterate kids who run slashdot.

    11. Re:Please use spellcheck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      loosers ?
      kettle...pot...

    12. Re:Please use spellcheck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      YHBT. YHL. HNAD.

    13. Re:Please use spellcheck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Looks pretty loose to me...

    14. Re:Please use spellcheck by martyn+s · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      You misspelled "Miss Peld".

    15. Re:Please use spellcheck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only thing they're not clear on is the fact that there are two drives in the case...

      What's not apparant is that this case has two drives in it apparantly.

      there's TWO drives in that case!

      +1 Informative plskthxbye

  11. ATTN: COMEDY ALERT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    not funny, no, not at all.. sorry sir.. emails are well.. no this is just unexplainibly not funny

  12. Wow by echorun · · Score: 1

    Wow, I remember when double density floppys were the greatest thing since sliced bread. First HD I bought was 10 megs I forget what insane price I paid for it too, now I keep that much on my keychain. Isn't tech grand? Can't wait for another 15 years when I'll have 500 gigs on my key chain.

    --
    The human condition is to not accept the human condition.
    1. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      "Can't wait for another 15 years when I'll have 500 gigs on my key chain."

      ...and the US government will have 500TB on you and everyone else.

      Sorry, I know its OT but I'm kinda pessamistic about future tech when the gov seems a little eager to use it to open my asshole a little wider. Can't be hiding anything up there, can we?

  13. what's also apparent by dzym · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... is that the editor apparently cannot spell apparent. And not only did he apparently misspell it once, he apparently misspelt it twice.

    1. Re:what's also apparent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, but no use crying over spelled milk.

    2. Re:what's also apparent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      apparently

    3. Re:what's also apparent by xenofalcon · · Score: 1

      Perhaps they have been using a spellchecker all along to induce these errors, thereby providing material for funny comments.

      I say it's a conspiracy.

  14. The Only Thing They're Not Clear On... by istartedi · · Score: 0, Troll

    ...is that there are two slashdot mentionings of the two drives in the case in the article in case whoever reads the article about the two drives in the case doesn't understand that there are two drives in the case.

    --
    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
  15. Portable mp3's? by neksys · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Christ... by my rough calculations, you could hold 8,000-10,000 full albums on that sucker, if we assume that you have about 14 tracks on an album, with each track being about 4 megs. That's an ungodly amount of music - sometimes these little "comments" people add to their stories just irritate me. They seem to exist solely for the wannabe geek factor... I can almost see the submitter thinking, "Hey, what additional comments can I add that will *impress* people? I'm a geek too, right?"

    1. Re:Portable mp3's? by qbwiz · · Score: 1

      It'll only take 4 years to fill up with my dial-up modem! Only 1 year to listen to all the music! W00t! Too bad they'll probably have 5 TB drives out by then...

      --
      Ewige Blumenkraft.
    2. Re:Portable mp3's? by ottothecow · · Score: 2, Interesting
      why can I only get this as firewire? I WANT ONE IN MY CASE

      my mp3 server would love 500gb in a 5.25 drivebay, and that is plenty fast for playing mp3s. And if you need it faster and faster just raid-0 it and go.

      I have never really be a fan of the external drive (what good is a 48x burner on USB 1)as a nice ribbon cable has always been faster than whatever I can plug into the back of my case (external scsi exempt) but firewire and firewire 2 are looking good. Personally I prefer them to USB2.0 but I hope that the competition makes them a standard not an obscurity.

      --
      Bottles.
    3. Re:Portable mp3's? by Cyno01 · · Score: 2

      ITS TWO DRIVES!, its not a 500GB drive, its 2 250s. Thats still a lot of music, i've had a 20GB(18.6) archos jukebox for almost a year now and its still not full.

      --
      "Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
    4. Re:Portable mp3's? by stratjakt · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm pretty sure the target for these isn't billy hardcores mp3 collection, or filthy mcnasties porn jamboree.

      MP3s are small potatoes. Even the most 'hardcore' I've seen have no more than a few dozen cd-rs full. It's hardly the killer app for big storage.

      These would be good in settings where one would need to archive big amounts of data, and still retain access to it in the short term. Maybe raw video footage, maybe great big uncompressed image files - blueprints or the like. I could think offhand I could use one of these to store all the ghost images of all the different workstations I would need to rebuild, and be able to carry it around.

      You know, big stuff.

      I guess someone could get one just to 'brag' about it.

      Either way, it's 2 200+ gig drives in a raid array. It's not like it couldn't already be done. You can already buy a little box to convert your IDE drive to an external firewire. So put the two together, you have this.

      --
      I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
    5. Re:Portable mp3's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I doubt it'd take up just one bay. In case you didn't read the article, this is two drives mounted in an external case. And at $899, unless you're out of spare internal drive bays, you'd be better off just buying two or three 180GB IDE drives and RAIDing them.

    6. Re:Portable mp3's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What? You mean you don't have 500GBs of mp3s?!? What a loser....

      You, sir, should get off slashdot. This is news for nerds, after all.....

      Personally, though, I'm finding this rather lacking....If only they came out with a 1TB version, I could get nearly everything on there! Oh well, I guess I'll have to use those bitrate strippers.

      (Upon a second read, that also seems to describe my social life pretty well.... bit-rate strippers)

    7. Re:Portable mp3's? by Kenshin · · Score: 2
      I'm pretty sure the target for these isn't billy hardcores mp3 collection, or filthy mcnasties porn jamboree

      Hey! Don't insult Philty McNasty! He's a perfectly upstanding member of my community! I watch wrestling at his place all the time...

      --

      Does it make you happy you're so strange?

    8. Re:Portable mp3's? by quinto2000 · · Score: 1, Redundant
      Video editing requires a much faster harddrive than the specs mention. Firewire is not up to snuff.

      Perhaps video archiving though.

      --
      Ceci n'est pas un post
    9. Re:Portable mp3's? by PhoenixFlare · · Score: 1

      "I'm pretty sure the target for these isn't billy hardcores mp3 collection, or filthy mcnasties porn jamboree. MP3s are small potatoes. Even the most 'hardcore' I've seen have no more than a few dozen cd-rs full. It's hardly the killer app for big storage."

      I'm guessing you're not a college student...I'm certainly not "billy hardcore", but I personally have 16 gigs and counting worth of just mp3's, and I can guarantee you there's people around here with even more.

      Not to mention DVD rips, pr0n, copies of game CD's, full backups, etc.....I know plenty of "normal" people who would kill for something like one of those drives, and not just to brag about it.

    10. Re:Portable mp3's? by be-fan · · Score: 2

      You've obviously never seen those DirectConnect servers that require you to share 100GB before they even let you in...

      --
      A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
    11. Re:Portable mp3's? by mhesseltine · · Score: 2
      Perhaps video archiving though.
      Translation...Pr0table Pr0n!!
      --
      Overrated / Underrated : Moderation :: Anonymous Coward : Posting
    12. Re:Portable mp3's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have 6500 MP3's on my workstation alone. If I, the average-user(tm) would need this, then obviously there's half a million other average Joe's out there that would be interested as well.

      So.. In the words of the great Sam Kinison..

      Shut the fuck up. (Hey, I'm sure he said it at least once..)

    13. Re:Portable mp3's? by majestynine · · Score: 5, Funny

      Insert standard comments:

      -Wow thats a lot of storage for all my porn
      ---I have more porn than you
      -----You're both fucking loosers

      -When is this possibly going to be adopted by consumers?

      -How are we going to back this much space up?
      ---With another disc/drive, stupid!

      -Bah, I still use 5 1/2 floppies
      ---You are a smelly gnu/hippy

      -Wow, the MPAA/RIAA/whoever it is we're hating this week/Disney are really going to hate this!

    14. Re:Portable mp3's? by stratjakt · · Score: 1

      Well, I meant archiving. Somewhere to put that ginormous raw frames avi file while you encode it or take it to your boss/director for approval.

      My point was that I just don't see this as a target for mp3 collectors, or something remotely useful for them.

      I mean, even if you have 80 zillion mp3s, chances that you need to have them all with you when you're riding the bus to school are pretty slim.

      But, then.. I'm sure euro-geeks are all lined up to get one.

      A fool and his money, and all that.

      --
      I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
    15. Re:Portable mp3's? by Wheel+Of+Fish · · Score: 3, Informative

      Firewire certainly is up to snuff for video editing. With a 400MB/s bus speed, the limitation is with the drive itself. You need at least a 7200RPM drive to play back and edit standard def video in real time.

      I have a 120GB 7200 RPM Western Digital firewire hard drive (Mac formatted) that I use for editing with Final Cut, and another WD 80GB 7200 RPM firewire drive (PC formatted) for Premiere and Avid use. They're very handy when you need to float between editing stations - just plug in the drive and pick up where you left off.

      A 500 GB drive would be great (the 120 gigger is already half full), but you're right about this drive's specs - it just isn't fast enough.

    16. Re:Portable mp3's? by Stonent1 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Video editing requires a much faster harddrive than the specs mention. Firewire is not up to snuff.

      Oh? Then how did people video edit 4 years ago when no drives weren't as fast as firewire is today?

    17. Re:Portable mp3's? by Blkdeath · · Score: 2
      I'm guessing you're not a college student...I'm certainly not "billy hardcore", but I personally have 16 gigs and counting worth of just mp3's, and I can guarantee you there's people around here with even more.
      "A few dozen" - let's say two dozen @ 800MB/disc = 24*800 = 19.2GB. Let's assume three dozen = 36*800 = 28.8GB. Four dozen = 48*800 = 38.4GB.

      Sorry, it's late and I got irked, but we're still not up at the .5TB range.

      --
      BD Phone Home!

      Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.

    18. Re:Portable mp3's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think that we are the average-user. We may be the top 1% of them. Anyways 5,000 mp3s = 30GB, so 83,333 mp3s would be needed to fill 500GB.

      There would be a lot of crappy songs unless the artists start making a lot of quality songs pretty soon.

      Now putting one of these things in a Tivo would make sense.

    19. Re:Portable mp3's? by NMerriam · · Score: 2

      While you wouldn't physically fit this in a case since it is two drives, it is worth noting that firewire and USB 2.0 are both internal and external specs. Most firewire cards have an internal connector for firewire drives inside the case, and I've noticed it on the USB boards we've gotten lately. Serial ATA only makes sense because it is backwards compatible, but internal firwire is a much better bus...

      --
      Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
    20. Re:Portable mp3's? by NMerriam · · Score: 2

      Video editing requires a much faster harddrive than the specs mention. Firewire is not up to snuff.

      huh? People have been editing digital video for years on systems much slower than this. Broadcast quality DV is actually pretty low bitrate compared to the 25+ Mbit/sec throughput you had to have a few years ago when everything was analog. We run an entire DV editing lab off of systems built with stock 5400 RPM IDE drives. You used to have to have SCSI RAID systems just to keep from dropping frames during capture.

      --
      Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
    21. Re:Portable mp3's? by 0x0d0a · · Score: 2

      insert standard comments

      -- We're sure going to need this much space for the next version of Windows!

    22. Re:Portable mp3's? by d-man · · Score: 2, Funny

      You seem to have forgotten:

      Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!

