Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Kai Ponte]

On Tuesday 01 May 2007 08:26:12 am Jeffrey L. Taylor wrote:
> I looking to buy an external hard drive to backup (not archive) my laptop. 
> It has USB 2.0.  I am looking for a desktop solution, i.e., don't need nor
> want to pay for portable powered USB drives.  Capacity 80GB to 160GB range.
>  Any recommendations and/or condemnations?


I have a few. I use them for backups. 

The most recent one I got was from Fry's. I bought a 300 GB (that's using 
the "new" term for GB) drive and a Linksys enclosure for around $120 
combined. 

I ended up formatting it with FAT32.

When doing a backup of my laptop or my desktops, I noticed I'm getting very 
fast speeds. 


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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Greg Freemyer]

On 5/1/07, Kai Ponte <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On Tuesday 01 May 2007 08:26:12 am Jeffrey L. Taylor wrote:
> I looking to buy an external hard drive to backup (not archive) my laptop.
> It has USB 2.0.  I am looking for a desktop solution, i.e., don't need nor
> want to pay for portable powered USB drives.  Capacity 80GB to 160GB range.
>  Any recommendations and/or condemnations?


I have a few. I use them for backups.

The most recent one I got was from Fry's. I bought a 300 GB (that's using
the "new" term for GB) drive and a Linksys enclosure for around $120
combined.

I ended up formatting it with FAT32.


I had someone fairly knowledgeable tell me that in the real world they
are seeing problems when using FAT32 on 500GB and above drives.  We've
been using FAT32 for all our external drives too, but we are
initiating the process of deciding if we want to go to EXT2 or NTFS
for the future.

I looked into this 2 or 3 years ago and did not feel comfortable going
either way at that time so we stayed with FAT.  But compatible drivers
seem to have improved in both directions since then.

Greg
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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[jdd]

Jeffrey L. Taylor wrote:

I looking to buy an external hard drive to backup (not archive) my laptop.  It
has USB 2.0.  I am looking for a desktop solution, i.e., don't need nor want
to pay for portable powered USB drives.  Capacity 80GB to 160GB range.  Any
recommendations and/or condemnations?


external on what kind? if not usb, must be scsi? may be ata?

as of the file system, ext3 is a very good choice, and can be read 
even from XP if necessary (there is a native XP driver for ext3)


jdd

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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Hans du Plooy]

On Tue, May 1, 2007 17:22, Greg Freemyer wrote:
> On 5/1/07, Kai Ponte <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> I ended up formatting it with FAT32.
>
> I had someone fairly knowledgeable tell me that in the real world they
> are seeing problems when using FAT32 on 500GB and above drives.  We've
> been using FAT32 for all our external drives too, but we are
> initiating the process of deciding if we want to go to EXT2 or NTFS
> for the future.

Unless you have to access the same drive from Windows, I would seriously
avoid using FAT32.  You are making backups because you value your data,
after all :-)

I'd much rather use ext3 if you need to read it from Windows.  There is a
driver called ifs2 or something like that, and Total Commander has had an
ext2 driver for ages.  They will both read ext3 but ignore the journal.

I'm actually seriously considering going for one of these consumer network
storage setups.  This looks good but I have yet to figure out in what way
the network connection work - if it's running samba internally or what:

http://www.iomega-europe.com/item?SID=48661c9266d010983d95b9b4f405cd37737:4735&sku=131433681

Hans

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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[jdd]

Hans du Plooy wrote:


I'm actually seriously considering going for one of these consumer network
storage setups.  This looks good but I have yet to figure out in what way
the network connection work - if it's running samba internally or what:


are they gigabit ethernet? if not, this will be dawn slow :-(
jdd


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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[John Andersen]

On Tuesday 01 May 2007, Jeffrey L. Taylor wrote:
> I looking to buy an external hard drive to backup (not archive) my laptop. 
> It has USB 2.0.  I am looking for a desktop solution, i.e., don't need nor
> want to pay for portable powered USB drives.  Capacity 80GB to 160GB range.
>  Any recommendations and/or condemnations?
>
> TIA,
>   Jeffrey

I've had very good luck with  "MyBook", from Western Digital.
(160 gig, arrived as Fat32, since migrated to Reiserfs).

