[Leica] OT: external hard disk size

[reid at mejac.palo-alto.ca.us (Brian Reid)]

> This question is directed mainly to Brian, who previously has stated that
> buying hard disks larger than 250 GB was an iffy proposition.

At any given time in the disk marketplace, there is a "leading edge" 
capacity, designed to hold market position, and a "most reliable" capacity, 
which is typically 6 months to a year older. It is purely an issue of 
manufacturing quality control. Disk manufacturers are very eager to get 
their latest and greatest out into the marketplace, and are willing (though 
they will never admit this) to back off very slightly on the QA of the 
newest size, in the interests of time-to-market.

I am still using 160GB drives for my backups; I have about a dozen of them, 
but they're in a cabinet in the garage. If I were going to buy disks today, 
I would buy the Seagate ST3300831AS 300GB Serial ATA. In my opinion, 400GB 
drives are still not quite reliable enough.

Many computers and their BIOSs have trouble with non-serial ATA interfaces 
to disks bigger than 160GB. Check before you buy. SATA is enough faster that 
it's worth adapting your computer to it.