      1) Buy one of these.
      3) Profit.

      --
      Unix: Where /sbin/init is still Job 1.
    23. Re:Portable mp3's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, you probably want the Slashdot Autoresponses:

      http://slashdot.org/~TrollBurger/journal/8262

    24. Re:Portable mp3's? by ottothecow · · Score: 1
      How many emo kids does it take to change a lightbulb?

      none, they would rather sit around in the dark and cry about it

      How many flys does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

      Two, but how do you get them in there?

      --
      Bottles.
    25. Re:Portable mp3's? by mosch · · Score: 2
      400 gigs would also be enough to hold about 1000 cds in a losslessly compressed format, which is... not enough to hold all my cds. it'd also hold about 80 or so dvds, which is.... not enough to hold all my dvds. and those aren't even interesting applications.

      it'll hold about 10 hours of 48 track 24/88.2 audio, a small fraction of an engineering firm's drawings or a small fraction of the raw video used by a film editor. people with servers that can boot from firewire could use them as a portable emergency recovery drive...

      The fact that you don't currently have a use for a nicely packaged, relatively inexpensive mass storage device does not mean that nobody needs one.

      if you really think that 400 gig firewire drives exist solely to stroke egos, go to a therapist now, because you're a pathetically insecure fuck.

    26. Re:Portable mp3's? by skaffen42 · · Score: 1

      Silly geeks! This won't impress anybody! Everyone knows it's not the size that matters, it's what you do with it that counts.

      :)

      --
      People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this.
    27. Re:Portable mp3's? by PhoenixFlare · · Score: 1

      "Sorry, it's late and I got irked, but we're still not up at the .5TB range."

      There's one person here on our DC(DirectConnect) hub sharing 421 GB at the moment, and several more at 100-290 GB....Not quite there yet, but give em time :)

      Might not be legitimate/legal stuff, but hey, a need is a need.

    28. Re:Portable mp3's? by pVoid · · Score: 2
      You're a geek, but you're wrong.

      I have roughly 60 Gigs worth of mp3s, and, I SHIT YOU NOT: I haven't even scratched the surface of what I want in terms of Jazz.

      500 is just a number, and I'm pretty sure I'll get there pretty quickly if I can afford it.

    29. Re:Portable mp3's? by mixmasta · · Score: 1

      I've got 377G of wav files, 30gb of mp3, and 330G of dvd iso's on an array at work. heh heh

      I'll take two. =P

      --
      #6495ED - cornflower blue
    30. Re:Portable mp3's? by machine+of+god · · Score: 1

      Wait, now I'm confused. How many library of congresses is that?

    31. Re:Portable mp3's? by Big+Jason · · Score: 2, Informative

      Dude, Firewire in its current incarnation is 400 megabits/sec, or roughly 50 megabytes/sec. I believe 1.2Gbps is coming.

    32. Re:Portable mp3's? by Hes+Nikke · · Score: 1

      says the man with the 6 GB HD :P

      --
      Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
    33. Re:Portable mp3's? by dildatron · · Score: 2

      it depends on what you are talking about. firewire is plenty fast for joe blow to do DV editing. it is fast enough for linear editing.

      --


      If you had nuts on your chin, would they be chin nuts?
    34. Re:Portable mp3's? by cheezedawg · · Score: 3, Informative
      How on earth is firewire a "much better bus"?

      First generation 1.5 Gbps SATA is over 3 times faster than current 400 Mbps firewire, and 2nd gen 3.0 Gbps SATA will probably be out by the time the 1.6 Gbps firewire becomes a reality

      The only reason SATA can be backwards compatible is because the protocol is so dang flexible- it can also do a lot more than just standard PATA features

      SATA uses 250 mV signalling which makes it really easy to integrate it into ICs

      The 1.5 Gbps for SATA is dedicated to each port, rather than the shared bandwidth of a firewire port (the 63 devices per port or whatever the limit is)

      Native firewire storage devices are VERY hard to find, and non-native solutions are at the mercy of the firewire bridge chip on the device. The bandwidth that those chips can crank out is often as low as 12 MB/sec- nowhere near the 50 MB/sec potential of the bus or even an IDE drive.

      Don't get me wrong- firewire is pretty cool and there are a lot of good uses for it, but I think that SATA is a much better solution for storage, and I don't think that blanket claims like yours are justified.

      --
      "The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
    35. Re:Portable mp3's? by Alien+Being · · Score: 2

      "25+ Mbit/sec throughput you had to have a few years ago when everything was analog"

      Yeah, those old 'analog' bits were pretty lame %-P.

      I assume you meant 'uncompressed'.

    36. Re:Portable mp3's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      And isn't it also funny that 10000 albums equates to 150000 dollars assuming that they are on average 15 dollars and that one buys the albums (big assumption). And you don't think that this is promoting piracy of music (if thta is what this is dedicated to do).

    37. Re:Portable mp3's? by GMontag451 · · Score: 2

      Firewire is most certainly up to snuff. At 400 Mb/sec it can stream DV (26.5 Mb/sec) in real time quite easily. Hell, it could stream a full 1080i HDTV stream with 24-bit 96kHz audio (375.5 Mb/sec). There needs to be a (-1 Incorrect) moderation.

    38. Re:Portable mp3's? by GMontag451 · · Score: 2

      DV is 26 Mbit/sec.

    39. Re:Portable mp3's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And, what happened to "All Your MP3s Are Belong to This Disc"

    40. Re:Portable mp3's? by Hadlock · · Score: 2

      where does one go to sign up for somthing like this? seriously. i just hit the 100 gig mark about 2 months back... of course, i probably already have most of what they're sharing (non porn, at least)....

      --
      moox. for a new generation.
    41. Re:Portable mp3's? by Matey-O · · Score: 2

      But how much HAVEN'T you listened to? I mean, you've only got Two Ears.

      Don't you?

      --
      "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
    42. Re:Portable mp3's? by evilviper · · Score: 3, Informative
      Firewire certainly is up to snuff for video editing. With a 400MB/s bus speed, the limitation is with the drive itself.

      That would be nice if true... Unfortunately, the "B" in "MB" is LOWERCASE... i.e. It's 400 MegaBITS, not bytes... Meaning it's 1/8th that speed in MegaBYTES. That would make it 50MB... Although technically slightly slower than USB2.0, in real world tests, Firewire is FAR faster.

      http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/02q2/020426/w dfirewire-04.html
      http://www.barefeats.com/fire18.html
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    43. Re:Portable mp3's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just read the previous post again. All you need to know is there, with a bit of extra work.

    44. Re:Portable mp3's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The secret: Samba-mounted "650Mb" sparse files that only take up about 10kb each. >=]

    45. Re:Portable mp3's? by be-fan · · Score: 2

      Direct Connect is a p2p protocol. If you go to you can find out all about it.

      --
      A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
    46. Re:Portable mp3's? by GreenKiwi · · Score: 2

      With a 400MB/s bus speed, the limitation is with the drive itself.

      Ummm... NO.... it's 400mb/s!

      That amounts to about 50MB/s.

      So about half the speed of an ATA100 bus.

    47. Re:Portable mp3's? by zbuffered · · Score: 1

      In Russia, The drives add on to you!

      Uhm...

      Hmm...

      Hot grits!

      --
      Synergy is your friend
    48. Re:Portable mp3's? by quinto2000 · · Score: 1

      you're confusing megabit and megabyte.

      --
      Ceci n'est pas un post
    49. Re:Portable mp3's? by MrResistor · · Score: 2

      Unfortunately, the "B" in "MB" is LOWERCASE... i.e. It's 400 MegaBITS, not bytes... Meaning it's 1/8th that speed in MegaBYTES. That would make it 50MB.

      That's still plenty fast for video editing.

      I do customer service repair on top end digital video production equipment, specifically storage RAIDs. My typical test for current SCSI RAIDs is simultaneous playback and record of 2 50Mbps streams[1]. That's the bandwidth limit (or very close, anyway) of the best Digital Video Server you can buy, and nobody runs them as hard as I do.

      For one thing, 50Mbps is a ludicrous quality level, and I very much doubt anyone uses that level of quality in the real world (at least for standard TV). Also, if you're dealing with multiple streams at the same time you're going to be sitting at a switcher, not a PC.

      So, firewire should be more than adequate for any current non-live video editing purpose. If you're doing lots of effects rendering, though, it may not be adequate, and I know of desktop editing/rendering solutions which are SCSI-based for this reason (they often have the SCSI bus integrated into the card doing the rendering in order to eliminate the potential PCI bus limitations).

      [1] That's for a RAID3 LUN with 5 10kRPM drives (an additional LUN doesn't increase available bandwidth, just capacity) in a fibrechannel chassis. Sometimes I go as low as a single 36Mbps stream for older, slower drives (believe it or not, people are still using 4GB SCSI drives, albeit generally with 4 5-drive LUNs). I only go to 60Mbps on the rare occasions when I have 5 drives in a RAID0, although that's only one stream.

      Let me reiterate that this is a top quality video system. I don't know what the entire system costs, but I know that we sell a fully populated RAID chassis for for somewhere in the neighborhood of $50k, and it's just an accessory to the actual system, which has internally the RAID0 array listed above.

      Oh, and yes I do mean b, not B.

      Anyway, I'm not disagreeing with you, just putting your statements in the context of the parent post.

      --
      Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
    50. Re:Portable mp3's? by GMontag451 · · Score: 2

      No, I'm not. All the numbers in my post were in megabits. My number for the bandwidth of HDTV was incorrect though, because I did the calculations wrong. 1080i is approximately 746 Mbit/sec, which FireWire wouldn't be able to stream, although FireWire 2, which is supposed to be out sometime soon at 3.2 Gbps, would have no trouble streaming it.

    51. Re:Portable mp3's? by quinto2000 · · Score: 1

      You have your Capitalization wrong.

      --
      Ceci n'est pas un post
    52. Re:Portable mp3's? by GMontag451 · · Score: 2

      No I don't. What is wrong with you? Can you not read or something? The only units I used in either of my posts were Mb/sec, Mbit/sec and Mbps, all of which are acceptable unit abbreviations for megabit per second.

    53. Re:Portable mp3's? by Cyno01 · · Score: 2

      Q: How many indie-snobs does it take to change a lightbulb? ~obligatory i dunno A: You havn't heard that joke?!?

      --
      "Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
  16. warranty? by halo8 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The French Translation Page says it has a 2 year warranty.. yet the Company page says 1..

    Odd...

    --
    The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
    1. Re:warranty? by kguilber · · Score: 1

      I always knew the french were up to something. Them and their funny words with extra letters.

    2. Re:warranty? by sporty · · Score: 5, Funny

      Consider it a metric conversion error :)

      --

      -
      ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only

    3. Re:warranty? by punkass · · Score: 2

      Don't joke...have you ever read about the cluser that is the Metric Calendar?

      --
      "Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
    4. Re:warranty? by fenix+down · · Score: 1

      I'm more worried about all the emoticons in the comment part of that review page. Exactly how many smoking smilies do you need? I guess it's important to differentiate between smoking cigarettes and bowling pins, but it's just a little distracting. Well, he seems to be enjoying his pin, so who am I to judge...