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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Kai Ponte]

On Tuesday 01 May 2007 09:22:43 am Greg Freemyer wrote:
> On 5/1/07, Kai Ponte <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On Tuesday 01 May 2007 08:26:12 am Jeffrey L. Taylor wrote:
> > > I looking to buy an external hard drive to backup (not archive) my
> > > laptop. It has USB 2.0.  I am looking for a desktop solution, i.e.,
> > > don't need nor want to pay for portable powered USB drives.  Capacity
> > > 80GB to 160GB range. Any recommendations and/or condemnations?
> >
> > I have a few. I use them for backups.
> >
> > The most recent one I got was from Fry's. I bought a 300 GB (that's using
> > the "new" term for GB) drive and a Linksys enclosure for around $120
> > combined.
> >
> > I ended up formatting it with FAT32.
>
> I had someone fairly knowledgeable tell me that in the real world they
> are seeing problems when using FAT32 on 500GB and above drives.  We've
> been using FAT32 for all our external drives too, but we are
> initiating the process of deciding if we want to go to EXT2 or NTFS
> for the future.
>
> I looked into this 2 or 3 years ago and did not feel comfortable going
> either way at that time so we stayed with FAT.  But compatible drivers
> seem to have improved in both directions since then.
>

I have one drive (160GB) formatted with Reiser. It is painfully slow to access 
and update. It does transfer fast.  I've also got rfsgui32 loaded on my expee 
and 2K machines. 

I just remember someone mentioning that FAT32 - when formatted through SUSE - 
is pretty good. So far, no problems. 

I might try EXT3, though, as my Wintendo machines are becoming fewer and 
fewer. I might even buy a Dell next time, now that they provide Ubuntu 
pre-loaded. (Of course, I wonder where I'm going to find the Trial AOL icon.)


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RE: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Morten Bjørnsvik]

|I had someone fairly knowledgeable tell me that in the real 
|world they are seeing problems when using FAT32 on 500GB and 
|above drives.  We've been using FAT32 for all our external 
|drives too, but we are initiating the process of deciding if 
|we want to go to EXT2 or NTFS for the future.
|
|I looked into this 2 or 3 years ago and did not feel 
|comfortable going either way at that time so we stayed with 
|FAT.  But compatible drivers seem to have improved in both 
|directions since then.
|

AFAIK FAT32 has an upper limit of 127GB. which means you need lots of
partitions. Fat is the worst filesystem out there. Anything else is better.

If you need windows portability, sharing it via samba from a server is 
a reliable option. Samba also supports windows acl well, if you want more 
than default windows filesystem security (everybody can read everything).
Maybe the write-ntfs patch will fix this?

When it comes to hard-disk of Choice the Samsung Spinpoint 500GB is great.
It has the lowest surface temperature of all the 500GB disks, which means
you can put it in an external non-fan box. The more platters and rpms the
higher the temperature.

Most newer disks of today can transfer more than 60MB/s which is the upper 
theoretical
bandwidth limit of usb2. 

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RE: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[frank nelson]

--- Morten Bjørnsvik
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


> AFAIK FAT32 has an upper limit of 127GB. which means
> you need lots of partitions. 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/154997

FAT32 supports drives up to 2 terabytes in size.

It would appear you do not know. As it only took a few
seconds to get the correct information, were you too
busy even for that? It must have taken you more time
to type up the incorrect information, than it took me
to find the above. If you don't know what you're
talking about, don't waste everybody's time with your misinformation.

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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Carlos E. R.]

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The Tuesday 2007-05-01 at 18:56 +0200, jdd wrote:

> Hans du Plooy wrote:
> 
> > I'm actually seriously considering going for one of these consumer network
> > storage setups.  This looks good but I have yet to figure out in what way
> > the network connection work - if it's running samba internally or what:
> 
> are they gigabit ethernet? if not, this will be dawn slow :-(

Why? At 100 Mbits/s they should be faster than usb non 2.0, ie, 12 Mbit/s. 
My PC doesn't have usb 2.0, so those network things are faster than usb.

And some of those boxes have three interfaces: network, usb, and firewire.


