What hardware are you using?

Discuss hardware related to portable usage, including the kind of storage devices people use, and how they use them.
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Userfriendly
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Re: What hardware are you using?

#31 Post by Userfriendly »

There's 3 types of NAND flash memory used in Memory Cards and SSD's.
SLC Single Layer Cell Longest Lifespan, Low Capacity and Most expensive
- This is industrial grade flash and has the most endurance with around 100,000 write cycles. Not easily accessible to regular consumers since its really expensive and largest capacity I've seen is 16GB.

MLC Multi Layer Cell Moderate Lifespan and Cheaper than SLC
- You'll find this type in some 'Pro' or 'Premium' type memory cards like Samsung Pro or Sandisk Extreme Pro both which have 10 year warranties. The warranty is what's telling even if they don't reveal the type of memory they use. MLC has around 10,000 to 3,000 write cycles.

TLC Triple Layer Cell Least Endurance and Cheapest
- This is the what you'll find in most cheap consumer memory cards. These only have around 1000 write cycles. I wouldn't use these for heavy duty video recording or photography use.

As far as I know from owning one and reading many reviews, Sandisk Extreme Pro's are the fastest (especially in 4k random writes, great for mobile use) and probably most reliable card you can get.

Here's a review round up of micro sd cards that also shows what type of memory they use .
http://ourberries.com/2015/04/16/conclu ... nd-reviews.

Some info on Micro SD. Applicable to Regular SD cards too.
http://ourberries.com/2014/09/15/microsd-knowledge/

Anyway, this old ass thread is about what kind of hardware we're using lol. I guess I just use a 256GB SSD either in a USB3 enclosure or a SATA-to-USB3 adapter. They don't need external power so it's easy enough to use like a USB flash drive. I don't like using regular USB sticks anymore because they're. SSD's are small enough to be portable and so much faster. Even though there are 128GB and 256GB USB flash drives available, I think it's more cost effective to get an SSD which you can use portably or jam inside a PC if you want. There's even mSATA(old)/M.2(new) SSD's if you wanna go even smaller. I know there's performance USB3 sticks out there but they cost as much as an 128GB SSD anyway.

Examples of adapters/enclosures:
SATA to USB - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005B3VO24/
2.5-inch Enclosure - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OJ3UJ2S
mSATA SSD Enclosure - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LRZPNHM/
M.2 SSD Enclosure - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KQ4LNJC/

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webfork
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Re: What hardware are you using?

#32 Post by webfork »

Userfriendly wrote:There's 3 types of NAND flash memory used in Memory Cards and SSD's.
I had no idea. Very interesting stuff, thanks.

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Re: What hardware are you using?

#33 Post by webfork »

webfork wrote:What to buy: I haven't looked into this in a while so my advice would be outdated, but I'd buy what professional photographers recommend.
One update on this: it may be old news to some folks here on the forums, but there is a new format for high-end external media: portable SSDs. They're a little larger than a thumb drive (usually about the size of one of those metal lighters) and cost more but are crazy fast.


This is definitely something I would recommend over a lot of other solutions. The amusing part about these is you could best your internal drive speed from only a few years ago, making it great for high end media, video edition, or a backup harddrive/OS.

DustinDeTorres
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Re: What hardware are you using?

#34 Post by DustinDeTorres »

Hey,
Can anyone mention the speed of specific drive? I bought several USB drive but each one of them is too slow like 2MB per Sec.

sherry156
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Re: What hardware are you using?

#35 Post by sherry156 »

I just bought Seagate Expansion 4TB for my xbox one and it was literally plug and play.
https://www.bestadvisor.com/portable-hard-drives
I no longer have to worry about space and download everything to it. Much cheaper price than the Microsoft version and is really worth every penny.

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joby_toss
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Re: What hardware are you using?

#36 Post by joby_toss »

Why do your posts look like a bunch of spam crap (best.a.d.visor)??? Stop, change or walk away, please!

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Midas
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Re: What hardware are you using?

#37 Post by Midas »

C'mon, it's a third post -- advise, exemplify, and criticize, but please don't send people away... remember that today's annoying noob is tomorrow's uber-geek. :P

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webfork
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Re: What hardware are you using?

#38 Post by webfork »

I just bought Seagate Expansion 4TB for my xbox one and it was literally plug and play.
Sadly, I just bought one of these because I got a really good deal, but I think I know why: the 4TB series have very high failure rates according to backblaze.