    5. Re:warranty? by !splut · · Score: 5, Funny

      French years are shorter. They felt the American year was killing off their French culture.

      --
      The angel in the oatmeal.
    6. Re:warranty? by fobbman · · Score: 3, Funny

      Apparently it's because there are apparently two drives in the case, which would, apparently, mean that there are two one-year warrantees. Which would mean two years, apparently.

    7. Re:warranty? by Loki_1929 · · Score: 2

      "They felt the American year was killing off their French culture."

      Killing? ... Don't the French usually surrender when that starts happening?

      --
      -- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
    8. Re:warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Vous pouvez dire ce que vous voulez...nous, on s'en fou!

    9. Re:warranty? by Michael+Marxmeier · · Score: 1

      AFAIR the EU now requires a two years warranty
      on consumer parts. So they may offer a different
      warranty in the EU (or burden it on the
      distributor).

    10. Re:warranty? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      European law requires 2 years warranty as a minimum. So maybe it's european / international warrenty?

  17. YES by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    YES YOU ARE

    please do not mod this up as funny, because, sadly, it is not..

  18. it had to happen by newsdee · · Score: 5, Funny

    Earlier today I bought a 80gb usb2 drive.
    I knew computers are obsolete as soon as you leave the store, but this is ridiculous. :-)

  19. Re:How much time by Zebbers · · Score: 2

    people pay?

  20. Finally! by TiMac · · Score: 5, Funny
    SWEET! Now according to the "expert" here I'll have enough HD space on my Mac for a whole 50 minutes of video!

    Dumbass...

    --

    1. Re:Finally! by TiMac · · Score: 3, Informative
      Dammit...Shoulda hit Preview...

      "a whole 50 HOURS" of video.

      --

    2. Re:Finally! by Alexei · · Score: 1

      Re. your first comment: it's 50 hours.

    3. Re:Finally! by Cyno01 · · Score: 1

      Uncompressed avi can run like 3 gb a minute, still a ways off though.

      --
      "Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
    4. Re:Finally! by Hex4def6 · · Score: 1

      I think he made a typo; He probably meant only 60 minutes, not 6 per gig. The reason I think this is that he compares it to WMP 9'c codec, which can do 1.5 Hrs / gig according to his article.

      Makes sense to me.

    5. Re:Finally! by nuckin+futs · · Score: 1

      either the WMP9 codec is state of the art, or that's a typo. anyone can fit 1.5 hrs of video on 1 gig of space, but how good is the quality of the video? you have to reduce something to get it to fit. he might be comparing compressed versus uncompressed material.

    6. Re:Finally! by cyt0plas · · Score: 0

      > SWEET! Now according to the "expert" here [connectedhomemag.com] I'll have enough HD space on my Mac for a whole 50 minutes of video!

      ...Except at the speed of the interface, (hey, if I screw up my math, it's because I'm tired, and making this up as I go.

      500GB * 1000MB = 5,000,000 MB
      5,000,000 MB @ 50 MB/S = 100,000 seconds
      100,000 seconds = 1666+(2/3) hours
      1666+(2/3) hours = 69.444 days.

      So, it would take you 70 days to watch those 50 minutes. I hope you have a really long attention span.

      --
      Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
    7. Re:Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Get some sleep :) You meant minutes, not hours, and a figure of minutes 10 times lower than the figure you quoted for hours.

    8. Re:Finally! by TiMac · · Score: 2
      I don't think so.

      I think if he meant 60 minutes, he would have said 1 hour, to compare hours to hours. When was the last time you heard someone say "the nearest Exxon station is 1 to 1.5 miles down the road...but there's a Texaco 5280 feet away." Comparisons are generally made "Apples to Apples."

      Also, if it were a typo it wouldn't prove his point, because 1-1.5 hours of WMV is basically the same as 60 minutes of DV...its not a drastic difference, which he made it out to be.

      Additionally, because he made mention of the various Pro-Mac users that had commented on "Part 1" in "Part 2" he obviously read some...and at least the first 2 mention that same issue...I bet he would have changed or retracted it if it were a typo.

      --

    9. Re:Finally! by UserChrisCanter4 · · Score: 2

      No, he's correct. Your standard DV format does consume on the order of 1GB per 5 minutes of video. Of course, when you capture to WMP, you're playing compression games. Go ahead and compare the video quality, though, and you'll see where the issue comes up. It's like saying, "This 64MB MP3 player is better than that CD player over there, because it contains an hour of music in 1/11th the space". Well, yes, it does, and at a loss to the audio, or in the WMP example, video quality.

  21. Why not set up a RAID in a box? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    This would be slick if it could be configured as a RAID system. 250 MB in one box with its own backup.

    1. Re:Why not set up a RAID in a box? by TheOnlyCoolTim · · Score: 3, Funny

      Just in case you drop it in a lake or something, or the building burns down. Good idea!

      Tim

      --
      Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
    2. Re:Why not set up a RAID in a box? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah that 250MB RAID would rule!

    3. Re:Why not set up a RAID in a box? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Totally dude! You could back it up to a CD-R no problem.

  22. you are wrong by Slashdotess · · Score: 2

    firewire is 400 mb/s.. ata 100 is 100 mb/s (hence the 100)

    1. Re:you are wrong by Door-opening+Fascist · · Score: 4, Informative

      Beware the difference between megaBITS and megaBYTES. mb is megaBIT and MB is megaBYTE. One byte is eight times larger than one bit, so it turns out IEEE 1384 is slower by a factor of two than ATA/100.

      Also remember that this is interface bandwidth we're talking about. One fast 50MB/s drive is all that's needed to swamp an IEEE 1384 interface, whereas even ATA/100 can handle two of those suckers on a channel (ignoring master/slave issues).

    2. Re:you are wrong by bigsteve@dstc · · Score: 1
      Beware the difference between megaBITS and megaBYTES. mb is megaBIT and MB is megaBYTE. One byte is eight times larger than one bit ...

      ... unless you are talking about FAT bits.

    3. Re:you are wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      You mean like my ATA 33 IDE interface and drives only transfer at 4.5MB/sec and my ATA 100 RAID IDE interface and drives (supposedly 60MB/sec sustained) only transfer at 26MB/sec?

      Claiming ATA100 transfer rate to be 100MB/sec is like claiming to users their DSL can go up to 6mbit (because of the modem) when you know that the isp only has a T1 out to the bone.

    4. Re:you are wrong by frohike · · Score: 2

      Also remember that this is interface bandwidth we're talking about. One fast 50MB/s drive is all that's needed to swamp an IEEE 1384 interface, whereas even ATA/100 can handle two of those suckers on a channel (ignoring master/slave issues).

      I could rob a bank for a million dollars! (ignoring law enforcement issues) ;) I hate to deflate that comment there, but you can't ignore the master/slave issues when making such a comparison :)

    5. Re:you are wrong by Sheepy · · Score: 2, Informative

      mb is millibit - not very useful Mb is megabit MB is megabyte But see also kibi (Ki), mebi (Mi), gibi (Gi), tebi (Ti), pebi (Pi) and exbi (Ei).

    6. Re:you are wrong by sc2_ct · · Score: 1

      The standard is 1394, not 1384.

    7. Re:you are wrong by DigitalCrackPipe · · Score: 1

      How many ATA drives can sustain 50MB/s? Last I checked they ususally can only write at a max of 20-30MB/s, so you're not loosing much at all except the burst transfer. However, these may be raid, so you're loosing a little, but if you don't want a firewire drive don't get one :)

    8. Re:you are wrong by Mortanius · · Score: 1

      Well, technically, mb would be a microbit, assuming tech follows the standard abbreviations. Not sure how you pull off a fraction of a bit, but if you can, more power to you.

  23. Talk about alot of space... by spoons67 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But one question. Though its been made terribly obvious to us that it's two drives, does it appear as two drives to your computer? If so, how does it manage that?

    --
    Begun, this browser war has.
    1. Re:Talk about alot of space... by TiMac · · Score: 1

      Only if it were a RAID I guess...moderator....might want to mod this up! Insightful, Interesting...something.

      --

    2. Re:Talk about alot of space... by Door-opening+Fascist · · Score: 2

      I'm guessing some form of RAID is used. Either striping or JBOD would make sense here, although they'd better be damn certain the drives don't fail, as either of them leaves you SOL if a drive fails and you haven't been backing up.

    3. Re:Talk about alot of space... by BrookHarty · · Score: 2

      I'd like to know if the drives show up as 1 or 2 drives. Also can you raid firewire drives? How about booting off firewire? :)

    4. Re:Talk about alot of space... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      The process that you describe has been available since Windows 2000 came out, under the feature called 'dynamic disc'.

      Oh, and while you were under your rock, the rest of mankind also invented the wheel, and this thing called, 'fire'. It's really great to light your bong with.

    5. Re:Talk about alot of space... by BiOFH · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      The process that you describe has been available since Windows 2000 came out, under the feature called 'dynamic disc'.

      The operating system you mention has been a piece of shit since... forever.

      Why do you insist on assuming some piss-poor Windows "feature" is the answer? It's much more likely to be hardware based since (now get this) 'not everyone uses Windows' and it clearly states it's for PC or Mac.

      Asshat.

      --
      - I am made of meat.
    6. Re:Talk about alot of space... by Door-opening+Fascist · · Score: 2

      I would assume so. Firewire drives are of the same construction as ATA drives, just with a different interface. I'm not sure about booting though, as that would probably take firmware upgrade in the BIOS.

  24. MOD PARENT AS OFFTOPIC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    nevertheless redundant.

  25. Apparently you can't spell 'apparantly' by payote · · Score: 0

    Spell check. please.

    --


    Never pet a burning dog.
  26. 19.6% Sales tax?!?!?! by Mafiew · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I thought living in california was bad!

    1. Re:19.6% Sales tax?!?!?! by snowtigger · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      And Sweden has 25% sales tax !

      Who can do better ?

    2. Re:19.6% Sales tax?!?!?! by PortWineBoy · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Yes but in Sweden you get Health Care and Old Age Pension with your expensive hard drive purchase. Of course, you still have to drive to Denmark for your booze. How sad.

      --

      this sig deleted by another sig

    3. Re:19.6% Sales tax?!?!?! by randyest · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Wow, what a bargain . . . wait, no. Nevermind. Sweden's tax rate sucks.

      I spend $100k/year on taxable purchases (easily), which in Sweden would be $25k/yr in tax (vs. $0 in here New Hampshire), or more than $2000/month -- and for that I get healthcare and retirement? Thanks but no thanks.

      I can BUY outright health insurance for less than $300/month for most of my life, never more than $1000/month (and that assumes my employer gives me nada for it, which is opposite of reality -- they pay all but $20/mo). And that's for some juicy-good BC/BS insurance with no, how do I say in Swedish, "long-ass lines and sub-standard care"?