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RE: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Carlos E. R.]

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The Wednesday 2007-05-02 at 10:01 +0200, Morten Bjørnsvik wrote:

> 
> AFAIK FAT32 has an upper limit of 127GB. which means you need lots of
> partitions. 

What?

Acording to the wikipedia, the limit is 8 Tera bibytes (8 TiB) - although 
if you format it from windows the limit is lower:

| In theory, this should support a total of approximately 268,435,456 
| (2^28) clusters, allowing for drive sizes in the range of 8 tebibytes 
| with 32K clusters. On Windows 95/98, due to the version of Microsoft's 
| ScanDisk utility included with these operating systems being a 16-bit 
| application, the FAT structure is not allowed to grow beyond 4,177,920 
| (< 2^22) clusters, placing the volume limit at 127.53 gigabytes.[4]. A 
| limitation in original versions of Windows 98/98SE's Fdisk causes it to 
| incorrectly report disk sizes over 64GB.[5] A corrected version is 
| available from Microsoft. These limitations do not apply to Windows 
| 2000/XP except during Setup, in which there is a 32GB limit.[6] Windows 
| ME supports the FAT32 file system without any limits.[7]





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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[jdd]

Carlos E. R. wrote:

Why? At 100 Mbits/s they should be faster than usb non 2.0, ie, 12 Mbit/s. 


give, there is no other thing on the net (or a good switch) ie no dvd 
dl :-)



My PC doesn't have usb 2.0, so those network things are faster than usb.


usb 2 is now 4 or 5 years old and available on addon cards, not 
usefull only for backup :-)




And some of those boxes have three interfaces: network, usb, and firewire.


well... I can use USB2 for video capture (it's nearly as fast as the 
original disk), certainly not network.


given this the network gigabit is pretty cheap nowaday, and I would 
already use it if all my house was not wired on cat 5, too slow :-(


if you can have gigabit, take it, you will be glad :-)

jdd


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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Carlos E. R.]

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The Tuesday 2007-05-01 at 08:48 -0700, Kai Ponte wrote:

> I bought a 300 GB (that's using the "new" term for GB) drive and a 
> Linksys enclosure for around $120 combined.

300 _GB_ is the correct naming, as the prefix Giga meaning 10^9 is 
way older than the "mistaken" computer parlance meaning of 2^30. This 
second meaning should use instead the new standard GiB (gibibite).

Hard disk manufacturers have been using the "correct" term for disk sizes 
for many years, although I guess not because it is correct, but because it 
yields bigger numbers for the same actual size ;-)

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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[George Stoianov]

AFAIK FAT32 has an upper limit of 127GB. which means you need lots of
partitions.


I have a usb disk I was trying to copy some linux distro iso's to,
while it was format with FAT32, and it would go up to 4 GB + and stop
saying file size limit was exceeded. For me that made it useless as a
lot of the file I have are larger than 4 GB. You will need to reformat
the disk to ext2,ext3 etc. which will make it problematic if you want
your windows and mac pcs to mount it automatically. You have to
evaluate carefully...

HTH
George
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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Örn Hansen]

On May 02, 2007 04:02 PM, Carlos E. R. wrote:


> 300 _GB_ is the correct naming, as the prefix Giga meaning 10^9 is
> way older than the "mistaken" computer parlance meaning of 2^30. This
> second meaning should use instead the new standard GiB (gibibite).
>

  I think a byte is always 2^8, no matter what.  So, a GB referenced as
(2^8) * 10^9 sounds kinda odd, especially when you historically talk
about kilobyte as 1024 (2^10) and a megabyte as 1024*1024 (2^20). =)
 

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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Carlos E. R.]

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The Wednesday 2007-05-02 at 16:40 +0200, Örn Hansen wrote:


300 _GB_ is the correct naming, as the prefix Giga meaning 10^9 is
way older than the "mistaken" computer parlance meaning of 2^30. This
second meaning should use instead the new standard GiB (gibibite).



  I think a byte is always 2^8, no matter what.  So, a GB referenced as
(2^8) * 10^9 sounds kinda odd, especially when you historically talk
about kilobyte as 1024 (2^10) and a megabyte as 1024*1024 (2^20). =)


Yes, it sounds odd, but nevertheless, it is the correct usage now (IEEE 
1541). The "classic" G (GB) in computer parlance has changed to Gi (GiB, 
to diferentiate from the G prefix as used in all the rest of units in the 
SI.