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-dri ... s-q1-2017/

This is an analysis of Enterprise drive failures, which are different than consumer, but make not mistake that they make many of the same components in the same factories.

It's admittedly not the only metric when considering data storage, but for backup drives, failure rate should be very high on the list.

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h3kt0r
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Re: What hardware are you using?

#39 Post by h3kt0r »

I'm using 500Gb external USB drives (x2) to store Comics, Ebooks, Games (both installers and installed games), Programs installers, ISOs, Music collection and Archives;
Then i have a 128Gb bootable micro SD card to store my portable programs, documents, a linux distro and a live windows system.
I also keep a 3Tb external USB drive to backup (twice a year) the 500Gb external USB drives (x2) i already mentioned.
Everything is plugged onto a USB hub which has its own power supply.
Which leaves me with a system hard drive built into my computer that has 92% free space and then i've got Rollback Rx Home edition installed, just in case...
I've upgraded the RAM to 10Gb on my laptop so even if i'm using a 3Gb RAM disk for browser caching and downloading, i still have plenty of memory to run other applications smoothly.
So far, everything went okay with this setup for a full year.

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h3kt0r
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Re: What hardware are you using?

#40 Post by h3kt0r »

Now, i've just salvaged an Acer Aspire one netbook : intel atom (1.6Ghz), 512Mb RAM, 8Gb SSD. Just installed Antix Linux on this netbook, it runs great :
web browsing is smooth, video streaming is fine, everything worked straight from the beginning : keyboard, touchpad, wifi, etc... Very light on system's
resources : 64 Mb memory load at logon.
If you still have an old computer, this is the distribution you need to give it a new life...

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Midas
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Re: What hardware are you using?

#41 Post by Midas »

Nice! 8)

I have one of those Asus netbooks somewhere -- and somewhat beefier, if memory serves me right -- that I'll have to test something like that on. One of this days... :P

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Re: What hardware are you using?

#42 Post by JohnEs »

I like this audio player http://www.foobar2000.org/

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webfork
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Re: What hardware are you using?

#43 Post by webfork »

Userfriendly wrote: Mon May 04, 2015 8:51 am There's 3 types of NAND flash memory used in Memory Cards and SSD's.
I'm probably late to the party in noticing this, but I just saw an example of the different flash memory types: Samsung puts out an "endurance" microSD card specifically for high write levels (common in recording devices like video cameras that have to write a *lot* of data to memory and frequently.

Turns out there are several options for consumers in this space:

WD: https://www.westerndigital.com/company/ ... plications
Sandisk: https://www.sandisk.com/home/memory-car ... ce-microsd (more on this from avnet: https://www.avnet.com/wps/portal/silica ... rosd-cards)

bitcoin
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Re: What hardware are you using?

#44 Post by bitcoin »

h3kt0r wrote: Sun Jul 08, 2018 11:26 am Now, i've just salvaged an Acer Aspire one netbook : intel atom (1.6Ghz), 512Mb RAM, 8Gb SSD. Just installed Antix Linux on this netbook, it runs great :
web browsing is smooth, video streaming is fine, everything worked straight from the beginning : keyboard, touchpad, wifi, etc... Very light on system's
resources : 64 Mb memory load at logon.
If you still have an old computer, this is the distribution you need to give it a new life...
this is what i buy, Acer 11.6" netbooks from about 4-5 years ago, mostly used off of Ebay. I have about 8 of them now, 2 actually still new in box.
The neat thing is with the Intel CPU version they could be upgraded to 8 GB RAM and then add an SSD and they very run well, 5 browsers with hundreds of tabs open and a dozen other programs open also, no problem. I have bought them used as cheap as $60 and new about $150.

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h3kt0r
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Re: What hardware are you using?

#45 Post by h3kt0r »

Upgraded the Acer Aspire One netbook ZG75 from 2008 with a new SSD, a 9 cells battery, added 1Gb RAM stick, installed a dual boot XP pro (with Chell moded driver) and latest AntiX Linux, and two 128Gb SD cards i had laying around for added storage. This little PC is still rocking ! Great for retro gaming : Diablo 2, Wizardry 8, Baldur's Gates 1 & 2, Space Rangers, Dungeon Siege, FreeLancer, etc...

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