      Of course, I've alrady paid social security tax on the income that lets me spend those bucks which, by my calculations, equals about oh, $0/month at retirement. But, with the avg $1500/month left over after I pay for health insurance throughout my working life, I could stock up a nice nest egg. Why, after 30 years at 8% I'd have more than US$2.2Million. That ignores the fact that I max out a 401k (pre-tax), a Roth IRA (after-tax, but tax-free interest), and contribute a nice fat chunk of after-tax income to investments (taxable on disbursement) before I spend that $100k/yr.

      So, I conservatively expect to get > $10M to retire on after 30 years of work (should I decide to go it that long), even at 5% gain (which amounts to more than my current monthly income if managed properly, even after taxes), the best possible health care for free or negligible out-of-pocket expense throughout my life, and enough left over to buy an X-box or 1000.

      What's the benefit of that 25% sales tax again, borkaborkaborka?

      --
      everything in moderation
    4. Re:19.6% Sales tax?!?!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Umm, free education, safety and good public services? There arent too many slums in scandinavia.

    5. Re:19.6% Sales tax?!?!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >What's the benefit of that 25% sales tax again, borkaborkaborka?

      An amazingly low (compared to the US) national debt?

      I wonder if his country owes nearly 20k per citizen...

    6. Re:19.6% Sales tax?!?!?! by randyest · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      to both of the above replies, at the risk of taking this even further OT. . .

      >>What's the benefit of that 25% sales tax again, borkaborkaborka?

      >Umm, free education, safety and good public services? There arent too many slums in scandinavia.

      free education? check -- pell granted my way all the way. State U got me that fat paycheck, in case you were gonna get cynical about State U's.

      safety? check -- ever been to NH?

      good public services? see above. BTW, I can afford my own services and can do a much better job of selecting and administering their application than any gubament, as can my neigbors. Unless you were referring to military sevices, in which case: hahahaha.

      slums? what's a slum? Oh, like in NYC, Detroit, and LA? Uh, not my prob. Besides, once drugs are legalized and subsequently become nice and cheap, slums will all disappear from mass suicide. Buh bye lusers.


      >An amazingly low (compared to the US) national debt?
      >I wonder if his country owes nearly 20k per citizen...

      and I should care about this because . . . ?

      I'll take a superb lifestyle and rosy GNP over 'low debt' with no possibility of a significantly scary collection agent any day.

      Thanks for playing -- please try again.

      insert coin

      --
      everything in moderation
    7. Re:19.6% Sales tax?!?!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The benefit of taxes is almost never for the wealthy. States with strong social programs are the result of a society that looks at itself and says "There are certain services that should be available to every person regardless of social standing". It's very easy, if you are in a position of wealth, to view the poor as a product of their own laziness. Suppose, however, that (assuming your primary skill-set involves computers) a fifth-generation programming model proves viable, and programmers, admins, and even operators become unneeded (or you end up with no marketable skills in some other fashion). This is the fate of thousands every year, and it spirals downwards with automation and relocation of industries to cheaper labour markets. What would you do if no one would hire you because Indians would do your job for 1/10th of what you could afford to do it for? Don't sell social programs short...while at their worst, they syphon money out of everyone's pockets to no good end, at their best they give people a chance to claw their way out of poverty. Instead of not giving a rat's ass about someone down on their luck, and assuming good health and education to be the right of the wealthy only, everyone can kick in a little bit and realize a society in which each member is guaranteed a certain level of dignity. I propose that you are not greater, nor are you lesser than any other on this planet. Despite the greatest of advantages, those with awesome potential fail, and regardless of barrier, many of humble origin meet with great success...no one may know destiny before the fact, and even though it's the worst kind of cliche, it could happen to you! Taxes are a sort of insurance for all of us...something to catch us, no matter the circumstances that face us, before we fall below a certain level that we view as nessesary to participate in society. Allow someone to have no home and no money, and you've doomed them. Realistically, there's no way to become gainfully employed once you've hit that point. There's no need for soviet style central planning, but there are real societal benifits to strong social programs. You may not see them from where you stand, but they are very real.

    8. Re:19.6% Sales tax?!?!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'll take this a little further OT..

      You are a selfish prick. The world is imploding because of "not my prob" people like you.

      I will get off of my soapbox now...

  27. Re:the first porn joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    was that even a joke?

  28. If you have to ask... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    (en/tee)

  29. And the site says.... by imag0 · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...Out of standard, considering each one of these storage units integrates two hard disks and a bridge FW/RAID, it is possible to configure them in RAID 1 (Mirroring) or RAID 0 (Stripping).

    And the answer, dear asshat, is yes

  30. If only my TiVo had Firewire.... by wowbagger · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If only the TiVo had a Firewire interface....

    Imagine getting 2 of these drives - 1TB on your TiVo.

    Of course, I'd want a faster processor, or parsing the "Now Showing" list would take forever!

    1. Re:If only my TiVo had Firewire.... by schwatoo · · Score: 1

      The Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 PVR/Digital Cable box that Time Warner Cable is distributing has FireWire...

      --
      I have trouble with passwords among other things.
    2. Re:If only my TiVo had Firewire.... by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 2

      Can you actually attach anything to that FireWire port?

    3. Re:If only my TiVo had Firewire.... by protohiro1 · · Score: 1

      Two of these drives...hmmm for just 2,000. That'd be worth it.

      --
      Sig removed because it was obnoxious
  31. Me no need spellchekr!?!! by mondoterrifico · · Score: 2, Funny

    "What's not apparant is that this case has two drives in it apparantly. Very Slick."

    Me passed grade 4. Me can speel grate! Me want job!

    Slashdot editors...continuing the assualt on all things grammatical!

    1. Re:Me no need spellchekr!?!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Me flunk English? That's unpossible!

    2. Re:Me no need spellchekr!?!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Me fail English. That's unpossible"
      - Ralph Wiggum

  32. Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA by kguilber · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    thanks, Yakov.

  33. When compressed via divix... by rusty0101 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Most people don't have enough movies to fill two of these things. With a couple of these, a Dazzel Holywood DV converter, and a DVD burner, you could easily go into business converting Home videos to DVDs for people.

    Whether you could make any money at it would depend upon what type of home videos they brought in, and what you got them to agree to let you do with the stuff...

    -Rusty

    --
    You never know...
    1. Re:When compressed via divix... by be-fan · · Score: 3, Funny

      Most people don't have enough movies to fill two of these things.
      >>>>>>>>
      You've obviously never seen a college campus network...

      --
      A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
  34. According to the french site by Slashdotess · · Score: 2, Informative

    According to the French site you can configure them to work in RAID-0 or 1 so I'd assume the computer would see them as one drive from the onboard RAID controller, otherwise a software controlled RAID wouldn't sustain 400 Mb/s, as they claim.

  35. I love the translations by core+plexus · · Score: 3, Funny
    "The case is out of aluminium and ZAMAC, a supposed alloy..." Hmmm, not sure what it is? A "supposed alloy".

    "...and can pile up horizontally on other of the same peripherals models..." Hey! Get off my other of the same peripherals models!

    "Sympathetic, the new system of comment, Ca will avoid the comment of twisted which spends their time insulting:p" Sounds like my voice recognition software is glitching up again. And many more.

    1. Re:I love the translations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Why don't you try and learn some French, loser?


      By the way, your haiku sucks!

  36. I thought 1TB/$5,000 was cool .... by timothy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This was a neat story, IMO:
    ("The Amazing $5k Terabyte Array")

    That's not too long ago.

    Now, for the same money, you can get twice the storage (4 of these), *and* a decent (though not high-end) laptop; you can fit your 2TB array and associated computer into a briefcase.

    That's a lot.

    timothy

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
    1. Re:I thought 1TB/$5,000 was cool .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      thanks timothy. was looking for that $5k array story at work today. =)

    2. Re:I thought 1TB/$5,000 was cool .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Will Windows even reconize drives past 2TB? Arizona State Univ.'s Networked drives that students store their files on says the size is 1.99TB, but I doubt it could fit in a briefcase.

      The question I have is when is it enough?

    3. Re:I thought 1TB/$5,000 was cool .... by Hays · · Score: 1

      UGH! Why don't slashdot stories have the year in their date? So many news sites do this. It's very annoying. Do they think after a year it will be obsolete knowledge?

    4. Re:I thought 1TB/$5,000 was cool .... by Steveftoth · · Score: 1

      no, they just are hoping that they can repeat the story :) that's the motto of /., when news gets slow, just repeat all the old stories.

    5. Re:I thought 1TB/$5,000 was cool .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Suck a dick timothy.

    6. Re:I thought 1TB/$5,000 was cool .... by andrewlong · · Score: 1

      Actually, under your user Preferences, and Homepage you can change the Date/Time Format, I think this link http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=edithome will work.

      I like mine 2002.12.05 1:15, military time and date.

  37. Shitty grammar and can't read, apparently by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Aparently, the poster can't read the fucking page because it says worldwide availability, apparently. slick, apparently. Stupid, lazy fuck.

  38. Re:Awesome!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Please put a real pussy on there! I feel cheated. :(

  39. big enough? by DarkHelmet · · Score: 2
    Hmmm, I wonder if I could fit the internet on it...

    Well, if not that, at least the whole red light district of it </sarcasm>

    --
    /^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
    1. Re:big enough? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All you need for the entire internet is one AOL disc.

  40. NAS by simpl3x · · Score: 2

    in addition to drives like this, Lacie intends to have a NAS storage head or unit in the future (http://www.lacie.com/technologies/technology.cfm? id=F8B7B736-7F7A-11D6-98090090278D3ED0). their AIT2 is also pretty nifty!

    1. Re:NAS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      jesus man you've been around long enough, figure out how to link the damn thing.

  41. quote by erikdotla · · Score: 1

    "Sympathetic, the new system of comment, Ca will avoid the comment of twisted which spends their time insulting:p "

    Easily the best post to a message forum anywhere on the Internet.

    --
    # Erik
  42. Ha-ha! This proves it, by haukex · · Score: 1, Redundant


    chrisd works for the Department of Redundancy Department!

    1. Re:Ha-ha! This proves it, by Anonymous+Freak · · Score: 1

      Yes, I find it particularly funny that it's doubly redundant. Not only is his comment redundantly repeating what was said in the submitter's comments, but he's redundant within his own comment!!

      --
      Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
      The purpose of that site was not known.
  43. And just twice as likely to fail! by autopr0n · · Score: 2

    Actualy I have two drives tied together with windows spanning (220gigs), but I hope its a temporary solution. In the future I definetly plan on having at least some redundancy involved, probably the one where you take 3 drives and the 3rd stores the XOR of the other two.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
    1. Re:And just twice as likely to fail! by Anonymous+Freak · · Score: 1

      A third drive storing a XOR of the other two? That is very similar to the RAID-4 specification, which nobody uses because it's silly.

      RAID-5 is much better. It stores the parity bit, but instead of dedicating a single drive, it stripes the parity bit along with the data bits. (So on pass 1, drives 1 and 2 get data, and drive 3 gets parity; on pass 2, drive 1 gets data, drive 2 gets parity, and drive 3 gets data; on pass 3, drive 1 gets parity, and drives 2 and 3 get data.) Much faster than RAID-4, and alot less stress on the disk that would otherwise be the 'parity' disk.