The byte remains the same. The change is in the prefixes. "Gi" is read 
"gibi", meaning 2³⁰. "G" means 10⁹. This way there is no ambiguity.



- -- 
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   Carlos E. R.
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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Kai Ponte]

Quoting "Carlos E. R." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:


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The Wednesday 2007-05-02 at 16:40 +0200, Örn Hansen wrote:


300 _GB_ is the correct naming, as the prefix Giga meaning 10^9 is
way older than the "mistaken" computer parlance meaning of 2^30. This
second meaning should use instead the new standard GiB (gibibite).



  I think a byte is always 2^8, no matter what.  So, a GB referenced as
(2^8) * 10^9 sounds kinda odd, especially when you historically talk
about kilobyte as 1024 (2^10) and a megabyte as 1024*1024 (2^20). =)


Yes, it sounds odd, but nevertheless, it is the correct usage now (IEEE
1541). The "classic" G (GB) in computer parlance has changed to Gi
(GiB, to diferentiate from the G prefix as used in all the rest of
units in the SI.

The byte remains the same. The change is in the prefixes. "Gi" is read
"gibi", meaning 2³?. "G" means 10?. This way there is no ambiguity.


That is fascinating. I wasn't aware there was an actual change. I just  
figured the hard drive manufacturers were just trying to pull the wool  
over our collective eyes.



So, now my memory management documentation is all wrong? I no longer  
have 4K of memory in my TRS-80?  :P



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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Carlos E. R.]

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The Wednesday 2007-05-02 at 11:00 -0700, Kai Ponte wrote:

> Quoting "Carlos E. R." <>:
> 

> That is fascinating. I wasn't aware there was an actual change. I just figured
> the hard drive manufacturers were just trying to pull the wool over our
> collective eyes.

They do, of course! It just happens to be correct - now. It wasn't correct 
some years back, but they did none the less. Many people have being caught 
that way, and when they tried their brand new 80 MB HD the OS said was 
only 76.2 MB! And some of them wanted to return the disks as faulty...

(My example is 80 MB to show how old is the problem... my HD was 84MB, 
ie, 80 MB, or rather, 80 MiB)

This problem would have never happened if computer people did not 
misappropriate the K, M, G prefix changing the long time established 
meaning. 


I learnt about the kibi, mebi, gibi... prefixes very recently. Ie, I'm a 
recent convert, and like most converts I try to get more converts to 
redeem myself ;-)


> So, now my memory management documentation is all wrong? I no longer have 4K
> of memory in my TRS-80?  :P

ROTFL!  X'-)

No, it isn't politically correct now :-P

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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[John O'Gorman]

On Wed, 2007-05-02 at 18:43 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> 
> The Wednesday 2007-05-02 at 16:40 +0200, Örn Hansen wrote:
> 
> >> 300 _GB_ is the correct naming, as the prefix Giga meaning 10^9 is
> >> way older than the "mistaken" computer parlance meaning of 2^30. This
> >> second meaning should use instead the new standard GiB (gibibite).
> >>
> >
> >   I think a byte is always 2^8, no matter what.  So, a GB referenced as
> > (2^8) * 10^9 sounds kinda odd, especially when you historically talk
> > about kilobyte as 1024 (2^10) and a megabyte as 1024*1024 (2^20). =)
> 
> Yes, it sounds odd, but nevertheless, it is the correct usage now (IEEE 
> 1541). The "classic" G (GB) in computer parlance has changed to Gi (GiB, 
> to diferentiate from the G prefix as used in all the rest of units in the 
> SI.
> 
> The byte remains the same. The change is in the prefixes. "Gi" is read 
> "gibi", meaning 2³⁰. "G" means 10⁹. This way there is no ambiguity.
> 
Yes and be sure to pronounce them jibi and jigger (like in 'Back to the
Future') rather than the common mispronunciation - Ghiga

Giga is derived from the Greek gigas (giant) and gigantic is a
derivative. The Greeks today pronouce it: yiga

John O'Gorman
> 
> - -- 
> Cheers,
> Carlos E. R.
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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[James Knott]

Örn Hansen wrote:
>   I think a byte is always 2^8, no matter what. 
>   
Frayed knot!  There were systems that used 6 bit bytes and probably
other sizes too.