      --
      Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
      The purpose of that site was not known.
    2. Re:And just twice as likely to fail! by benwb · · Score: 2

      For most applications RAID-5 is a better choice, but you pay a lot if you have a disk failure. RAID-3 is a much better choice for situations where you need guaranteed performance in the event of a disk failure.

    3. Re:And just twice as likely to fail! by Anonymous+Freak · · Score: 1

      How do you 'pay more' for a RAID-5 disk failure than with any other RAID level? About the only 'free' RAID level is RAID-1. Because you suffer absolutely no penalty, since you just read from an exact copy.

      With any parity-based RAID level, you lose some speed when a drive fails. In RAID-5, if one fails, the hardware (I *HOPE* you're using hardware RAID-5) calculates the original data based on the surviving data and parity. Yes, it's slightly slower than full speed, but it's still there.

      With RAID-3, you've just got a RAID-0 plus a parity drive. Yes, it's redundant, but if one of the striped drives fails, you STILL have to do the same calculations as with a RAID-5. The only difference is that with a dedicated parity drive, you're constantly trashing the parity drive. (If you've got a 4-drive array, with 3 striped and 1 parity, the parity drive is written to 3 times as often as the data drives.)

      --
      Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
      The purpose of that site was not known.
  44. Re: Heh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "When mods on crack attack"

    In todays episode...

  45. MOD PARENT AS FUNNY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    if you're on crack.

  46. That's a lot of MP3s by not_cub · · Score: 5, Informative
    Pretty cool for a portable MP3 collection.

    500GB = 4194304000Kbits
    = 16384000 secs @ 256kbps
    = 3792.6 72min albums @ 256kbps
    = $20,000 worth of CDs, assuming you can find them at $5 each.

    Not to mention the fact that that's half a year of music. So pretty cool for a radio station on a mission never to play a top 40 hit ever again maybe?

    I would like to nominate "Pretty cool for a portable MP3 collection" as the most fatuous comment on slashdot now that "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these" is dead.

    not_cub

    --
    q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
    1. Re:That's a lot of MP3s by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yeah? so?

      i'm still encoding my cd's to mp3, i'm at 70gb now, and can't go any higher until i can find a friend with an 80gb drive so i can quickly reconfigure my drives. i'm maxed out, and i'm no where near done with my collection of legitly purchased cd's.

      yeah, i'm a dj, but i know many people with much larger cd collections than i.

      oh, and i have only 1 top-40 hit in there -- i bought a spice girls single for fun, one day.

    2. Re:That's a lot of MP3s by chazzf · · Score: 2

      What about a Beowulf Cluster of Slashdot meta-comments?

      --
      No statement is true, not even this one.
    3. Re:That's a lot of MP3s by Tokerat · · Score: 3, Funny


      Imagine a pretty cool beowulf cluster of these portable MP3 collections?

      --
      CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
    4. Re:That's a lot of MP3s by Lt+Razak · · Score: 1
      Burn them to DVD-R's.

      Or do they HAVE to be on HD?

  47. Nah... by autopr0n · · Score: 1, Troll

    In 15 years we'll all keep or data under the watchful eye of Big Broth^h^h^h^h^h TIA (the total information awareness program). Not only will our data be instantly accessible wherever we go, it'll also be constantly sifted through to weed out terrorists!

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  48. Imagine........ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All the music & Movies you could store with A Beowulf Cluster of These

    1. Re:Imagine........ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      No, imagine all the pr0n you could store.

      If I didn't say it, someone else would.

  49. 500GB?? by Marton · · Score: 1, Redundant

    So, who on earth makes 250GB drives? Last I heard the largest you could get was 200GB.

    1. Re:500GB?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      These ones are physically larger. They fit into a 5.25" bay and not the teeny kind.

    2. Re:500GB?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maxtor in the MaxLine Enterprise drives. They make 320GB too! :-)

    3. Re:500GB?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some factories, I'd guess. I don't think they make them in fast-food chains or embassies.

  50. factor? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    so it turns out IEEE 1384 is slower by a factor of two than ATA/100

    Did you mean slower by a quotient of 2 or slower by a factor of 0.5?

    That was confusing...

    1. Re:factor? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no on e fuc ki ng says sl ow er by a quoti ent of two. you wer en't conf us ed. it's no t eve n w rong.

    2. Re:factor? by martyn+s · · Score: 1

      No, then he would say faster by a factor of 0.5. Yes, then it isn't faster.

  51. Fear of HD editing by benwaggoner · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, if you wanted to use this for HD editing...

    1920x1080 pixels
    30 frames a second
    16 bits per pixel*
    That's be 949 Mbps, or 118 MB per second.

    Or about 70 minutes of uncompressed editing on this at max resolution.

    Of course, being FireWire, it'll have a lowly peak data rate of 400 Mbps. We'd need the 1394b 1600 Mbps standard for this to be useful for uncompressed HD editing. This is why honkin' Ultra-160 RAID systems are used for this kind of work!

    The good thing is that over the air HD transmissions are a measly 19.2 Mbps. That'd give you 58 hours or so.

    * (it's YUV with chroma sampled at 4:2:0, so there is one luma bitmap at 1920x1080, and two chroma bitmaps at 960x520, all at 8 bits per channel).

    1. Re:Fear of HD editing by _LORAX_ · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actuall for clarification...

      YUV 4:2:0 is 12 bits per pixel since the chroma is only samples every other line. YUV 4:2:2 is 16 bits per pixel.

      so thats...

      711 Mbps or 89 MBps or about (wierd) 89 minutes of uncompressed HD based on the fact that 500GB actually means 500000000000 bytes.

    2. Re:Fear of HD editing by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2

      However, unless I'm mistaken (and I could be, I'm an audio guy, not video) DV video that comes form modern digital cameras is comrpessed. I don't believe it's huge comrpession, but still significant.

      Also I think YUV 4:2:0 is 12-bit, not 16-bit. 4:2:2 is 16-bit I think.

    3. Re:Fear of HD editing by benwaggoner · · Score: 2

      Doh! Of course. I was thinking of 4:2:2, which is used for lossless editing of standard def content. HD uses 4:2:0 instead.

    4. Re:Fear of HD editing by benwaggoner · · Score: 2

      DV uses 4:1:1, and is about 6.5:1 compressed from the original. Works out to be 25 Mbps.

      For playback that doesn't require editing, modern codecs can look darn good at a 50:1 compression. WMV9 can do GREAT at 2Mbps at 720x480 interlaced.

    5. Re:Fear of HD editing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      * (it's YUV with chroma sampled at 4:2:0, so there is one luma bitmap at 1920x1080, and two chroma bitmaps at 960x520, all at 8 bits per channel).

      Have you been hanging around with John Carmack?

    6. Re:Fear of HD editing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is why honkin' Ultra-160 RAID systems are used for this kind of work!

      Screw Ultra-160... That stuff is obsolete. The real action is Fibre channel. 2 Gigabit full duplex... theoretical peak of 450 MB/sec, 350+ MB/sec actual data transfer speeds using some decent (Seagate Cheetah) drives and raid controllers. Did I mention a maximum cable length of 10 km?

  52. What is not apparent by kobotronic · · Score: 3, Funny

    "What's not apparant is that this case has two drives in it apparantly."

    I love the little comments after slashdot story submissions. :)

    1. Re:What is not apparent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey! Taco has to justify his megabucks somehow, no?

    2. Re:What is not apparent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey! Taco has to justify his megabucks somehow, no?

      Actually, no.

      So, seriously, do all of you that keep posting comments like this think that every story on slashdot is posted by (and in some cases submitted by) CmdrTaco? There are other editors on Slashdot.

  53. Read the article first ... by snowtigger · · Score: 1

    This would be slick if it could be configured as a RAID system. 250 MB in one box with its own backup.

    From the translated article ...

    Out of standard, considering each one of these storage units integrates two hard disks and a bridge FW/RAID, it is possible to configure them in RAID 1 (Mirroring) or RAID 0 (Stripping).

    1. Re:Read the article first ... by Stonent1 · · Score: 1

      Out of standard, considering each one of these storage units integrates two hard disks and a bridge FW/RAID, it is possible to configure them in RAID 1 (Mirroring) or RAID 0 (Striping).

      Most likely this is making 2 identical sized partitions and using your operating system's software raid 1 support.

  54. your 80gig drive is obsolete. by minitrue · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yes, your 80gb drive is now obsolete. It is completely unusable with your current configuration. Throw it out now. Or for more eco-friendly processing, please mail it to:

    Me
    c/o Obsolete Hardware Dept.
    NY,NY 10001

    We will kindly take care of any obsolete hardware you may have around your house including sub 2GHz Athlons and P4s, 64MB GeForce cards, and low capacity hard drives of 100GB or less. Do not worry about our processing fee for it will be absorbed in the premium you pay for buying the fastest neatest doodad. Click here to receive notice when we launch our innovative program for disposing of your automobile once it loses that new car smell! ;-)

    1. Re:your 80gig drive is obsolete. by Tokerat · · Score: 2

      Apparantly many will believe such things, as they strive to get the latest and greatest, apparently.

      --
      CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
    2. Re:your 80gig drive is obsolete. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nono, what's not apparant is that you don't grasp the full humor of the situation, apparently. Don't ask me what is apparent, because it's not apparent what's apparent, apparently.

  55. Re:Awesome!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ROFL Mod parent up to FUNNY

  56. hmmm... by Sj0 · · Score: 2, Redundant

    If you have a 500GB mp3 collection, the RIAA would like to have a word with you. ....and maybe, just maybe, it's time to get off kazaa. Seriously. Just doing some rough calculations, That's over 5,000 hours of standard quality MP3 audio. over 200 days!

    --
    It's been a long time.
    1. Re:hmmm... by nion · · Score: 1

      Hey, who said you'd be downloading other people's low quality shit? I (mostly *cough*) rip my own CD's so I don't have to try to find at *least* a 192kbps mp3 on the 'net that isn't a PITA to listen to over my mediocre speakers. Especially so that if I DO decide to make a mp3 cd for my home stereo, it doesn't sound like I ripped it from a tape that's been stepped on.

      Sheesh.

      --
      der dee der.
    2. Re:hmmm... by Sj0 · · Score: 2

      Okay, even doubling file size, it's STILL over one-hundred days of MP3s.

      --
      It's been a long time.
    3. Re:hmmm... by dukarukus · · Score: 0

      dude,

      say 1 five minute song at 192 is about 7 mb.

      500,000mb / 7 = 71,428 songs

      71,428 songs * 5 min = 357,140 minutes

      or 5952 hours

      there's a good chance that none of us will ever meet anyone will a collection this large. ever.

    4. Re:hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As someone else calculated, at 256 kbps encoding, it is approximately 3800 albums. That may sound like a lot, but there are people who have collections that large. I was a member of a mailing list for a musical group that I liked and mentioned that I was looking for storage for the 500 or so CDs that I owned. It turned into a thread where people mentioned how many CDs they owned. 500 CDs wasn't even close to being the most owned. There were a few who had over 3000 CDs, so don't go around thinking that it is rare for a music lover to own a lot of CDs. Some djs sometimes own 10,000 or more vinyl albums!

      Another use, some people use home theater PCs. For ease of use, they transfer all their DVDs to hard drive. Movies are approximately 7-8 GB, it is not unusual for one to own more than 70 DVDs.

  57. Help! I need context! by Cap'n+Canuck · · Score: 2, Funny

    500GB - how many Libraries of Congress is that?

    1. Re:Help! I need context! by rocket97 · · Score: 0

      Well this you can hold in your hand... the Library of Congress I think would be a bit too heavy to do that and quite a bit larger.

      --
      "The two most abundant elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." -Harlan Ellison
    2. Re:Help! I need context! by DarkVein · · Score: 2

      I'd like to keep a personal copy of the Library of Congress. Maybe two, so that I can have one version to make notes in. Can I do that?

      --

      I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.

    3. Re:Help! I need context! by io333 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Last I saw, the LOC was 13 TeraBYtes. You'd need 26 of these drives. Alternatively, Each drive holds ~4% of a LOC. Yes, I understand your question was kind of a joke, but I thought I'd do the math real quick just to consider the implications. I wonder if anyone has a good estimate of how long it will be until the typical consumer PC has sufficient storage space to hold the LOC?

    4. Re:Help! I need context! by Yosho · · Score: 1

      Ah, but how much would that be if it were gzipped? I would imagine that as the LoC is probably mostly text, you could compress the hell out of it.

      --
      Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
    5. Re:Help! I need context! by ottffssent · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's not "how long until the typical PC can store the LOC?", it's "how long ago's LOC can the typical PC store?"

      How big was the LoC 5 years ago? Under a few hundred gig, I'll bet. Today's LoC is (or so I read on Slashdot so it must be true) about 13TB. So how long will it take for desktops to reath 13T? Well, at their current ~40%/yr increase, about 13-14 years. At which point the LoC will undoubtedly have swollen to about another 13-14 years worth of PC evolution. But I don't think *anyone* thinks hard drives will continue to scale for almost 15 years. The superparamagnetic effect has been looming for the past 5 years or so and lord knows how much money has managed to push it off a few more years, but we're rapidly approaching the point where the amount of energy difference between a N and a S magnetic domain is the same as the amount of thermal energy present - presto, a random collection of bits.

      Maybe materials science will surprise us once again. The road started with MR (magnetoresistive), then GMR (giant magnetoresistive) and something else whose TLA I can't remember. Then Pixie Dust, and now Pixie Dust2 (5 layers rather than 3) pushing 80Gb/sq. in (if memory serves). A 3-platter design using 3.5" platters with a 1" hole for the servo could pack just over 500GB in. Now figure buying them for $200 - suddenly ripping your DVDs to disc doesn't seem quite so stupid. My mind rebels at the thought of 5T of RAID5 storage in a 3U rack, with 2 hot-spares. I also cringe at the thought of formatting that. Or fscking.

  58. Some people make things that others will buy. by Glytch · · Score: 4, Funny

    You know, like computer peripherals that work with computers that currently exist.

    And when was the last time you saw an external hot-swappable ATA plug?

    Hey, tell you what. I've currently got a bridge under construction. I'll let you drive on it for the low monthly rate of $50 per month. Come on! Only $50 monthly for unlimited use of my yet-to-be-built bridge! That's a hell of a deal, friend.

    If you don't like that, I've also got a $10 per month bridge just down the river. It's only two lanes, and it's sealed at both ends, but it's still a bargain.

  59. Way cool... by di0s · · Score: 1

    And like I said about 7 years ago with the drives of that time: "I'll never use up all that room!"

  60. You know.... by MortisUmbra · · Score: 1

    Between the damned reposts, and the redundancy in this article, and the stupid-ass comment about MP3's (come on ass-hat, you MUST realize that nobody in their right mind has a personal MP3 collection even half that size, is this your first week in the tech biz?) this crap is starting to get rather irrirtating, damned glad I don't pay for this site. Sheesh, makes me wish I could strip out the ads too, I mean if you guys aren't going to put some effort into this why the hell should you get paid for it?

    --

    "The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
    1. Re:You know.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fool! Have you ever heard of EMUSIC? $9.95 unlimited downloads? I've been on the service for a year and a month now and I can say with confidence that I could easily fill 500GB. As it is, I've filed 320GB to date.

      And yes, EMUSIC doesn't like me. But that's between me, their advertising department, and my state AG office.

    2. Re:You know.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > come on ass-hat, you MUST realize that nobody > in their right mind has a personal MP3
      > collection even half that size, is this your
      > first week in the tech biz?

      My MP3s:

      Total Size: 256.09 GB
      Total Duration: 3422.3 hours
      Folder Count: 5961 folders
      File Count: 45769 files

      I'm probably not in my right mind, however.

    3. Re:You know.... by Sj0 · · Score: 1

      Are you an obsessive compulsive? Getting more music than you could listen to in three months sustained listening isn't a sign of good mental health. Get help.

      --
      It's been a long time.
  61. better translation by Permission+Denied · · Score: 5, Informative
    I'm 'merican, so be nice :)

    LaCie France launches its new "Big Disk" hard drives which hold 500 MB and 400 MB and use firewire.

    Firewire can theoretically deliver 400 Mbps, and these disks have a sustained transfer rate of 30 to 40 MB/s [Ed: note the unit change: 240 to 360 Mbps]. The casing is aluminum and ZANAC, an alloy believed to increase robustness and provide better heat dissipation.

    The disks come in a 5 1/4 inch format and can be stacked on top of each other or installed vertically in a rigid base. [Ed: vibration causes disks to fail very quickly, best not keep this thing on your desk]. Since each unit comes standard with two internal hard disks and a FW RAID bridge, it's possible to configure them in RAID 1 (Mirroring) or RAID 0 (Stripping) [Ed: he meant "striping" - Freudian slip?]

    And how much does this cost in France?

    The LaCie Big Disk 400 MB (7200 rpm / 8 MB cache) costs 999 Euros HT (1195 Euros TTC). [Ed: HT = hors taxe, no tax, TTC = toutes taxes compris, all taxes included; dollar is roughly equivalent to Euro].

    And the LaCie Big Disk 500 MB (5400 rpm / 2 MB cache) is available for 1124 Euros HT (1344 Euros TTC).

    They come with a 2-year warranty and a CD with the Silverlining utility (Mac and Windows) and the Silverkeeper backup software (Macintosh).

    ------

    Comments talk about the new moderation system at the site and the site's resident trolls. Google translation does quite a job on the colloqial 'net language they use. A nice French pr0n banner at the bottom to even things out (vis-a-vis RAID 0 stripping).

    1. Re:better translation by Permission+Denied · · Score: 2

      Of course, I meant "GB" instead of "MB" in most places. Although it would also be news if, in fact, it were a half-gig drive costing upwards of a thousand dollars in 2002.

    2. Re:better translation by cyril3 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      he said he's american you dick. America-bashing has sadly come to be "the opium of the intellectual." (--Lee Harris, Dec 2002, Jan 2003 Policy Review) but in your case its wholly justified.

    3. Re:better translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ferme ta putain geule, nique ces putain americains et son putain merde.

  62. Mod this... by Ghoser777 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    -1 Redundant

    F-bacher

    --
    James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
  63. man....I need by Dylan_t_p · · Score: 1

    I'd give almost anything to have that kinda space all I have now is 60 gigs and that fills up constantly, though whats really sad is between me and my friend we could have that sucker filled up in about a week with tons of worthless crap :) thank god for technology

  64. Two words... by LinuxHam · · Score: 2

    satellite usenet

    shouldn't take THAT long to fill 500GB with a continuous full usenet feed at 128k or 256k. maybe a week or two. More realistically, cron a binary harvester against localhost, expire articles every few days, and stream mp3's through your stereo using MServ to vote up and down individual tracks. Now THAT's what I call "the sounds of the Internet" :)

    --
    Intelligent Life on Earth
  65. you're welcome ;) by timothy · · Score: 1

    I think it was on my third page of Google results. There was another, similar one posted by Michael prior about another $5K TB array, but this one has more details.

    It's amazing (well, to the easily amazed, like me) that soon 1TB will be a normal, reasonable, regular-type quantity of storage. My step-brother told me the other day that he has half a TB of storage in his household, and it still boggles my mind.

    timothy

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  66. flashback to 1980 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, 250MB in a box would be very sweet. I could fit all my 8-tracks and LPs on that!

  67. How do they do this? Are there two drives in it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    made you look!

  68. Where does it say there are two HDs? by jerrytcow · · Score: 2

    I would have thought it was two drives (since I haven't seen any drives larger than 250 GB), but I don't see how you can fit two drives in a 6.7x1.7x10.6" case. I have an external firewire drive and it's only about an inch smaller width and depth - not much extra room in the case either. And why is there only a 2 MB cache in the 500 GB version? Since every drive I've seen has at least 2 MB cache wouldn't a two drive RAID have at least 4 MB of cache?

  69. Price by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1344 euros for 500Gb ? OK so it's firewire and RAID, so what.
    It's still a tad expensive if you price seperate drives and raid controllers.
    I'll wait for a 1Tb drive thank you.
    Something that hard drive manufacturers could address is the time it takes to format these beasts, and while they're at it, how about RAID-on-Drive (ROD (TM)(C)) with a jumper for selecting raid type and primary controller/slave raid drive/s. (just an idea - flame away)

  70. Alternate story [mis]-interpretation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    LaCie has release their "Big Dick" - a large capacity tool with decent specs. The only thing they're not clear on is the fact that there are two balls in the case...but that only seems logical. Looks like it's only available in Europe though, so here's a link to a French Hardware site's description of it

  71. God... by Peterus7 · · Score: 4, Funny
    I tried explaining this to my g/f, and why this was so neat....

    The back of my head still hurts from her smacking me...

    jk.

    1. Re:God... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      rosie and her five friends getting a lil out of control there?

    2. Re:God... by Peterus7 · · Score: 1
      Only in bed, parties, and other such occasions...

      She finds me talking about hardware sexy, but only when I show it to her.

      Yes, she finds me showing her motherboard to be very sexy.

    3. Re:God... by Peterus7 · · Score: 1
      Holy crap.... That's the first score 4 (higest score ever, actually) I've ever gotten. I think that this calls for a celebration... ::Laughs sadly...:: I play LAN tonite... with myself and my oh so interesting to talk to bots...

      I certainly hope I am not the epitome of the typical /. user...

  72. Looks like it IS available in the US by WeirWolf · · Score: 1

    The LaCie page has a suggested US $ price of $899... that kind of implies that it's not just available in Europe

    1. Re:Looks like it IS available in the US by RebelTycoon · · Score: 2, Funny

      Nope, its just so Americans can understand how much it costs...

  73. -1 failure to use the word "wang" by adb · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    ...in a comment mentioning both penii and computers. Is your wang floppy?

  74. Wow by CaptainSuperBoy · · Score: 0, Troll

    I'm very impressed by this drive. Imagine what you could do with a Beowulf cluster of these!

  75. Not sure. by timothy · · Score: 1

    I don't have Windows, and I don't know how much disk space it recognizes.