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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[jdd]

James Knott wrote:

Örn Hansen wrote:
  I think a byte is always 2^8, no matter what. 
  

Frayed knot!  There were systems that used 6 bit bytes and probably
other sizes too.



some count on nibbles (4 bits) and use ten bytes registers (HP-41 :-)

jdd

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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Randall R Schulz]

On Wednesday 02 May 2007 15:07, James Knott wrote:
> Örn Hansen wrote:
> >   I think a byte is always 2^8, no matter what.
>
> Frayed knot!  There were systems that used 6 bit bytes and probably
> other sizes too.

10 bits per byte on some BBN machines, e.g. The 36-bit words on Univacs 
made them nine bits-per-byte, though they were not really 
byte-addressable, at least not back in the 80s. I don't know if they're 
still in use and if so whether they've been given byte addressability.


RRS
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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Carlos E. R.]

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The Wednesday 2007-05-02 at 15:58 +0200, jdd wrote:


> > My PC doesn't have usb 2.0, so those network things are faster than usb.
> 
> usb 2 is now 4 or 5 years old and available on addon cards, not usefull only
> for backup :-)

I know, I know, but I don't have dozens of PCI sockets. Only three.


> > And some of those boxes have three interfaces: network, usb, and firewire.
> 
> well... I can use USB2 for video capture (it's nearly as fast as the original
> disk), certainly not network.
> 
> given this the network gigabit is pretty cheap nowaday, and I would already
> use it if all my house was not wired on cat 5, too slow :-(
> 
> if you can have gigabit, take it, you will be glad :-)

My router is 100 Mbit, so it's no use; same as my other PC, and those of 
my "visitors".

In my particular case, a network disk is interesting, if I can find it 
nice, cheap, and good. Otherwise, usb is not bad either, even if I have to 
wait longer than you ;-)

Can't have everything state of the art.

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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Joseph Loo]

George Stoianov wrote:
>> AFAIK FAT32 has an upper limit of 127GB. which means you need lots of
>> partitions.
> 
> I have a usb disk I was trying to copy some linux distro iso's to,
> while it was format with FAT32, and it would go up to 4 GB + and stop
> saying file size limit was exceeded. For me that made it useless as a
> lot of the file I have are larger than 4 GB. You will need to reformat
> the disk to ext2,ext3 etc. which will make it problematic if you want
> your windows and mac pcs to mount it automatically. You have to
> evaluate carefully...
> 
> HTH
> George
You hae to be careful between file system and file size. I believe that FAT32
only allows a maximum of 4 GBytes. You can have many filex within the 
filesystem.

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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[John O'Gorman]

On Tue, 2007-05-01 at 10:26 -0500, Jeffrey L. Taylor wrote:
> I looking to buy an external hard drive to backup (not archive) my laptop.  It
> has USB 2.0.  I am looking for a desktop solution, i.e., don't need nor want
> to pay for portable powered USB drives.  Capacity 80GB to 160GB range.  Any
> recommendations and/or condemnations?

I have had some experience (not all good) with CoolGear Boxes.
They are a US company and I had to obtain them through a colleague
resident in the US as they didn't seem to have distribution channels to
NZ or provision for international purchase via the web.

The earlier boxes proved marginal in operation drawing their USB current
from the server. This has been fixed in later offerings.
When I googled for coolgear recently, their website did not list the
boxes I have among their products.

They had a variety of offerings. My choice was a 2 tray box, with a
single USB2.0 connector. Each try is keylocked and is levered into the
box where a SCSI physical connector is used (even with IDE or SATA
drives). The backplane has hotplug circuitry.

The trays are proprietary. They have different boxes for IDE (my
choice), or SATA, or SCSI. You cannot remove them except by turning the
key (which disconnect power from the tray).
My purpose was to use the USB boxes as replacements for obsolescent
Tandberg SLR24 tape drives. The IDE choice is the cheapest.
My hopes to use them on a client site foundered on SUSE 9.0's
unpredictable and inhumanly named mount points. It wasn't an easy option
to upgrade the SUSE as they had proprietary Informix software.

I have now nearly completed the upgrade for them on a 2nd machine and
will change them over to using the USB drives as archive and tape
options. I hope to write scripts which will check that the devices are
mounted then call the appropriate commands (tar and ontape) to complete
the archive and backup.

I have found performance disappointing (probably a side-effect of the
sync mount option) compared with the tape drives.

But it is a cheap solution and the IDE entry level HDDs are readily
available.
> 
> TIA,
>   Jeffrey

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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[jpff]

Let us not forget the 7bit byte on the DEC PDP10 (5 in a word with 1
bit extra), or the 9bit octet on Multics.  When I first came across
the term byte it referred to the size of a character, while our
machine at the time had 6bit characters.
==John ffitch
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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[jdd]

Carlos E. R. wrote:


if you can have gigabit, take it, you will be glad :-)


My router is 100 Mbit, so it's no use; same as my other PC, and those of 
my "visitors".


I'm in the same situation, but think this kind of HW i here for long 
time, you will probably have a gigabit router anytime soon :-)


jdd

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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Aaron Kulkis]

James Knott wrote:

Örn Hansen wrote:
  I think a byte is always 2^8, no matter what. 
  

Frayed knot!  There were systems that used 6 bit bytes and probably
other sizes too.


Doubly frayed knot...


Those aren't bytes, those are words.

Wordsize may vary, but bytes are 8 bits.
and nybbles are 4 bits.



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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[James Knott]

Aaron Kulkis wrote:
> James Knott wrote:
>> Örn Hansen wrote:
>>>   I think a byte is always 2^8, no matter what.   
>> Frayed knot!  There were systems that used 6 bit bytes and probably
>> other sizes too.
>
> Doubly frayed knot...
>
>
> Those aren't bytes, those are words.
>
> Wordsize may vary, but bytes are 8 bits.
> and nybbles are 4 bits.
>
>
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte

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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Randall R Schulz]

On Wednesday 02 May 2007 15:32, Aaron Kulkis wrote:
> ...
>
> Wordsize may vary, but bytes are 8 bits.
> and nybbles are 4 bits.

So say you. Reality differs.


RRS
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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Jeffrey L. Taylor]

Quoting Aaron Kulkis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> James Knott wrote:
> >Örn Hansen wrote:
> >>  I think a byte is always 2^8, no matter what. 
> >>  
> >Frayed knot!  There were systems that used 6 bit bytes and probably
> >other sizes too.
> 
> Doubly frayed knot...
> 
> 
> Those aren't bytes, those are words.
> 
> Wordsize may vary, but bytes are 8 bits.
> and nybbles are 4 bits.
> 

Bytes were 6, or 8, or possibly others.  A byte was a character, 6 bits for
BCD, 8 bits for EBCDIC and ASCII.  I know, I was there.  Now, 6 bit words, I
never saw any of them.  IIRC, 12 bit words was the smallest I ever saw.

Jeffrey
Registered Old Fart/Greybeard
Programming since before there were ICs (ie. 1967)
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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[jdd]

Randall R Schulz wrote:

On Wednesday 02 May 2007 15:32, Aaron Kulkis wrote:

...

Wordsize may vary, but bytes are 8 bits.
and nybbles are 4 bits.


So say you. Reality differs.


this may be a translation problem...

I see on wikipedia that the word "octet" can be used when 8 bits must 
be enforced, however "octet" in the french translation for "byte", so 
in french there is no difference between "byte" and "octet" (in fact I 
discover than "octet" can be used in english).


what about other langages? may be the problem is only in english?

jdd


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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[jpff]

But do not forget that the Multics, a French machine in later life
(Machines Bull, had a 9-bit octet.  Caused much amusement in my circles.
==John ffitch

> "jdd" == jdd  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 jdd> Randall R Schulz wrote:

 jdd> this may be a translation problem...