    Even if I did, I sure don't have 2TB.I'm doubt that the kernels of any of the Linux machines I have right now could nicely handle TB either, and I have serious doubts about the motherboards inside them handling so much disk anyhow ;)

    timothy

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
    1. Re:Not sure. by dildatron · · Score: 2

      actually, both windows and linux can theoretically support 2TB of data per server, possibly more by now. I have never tried THAT much on one server, but I do test 7TB disk arrays, and I am fairly certain the limit is still at 2TB for windows and linux. someone please correct me if i am wrong. i have never "tested" this fact, but thre is documentation of it if you are willing to look.

      --


      If you had nuts on your chin, would they be chin nuts?
    2. Re:Not sure. by dildatron · · Score: 3, Informative

      i should have mentioned that the BIOS is often the main limiting factor, not the OS.

      ext2 is capable of 4TB maximum, with a max files size of 2TB. ext3 is the same, i belive.

      ntfs has a theoretical max space limitation of 16 exabytes.

      also note there are other limitations besides the theoretical limits... bios, interface, software, and max # of LUNs just to name a few. reliastically, a few terabytes is probably the ceiling for now for joe blow hardware.

      --


      If you had nuts on your chin, would they be chin nuts?
  76. Time to access entire space by sdbbp · · Score: 1

    How long does it take to read this thing?
    This is really skewing the bandwidth per capacity
    number.

    500GB at 40MB/s (assuming GB is base 10)

    12500s == 3h28m20s

    So "gigabytes can be exchanged in seconds"? Yeah,
    12,500 seconds.

  77. MMMmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    a beowulf cluster of MP3s.....

  78. Digital Video storage claims way off by magnum3065 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I was curious about their claim that the drive can hold 2 days of uncompressed digital video since they didn't make any reference to the resolution or frame rate of the video they were talking about. I quickly found some figures here for storage rates for video. Based on their figures for NTSC video stored uncompressed in MJPEG format the video should run about 20MB/s not including the audio they factor in later. At this rate 500GB will only store 7 hours of uncompressed video, only 30% of what they claim. Now, I know companies like to tweak their statistics to make their products seem better, but this seems very misleading.

    1. Re:Digital Video storage claims way off by pandemonia · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well, NTSC DV is about 220 Megs/Minute (or 5 minutes/Gig), which means that 500 gigs is good for about 2500 minutes, or 41.67 hours of DV-Compressed video.

      --
      -mz
    2. Re:Digital Video storage claims way off by magnum3065 · · Score: 1

      Well, ok, but they specifically say "uncompressed" video. Now maybe they really meant to say losslessly compressed video, but they should make this clear.

  79. naw, WAV baby by mixmasta · · Score: 2, Interesting

    forget crappy mp3....

    I think flac is cool but is too little, too late at this point. With 500 gig I don't need to compress at all, saving my time, and as my music collection grows it won't outstrip hard disk gains.

    DVD iso's are a totally different story though :-P

    --
    #6495ED - cornflower blue
  80. Amazing! by vslashg · · Score: 1

    Yeesh, I thought I knew something about technology. I really didn't think technology hit the point where you could fit 500GB of data into a single hard drive!

    1. Re:Amazing! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Veloso... yours was officially the most useless comment ever on Slashdot. Congratulations!

      See you around on TopCoder.

    2. Re:Amazing! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bookmark your post so you can look at it in 3 years for a good laugh.

    3. Re:Amazing! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      eGads! What's next??? Flying cars?!?!?!?!

  81. It's not the size..... by kdgibson · · Score: 1

    It's how you use it, right???

  82. Le Big Disk by ubugly2 · · Score: 0

    [VINCENT]
    No, they got the metric system there, they wouldn't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is.

    [JULES]
    What'd they call it?

    [VINCENT]
    They call it Royale with Cheese.

    [JULES]
    Royale with Cheese. What'd they call a Big Disk?

    [VINCENT]
    Big Disk's a Big Disk, but they call it Le Big Disk.

    [JULES]
    Le big Disk ! Ahhaha, what do they call a Whopper?

  83. LaCie Drives by rattler14 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I just got my external 120 GB firewire drive in the mail 2 or 3 days ago (figures they just released a new model... but it's not like i would have spent the money for the 400GB version). I must say, it works extremely well with my G4 powerbook. In fact, it't access speed when flipping between the directories is noticeably faster. They are fairly small too, i just tuck the drive behind my monitor.

    All and all, i'm very pleased with it so far. I've transferred about 60+ of files too it, never even a hiccup in speed.

    plus, it comes with all sort of diagnostics on the drive (preformatted in HFS+) format.

    definitely worth the $270, especially for a powerbook limited by the size of the hard drive you can afford to put into it.

    --
    my last sig was too controversial... now, a new and improved useless sig!
  84. has anyone thought.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    that it could be a 5 1/4 disk? ;)

  85. That's .025 Libraries of Congress... by wirelessbuzzers · · Score: 2

    500 GB is about a fortieth of the Library of Congress, according to Wikipedia.

    Compression would bring this down, and with good compression you could bring it down to maybe a 5th of the Library of Congress considering English has, according to Shannon's estimates, between 0.6 and 1.2 (probably closer to 1.2) bits of entropy per chararcter.

    \begin{wishful thinking}
    Just wait until holographic technology hits the mass market, then we can get it onto one CD-sized disk!
    \end{wishful thinking}
    \end{slashdot post}

    --
    I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
    1. Re:That's .025 Libraries of Congress... by DarkVein · · Score: 2

      Wikipedia says that the LOC has 20TB of text.

      This is significant, because the LOC also archives art, music, microfilm (part of which could be considered text), and films. The LOC in its entirety is certainly much larger than 20TB.

      --

      I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.

  86. m=milli by goldfndr · · Score: 3, Funny
    Beware the difference between megaBITS and megaBYTES. mb is megaBIT and MB is megaBYTE. One byte is eight times larger than one bit, so it turns out IEEE 1384 is slower by a factor of two than ATA/100.
    Sorry, "mb" is millibit.

    --
    Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
    1. Re:m=milli by Skiboo · · Score: 1

      I find myself often pointing out to people that the closest thing that KM comes to is Kelvin megas.

      Maybe i should get out of the house more...

  87. Hmmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0



    Well imagine a beowulf cluster of mp3 players.

  88. spam? by emarkp · · Score: 1

    Obviously you don't get as much spam as I do...

  89. Damn by Tokerat · · Score: 2

    I come to the comments looking for reactions to this new drive and I see people mostly making the same, overused, modded up six other times already joke. Mostly...

    Oops.

    (The apparantly unobvious thing about my sarcasm is that it's apparant to pretty much only the people who watch South Park. Apparantly...)

    --
    CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
    1. Re:Damn by Datafage · · Score: 1

      Cat Orgy. :)

      --

      Nicotine free Amish .sig.

    2. Re:Damn by Tokerat · · Score: 1

      Yea, mostly...

      --
      CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
  90. WiebeTech Firewire RAID by MichaelCrawford · · Score: 3, Informative
    Check out the WiebeTech Firewire Raid.

    Check out the comparitive review at barefeats in which they conclude that the WiebeTech product performs better than the competition.

    Note that if you don't have firewire hardware on your box, you can get a PCI or Cardbus card to do it. There is a compatibility list at www.linux1394.org. I'm using one of the Belkin cards in my PC, and it works well.

    Disclaimer, so you don't think I'm astroturfing: WiebeTech is my current consulting client.

    --
    Request your free CD of my piano music.
  91. Backups... by L.J.+Hanson · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Now when will someone release a decent backup system for the consumer so that we can backup these monsters.

    L.J.

  92. note to chrisd by spazoid12 · · Score: 1

    Just because a slashdot submission screener dude *can* add a little comment to the end of a submission doesn't always mean he should.

    "What's not apparant is that this case has two drives in it apparantly. Very Slick." ... wow! excellent point!!

  93. DV Video by Christopher+Bibbs · · Score: 2

    ~13GB per hour. At which rate you'll be able to get less than 40 hours on to one of these drives. Or less than the amount of video a film student can shoot in a semester.

  94. It soon will be, MacMall has it on their website by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    MacMall has it on their website as available
    *soon* for $999 for the 500 gig one. Over the time I have been getting their web emails, since I got a 250 for my imac, and a 1/2 terabyte raid array down in the living room, their *soon* often seems to come to pass in a few weeks to a month at the very longest, so I expect these will be here for christmas giving. :)
    Good thing I don't have a girlfriend right now to smack me on the back of the head, since I've got 750 gig almost filled with old digitized tv shows. :) and bad old 50's-60's sci-fi B movies. One can never have enough video stored up for when the mpaa and the government make conditions where we can only watch the current drivel they put out -when- they say we can. I'll just turn off the tv and sell it watch the old stuff. I need a few of those 500 gig drives!

  95. 500GB worth of music by NateDoggITH · · Score: 1

    I too think that its unlikely anyone could dig up music they actually like on that that scale (exept for only the most non-discriminating of listeners). I don't, however, feel that this should stop people from trying. Anything truely "worth doing" should be worth doing for it's own sake and not becase there is some "reason" or "purpose" for it to be done.

    %&#60
    And I belive that someone out there belives that this is a cause worthy of their attention... And with 360kbps files... With a T3 line... No social life... And God willing... There will be a 500GB mp3 collection that one person can find tollerable as a whole!

    Not that I (or the RIAA; not that I or anyone else cares) endorses this, but I (and the RIAA; for different reasons) would like to hear the story of a man with 500GB of mp3s.

    1. Re:500GB worth of music by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Well, how about 700GB?

      I know a few people with over 1TB

    2. Re:500GB worth of music by Stalyx · · Score: 1
      OH MA GOD!!! You know someone who has 1TB worth of songs? Oh COOOOOOL!!!

      Now go beat him over the head with a rusty aluminium baseball bat for every o-town/britney spear's song he has!!!

  96. Great For Backups by moosesocks · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've owned two LaCie pocketdrives for a little under a year (48gb and 30gb), and I must say that they've been a godsend for a geek like myself.

    I can store all my stuff on them. Take them to virtually ANY PC in existance, (anything with usb or firewire - just about any OS works - linux, mac, windows... no drivers required), and "it just works".

    The most practical application i've found for these drives is doing backups of my pcs or client's pcs before doing major upgrades, etc.

    I can take my Mp3 collection anywhere. I once even configured one of them to be a BOOTABLE LINUX DRIVE which I could use ANYWHERE (on older pcs, i needed a bootdisk, but the idea was still cool...)

    The only gripe with the 500gb drive is that it's too big to tote around like the pocketdrives, which fit into a pocket, run completely silent, have a shock absorbant silicone buffer, can be self-powered on firewire, etc.

    Either way, all geeks can benefit from external usb/firewire drives. Before I got them, I never envisioned needing one, but now that I own two, I couldn't envision living without them.

    --
    -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
  97. Wow! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these LaCie drives!
    ;o)

  98. TB vs TiB by I+am+Jack's+username · · Score: 1
    Hard disk manufacturers use the correct terms, a difference of about a hundred billion bytes for a TB.

    1 terabyte (10^12) has 99 511 627 776 less bytes than 1 tebibyte (2^40).