 jdd> I see on wikipedia that the word "octet" can be used when 8 bits must 
 jdd> be enforced, however "octet" in the french translation for "byte", so 
 jdd> in french there is no difference between "byte" and "octet" (in fact I 
 jdd> discover than "octet" can be used in english).

 jdd> what about other langages? may be the problem is only in english?

 jdd> jdd

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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[jdd]

jpff wrote:

But do not forget that the Multics, a French machine in later life
(Machines Bull, had a 9-bit octet.  Caused much amusement in my circles.


weel, the name "octet" coming from "octal", I hope the ninth is only a 
parity control :-)


jdd

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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[James Knott]

Jeffrey L. Taylor wrote:
> Quoting Aaron Kulkis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>   
>> James Knott wrote:
>> 
>>> Örn Hansen wrote:
>>>   
  I think a byte is always 2^8, no matter what. 
  
 
>>> Frayed knot!  There were systems that used 6 bit bytes and probably
>>> other sizes too.
>>>   
>> Doubly frayed knot...
>>
>>
>> Those aren't bytes, those are words.
>>
>> Wordsize may vary, but bytes are 8 bits.
>> and nybbles are 4 bits.
>>
>> 
>
> Bytes were 6, or 8, or possibly others.  A byte was a character, 6 bits for
> BCD, 8 bits for EBCDIC and ASCII.  I know, I was there.  Now, 6 bit words, I
> never saw any of them.  IIRC, 12 bit words was the smallest I ever saw.
>
>   

Many microprocessors are 4 bit, when used for such things as calculators
etc., that don't need 8 bits.  The very first microprocessor, the Intel
4004 was 4 bits.  The 8 bit CPU's also have an 8 bit word.



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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Clayton]

> AFAIK FAT32 has an upper limit of 127GB. which means
> you need lots of partitions.


This is an artifact of Microsoft's brilliant choices.  Windows was
shipped with the registry setting for Large Drive Support turned
off... thus the 127 GB limitation.  You could get around this by
changing the registry setting, thereby enabling you to format a single
partition larger than 127 GB or you could install Linux which
didn't have this brain dead setting, and is not limited by BIOS
knowledge of drives over a predetermined size. :-)  I have no idea if
this is still an issue with XP SP2.

Windows only supports creating FAT32 partitions up to 32GB (although
they can read/write FAT32 partitions over 32GB)

FAT32 has a file size limitation... you cannot write a single file
larger than 4GB... so your 8GB double layer DVD ISOs cannot be stored
on a FAT32 partition.


C.
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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[jpff]

It had to be said. I worked on the Burroughs B1700 which has a
1bit word; it was bit addressable and as a soft machine the programmer
could select whatever virtual word length they liked.  I remember the
other LISP team changing from 22 to 23 bits one day.  There was an
advantage to 24 bit virtual words, but at its heart it was a 1bit machine.
==John ffitch
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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Carlos E. R.]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1


The Monday 2007-05-07 at 08:07 +0200, jdd wrote:

> > > Wordsize may vary, but bytes are 8 bits.
> > > and nybbles are 4 bits.
> > 
> > So say you. Reality differs.
> 
> this may be a translation problem...

The definition varies acording to who makes them. One definition could be 
the smallest group of bits the CPU adresses at a time; in modern computers 
that is 8 bits.

for instance:

- From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  byte
   n : a sequence of 8 bits (enough to represent one character of
   alphanumeric data) processed as a single unit of
   information

- From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  byte
   
   /bi:t/ (B) A component in the machine {data hierarchy}
  usually larger than a {bit} and smaller than a {word}; now
  most often eight bits and the smallest addressable unit of
  storage.  A byte typically holds one {character}.

   A byte may be 9 bits on 36-bit computers.  Some older
  architectures used "byte" for quantities of 6 or 7 bits, and
  the PDP-10 and IBM 7030 supported "bytes" that were actually
  {bit-fields} of 1 to 36 (or 64) bits!  These usages are now
  obsolete, and even 9-bit bytes have become rare in the general
  trend toward power-of-2 word sizes.
   