    1. Re:TB vs TiB by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "fewer", not "less" in this instance.

      Singular/plural, y'know. Not a flame. Hope this helps.

  99. portable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    portable MP3 collection?!?? How bout portable WAV or FLAC collection.. Forget MP3, its not all that good... Hell, I don't even listen to my MP3's anymore.

  100. Did anyone notice the price? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1200 Euros = $1200. Buy yourself a RAID controller and a few 120 GB drives. Hell, buy yourself a whole new system.

  101. availability by servanya · · Score: 1

    Hmm...I click on the link, and it says:
    available: worldwide

    Nice editing /.

  102. Pretty good deal by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Informative

    My knee-jerk reaction to these products, especially from LaCie, has usually been, "wow, they're getting a nice premium for doing some integration". So, pricing them, I find the maxtor 250's are going for $400 a pop, add in a hundred bucks for a case/ATAFirewire bridge, and you've got only a hundred bucks left for doing your hardware striping. Probably with the right IC you could come in $50 under, but this is still a good deal.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  103. Will not work on some mbs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have a 120 gig I bought for sharing my MP3 collection between my laptop and desktop. It works with my built in firewire port on the laptop, but does not work correctly with the pci card on the desktop. Their online documentation does say that it will not work with all pci cards.

  104. Re:It soon will be, MacMall has it on their websit by Cid+Highwind · · Score: 1

    The LaCie page has a suggested US $ price of $899...

    MacMall has it on their website as available
    *soon* for $999 for the 500 gig one.


    Proving once again that you CAN screw Mac users out of an extra $100 just by selling stuff in a Mac-specific store. No wonder similar hardware always costs more for Macs than for wintel. Oh well, I guess you can't expect too much consumer sense from people who still pay 3 grand for a new computer.

    --
    0 1 - just my two bits
  105. We're making something similar by sid6581 · · Score: 1

    4 hard drives in a small tower, with a USB 2.0 connection. That's close to a terabyte with commonly available hard drives today.

  106. Won't work (probably) under Linux by jamieo · · Score: 2

    I have a similar enclosure to this made by Miglia (Mediabank). You can basically put 2 3.5" hard drives in there as master/slave and connect up the firewire cable.

    It's neat but doesn't work under linux. The ieee1394 stack in Linux doesn't support multiple LUNs for a device, and so it can only see the first disk in the box. I highly suspect that the Lacie drive will be the same. It's probably just using an updated version of the Oxford chipset that can cope with drives over 120Gb. From the ieee1394-devel mailing list, there's been no serious action to work on this.

    Firewire drives are well cool though.

    Jamie

  107. LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You dumbass! You made a spelling mistake yourself while criticizing others spelling mistakes!! LOL LOL OMF WTD

    1. Re:LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      WTF is LOL LOL OMF WTF?

  108. Wow... by marhar · · Score: 2

    Imagine one of these hooked up to a beowulf cluster! ;-)

  109. **WARNING** Major Brag, read at your own risk by zvogt · · Score: 1

    Well my legitimate music collection (legit meaning albums PURCHASED, disregarding any CDRs that may have _accidently_ found their way into my collection), currently contains over 11,600 album titles. So it CAN happen. (I'm sure just as much was spent on theft&fire-resistant storage of the collection as on the music itself.)

    1. Re:**WARNING** Major Brag, read at your own risk by not_cub · · Score: 2
      Didn't say it couldn't happen. In fact, I'm impressed.

      11600 albums ~= 1.6 albums/day since CDs were introduced in 1982
      ~= 90m of shelf space

      Again, the logistics are impressive, as is your voracious appetite for new music.

      not_cub

      --
      q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
  110. Re:That's a lot of MP3s (but not really!) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, 500GB for MP3s does seem silly at first.

    But my MP3 collection is now 247GB. All MP3s have been ripped @256VBR.

    That's all of my CDs, and all of my roommates' CDs: there are five of us, and we all live and breathe music.

    When you have this much music, you have to budget your CD purchases carefully. Typically, amongst the five of us, we purchase around 30 new CDs each month. That means we're increasing disk usage by approximately 4GB/month. We'll hit 500GB in about five years, assuming we all still live together.

    Hopefully in five years Apple will have released their 500GB iPod. For now, though, the iPod and all other portable jukeboxes have missed my storage-capacity requirements by a factor of ten.

  111. feh by ErikZ · · Score: 2

    Big Deal. Maxtor sells external 250GB Firewire/USB2 drives. The cool thing is that they come with backup software and a button on the case.

    Push the button, make a backup.

    I've been looking at this as a backup solution, I just need to get a firewire or a USB2 card.

    --
    Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
  112. not as big as it looks by tylerh · · Score: 2

    {begin parochialism}I find it hard to believe anybody can identify 320 days worth of music they actually like.{end parochialism}

    It's pretty easy - just leave pop music behind and explore "serious" music (eg. classical or jazz).

    First, you really can tell the difference betwee 128 and 192, particularly in the bass when the full dynamic rage is blasting (think a Beethoven finale). Also, some high end voice loses some clarity (think Ella Fitzgerald). So that increases storage needs 50% right there. Next, the typical pop CD contains a bit over 1/2 an hour of music, while classical CD's often run to 70 minutes or more. Lastly, with serious music, it's not just the piece, but the performance. The same composition with a different performer can be a completely different experience. You can hear this easily with Chopin and operas, but it is also true of any symphonic work worth hearing. Talking about jazz without referencing the performer (and the performance for the really good stuff) is a complete waste of time. "remixes" are as old as music performance itself. So if you like a piece, you will have multiple, high-quality copies. I personally have three copies each of Shostakovich's 8th string quartet and Beethoven's symphonies.

    If you are into live performances, then you're using .shm or something simlar, and those run about 5 times the size of the equivalent mp3. Lastly, the true audio file/snob will leave his/her music as .wav. For me, that would immediately move my collection over the 100 gig mark. And who says this is just about mp3? This drive would only hold 100 DVDs. If you wanted to capture in HDTV format, it would hold even less.

    Never underestimate the human need to fill all available disk space.

    --
    "one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
  113. Translation - French to English by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here is my translation of the thing:

    HD LaCie 400/500 GBytes avail. in France. (11/23/2002)

    LaCie is launching in France its new "Big Disk" harddrives, with a capacity of 500 GB and 400GB and using a Firewire interface.

    The firewire interface can theoricaly deliver 400Mbps, and those disks have a sustained transfer rate of 30 to 40MB/s. The case is made of alluminum and ZAMAC (?), a metal alloy that is supposed to increase the robustness and help dissipating heat.

    It is a 5"1/4 device and can stack horizontally (that is stack units when they are laying flat) or use a removable stand. By default, given that the device contains 2 harddrive (yes, 2!) and a Firewire/RAID bridge, it is possible to configure it in RAID1 (mirroring) and raid0 (stripping)

    2 BIG IMAGES

    And how much is this in France ?

    the LaCie Big Disk 400GB (7200RPM/8M cache) is available for 999Euros (without tax - 1195 with tax). And the LaCie BigDisk 500 GB (5400rpm/2Mo cache) is available for 1124Euros (no tax - 1344 with tax).

    With a 2year warranty, In the package is also included a CDrom with tools from SilverLining (mac/win) and a backup software SilverKeeper (mac)

    FOLLOWS LOTS OF COMMENT ABOUT THE DRIVES

    Jok

  114. pR0n by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    500gb??
    Gimme a 2weeks and a t-1 i'll fill it up from the newsgroups alone. ;)

  115. so who makes 250GB HDDs again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Thanks.

  116. In soviet Russia... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    FLAC converts YOU!

  117. Confused? I am. by 6Yankee · · Score: 1

    This is bad enough:

    The only thing they're not clear on is the fact that there are two drives in the case

    but then this happens:

    ...but that only seems logical.

    Jesus, now I'm even more confused. Are we talking about two logical or two physical drives here?

  118. 125,000 songs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Pretty cool for a portable MP3 collection." An MP3 collection of 125,000 4MB songs? Or 10,416 albums at 12 songs per album? Yeah, I'm sure everyone is in need of portable mass storage of this scale so they can take their collection of 125k songs with them.

  119. Serial ATA by LionMage · · Score: 1

    Actually, Serial ATA debuted at 150 MB/s, not 133. It's therefore theoretically a bit faster than ATA/133. However, since most motherboard manufacturers are hanging Serial ATA controllers off of the PCI bus (and since all add-on Serial ATA cards are, naturally, PCI), there's a performance cap associated with the top bandwidth afforded by PCI.

    What this means is that, in order to realize the current max bandwidth of Serial ATA (and to provide a growth path for the future), future motherboard chipsets will need to integrate Serial ATA in a manner which bypasses PCI altogether.

    Of course, these architectural issues are minor compared to the benefits of thinner, more easily routed cabling (and consequently better case cooling). I'm not sure I like how Serial ATA is strictly point-to-point rather than multi-drop -- this means each drive needs a separate cable. No more daisy chaining drives off a single bus with Serial ATA. But considering how small the Serial ATA connector is, you can put a lot more of them on a motherboard, so I guess it all balances out.

    (And yeah, I know you can buy round cables for standard ATA/100 and ATA/133 drives, but there are signal integrity issues with round IDE cables.)

  120. Re:you are wrong ALSO by spoons67 · · Score: 1

    IEEE 1394a (FireWire or iLink) has sustained transfer rate of 400 Mb/s. (thats megabits per second)

    USB 2.0 has a peak transfer rate of 480 Mb/s, but usually you won't get that kind of throughput.

    With the ATA 100 standard, the 100 is for 100 MB/s, thats 800 megabits per second, so ATA100 is twice as fast as FireWire.

    However, the IEEE 1394b standard will operate at 1600 Mb/s, or about 2x as fast as ATA 100, so good things are to come.

    --
    Begun, this browser war has.
  121. important distinction! by timothy · · Score: 1

    Thanks for pointing that out.

    It's actually a pretty neat comparison to say "as much text as in every book at the LoC" but annoying to forget that text is not the same as books / other artifacts. For newer books I think this matters less, but for older books (which can't be reproduced by telling a printer to reproduce a postscript file), the actual substance of the book itself holds a lot of information. Color / typeface / paper quality / etc.

    Just like a painting can be *represented* at different bit depths and resolutions -- no one of these *is* the painting, so you have to specify these parameters before saying "enough hard drive space to hold every painting in the louvre!"

    Anyhow, thanks for pointing out a peeve of mine. :)

    timothy

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  122. Re:the first porn joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Objection! They didn't put peanut butter in the peanut butter sandwiches.

  123. Last Post! by alpg · · Score: 1

    "Section 2.4.3.5 AWNS (Acceptor Wait for New Cycle State).
    In AWNS the AH function indicates that it has received a
    multiline message byte.
    In AWNS the RFD message must be sent false and the DAC message
    must be sent passive true.
    The AH function must exit the AWNS and enter:
    (1) The ANRS if DAV is false
    (2) The AIDS if the ATN message is false and neither:
    (a) The LADS is active
    (b) Nor LACS is active"

    -- from the IEEE Standard Digital Interface for
    Programmable Instrumentation

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...