  The term was coined by Werner Buchholz in 1956 during the
  early design phase for the {IBM} {Stretch} computer.  It was a
  mutation of the word "bite" intended to avoid confusion with
  "bit".  In 1962 he described it as "a group of bits used to
  encode a character, or the number of bits transmitted in
  parallel to and from input-output units".  The move to an
  8-bit byte happened in late 1956, and this size was later
  adopted and promulgated as a standard by the {System/360}
  {operating system} (announced April 1964).
 

  James S. Jones <> adds:
   
  I am sure I read in a mid-1970's brochure by IBM that outlined
  the history of computers that BYTE was an acronym that stood
  for "Bit asYnchronous Transmission E__?__" which related to
  width of the bus between the Stretch CPU and its CRT-memory
  (prior to Core).

  Terry Carr <> says:
   
  In the early days IBM taught that a series of bits transferred
  together (like so many yoked oxen) formed a Binary Yoked
  Transfer Element (BYTE).
   
 

 
> what about other langages? may be the problem is only in english?

No, the problem arises when experts from several generations talk together ;-)

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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[James Knott]

jpff wrote:

It had to be said. I worked on the Burroughs B1700 which has a
1bit word; it was bit addressable and as a soft machine the programmer
could select whatever virtual word length they liked.  I remember the
other LISP team changing from 22 to 23 bits one day.  There was an
advantage to 24 bit virtual words, but at its heart it was a 1bit machine.
==John ffitch
  


Anyone here with a 2 bit computer?  ;-)


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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Patrick Shanahan]

* James Knott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [05-07-07 10:42]:
 [...] 
> Anyone here with a 2 bit computer?  ;-)

And change   :^)
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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Joseph Loo]

jdd wrote:
> Randall R Schulz wrote:
>> On Wednesday 02 May 2007 15:32, Aaron Kulkis wrote:
>>> ...
>>>
>>> Wordsize may vary, but bytes are 8 bits.
>>> and nybbles are 4 bits.
>>
>> So say you. Reality differs.
> 
> this may be a translation problem...
> 
> I see on wikipedia that the word "octet" can be used when 8 bits must be
> enforced, however "octet" in the french translation for "byte", so in
> french there is no difference between "byte" and "octet" (in fact I
> discover than "octet" can be used in english).
> 
> what about other langages? may be the problem is only in english?
> 
> jdd
> 
> 
Actually there is a difference between a byte and an octet. A byte can be 6, 7,
8, or 9 bits. An octet is defined as an 8 bit byte. It is defined via CCITT I
think I got the telecounication standards correct.

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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[James Knott]

Joseph Loo wrote:
> jdd wrote:
>   
>> Randall R Schulz wrote:
>> 
>>> On Wednesday 02 May 2007 15:32, Aaron Kulkis wrote:
>>>   
 ...

 Wordsize may vary, but bytes are 8 bits.
 and nybbles are 4 bits.
 
>>> So say you. Reality differs.
>>>   
>> this may be a translation problem...
>>
>> I see on wikipedia that the word "octet" can be used when 8 bits must be
>> enforced, however "octet" in the french translation for "byte", so in
>> french there is no difference between "byte" and "octet" (in fact I
>> discover than "octet" can be used in english).
>>
>> what about other langages? may be the problem is only in english?
>>
>> jdd
>>
>>
>> 
> Actually there is a difference between a byte and an octet. A byte can be 6, 
> 7,
> 8, or 9 bits. An octet is defined as an 8 bit byte. It is defined via CCITT I
> think I got the telecounication standards correct.
>
>   
CCITT is obsolete.  It's now ITU.


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Re: [opensuse] USB 2.0 external hard drives

[Robert Smits]

On Monday 07 May 2007 07:41, James Knott wrote:
> jpff wrote:
> > It had to be said. I worked on the Burroughs B1700 which has a
> > 1bit word; it was bit addressable and as a soft machine the programmer
> > could select whatever virtual word length they liked.  I remember the
> > other LISP team changing from 22 to 23 bits one day.  There was an
> > advantage to 24 bit virtual words, but at its heart it was a 1bit
> > machine. ==John ffitch
>
> Anyone here with a 2 bit computer?  ;-)
>

You remind me of Harry martin's description of Windows 95 - to wit:

Windows 95:n. 1 Global Virus 2. 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell 
written for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for 
a 4 bit microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of 
competition. 

Bob


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