Two Tech Items Required

[ukbobboy01]

Hi Forum Members

I would like to ask for advice on two tech items I plan to buy in the near future:

1) I would like to buy a device that can turn my ordinary (digital) Samsung TV into a smart TV, the device should have the following features:-

a) the ability to download digital TV apps from the Internet so that I can watch streaming Internet videos, additional UK digital TV channels e.g. the +1 channels that are not available on terrestrial TV and catch-up TV channels on my main TV.

b) should also be able to stream films, music and videos from my NAS device.

c) connect seamlessly to my w-fi and become part of my home network.

2) Unfortunately, I require another external USB HD drive but I want one that can remain cool, i.e. has a cooling system. USB HDs, by default, run hot, have no internal or external cooling system and consequently have a tendency to suddenly fail.

Therefore, does anyone know of an external USB HD that is reliable, with a cooling system and large HD, preferably up to 1TB.

Thanks in advance.


UK Bob

[ukbobboy01]

Dear Forum Members

I've been doing some research on the home "tech items" I require and, in relation to item 2) in my previous post, I came across this interesting looking device (see attached jpg) .

An External 4 x Sata HD USB Drive.

It has an extra large (8cm) fan and so should keep all the installed hard drives cool.

However, I can't help feeling that if I buy this item it will be like going back in time to when I had multiple external USB drives and some of them failed.

Anyway, still mulling this one over.


UK Bob

[Lord of the Rings]

Another thought:
Fanless drives do not necessarily mean a loss of data:
The last external drive I bought (about 18 months ago) was a 6 TB FW8/USB (2 drives) set to run in in RAID-1 mirror mode of 3 TB capacity so if one drive fails, it can be replaced without any loss of data. This one was a WD My Book II. It's supposedly easy to change the drives or so I read. The drive's software keeps you aware of if the drives are working properly. The entire back & top of the casing has air slots. Note that Win XP does not support drives larger than 2 TB, but they had a 4 TB model equivalent.
I only use mine for backup & longest connected time about 10 hours, no issue with heating.

I'm not up to date on the latest media setups & storage devices. I don't even have a digital TV yet lol (our city only stopped transmiting analogue as an alternative March last year.) I use a digital set-top box, which does have ability for playing media via a USB HDD (ie: apparently has built-in audio & video codecs.) I haven't tested that option out yet (I rarely watch TV these days.)

[ukbobboy01]

Hi LOTR

Replying to your thought:

Fanless drives do not necessarily mean a loss of data

OK, I will agree with that but it does mean that drive will run hot, regardless of what the manufacturers say, and are more prone to failure.

As for air slots, I believe they just barely make it as cosmetic adornments, that's why I have to keep a small desk fan blowing across the top of my modem-router. It just means that any further external HDs I get must have a sizeable fan installed.

However, I must admit I am somewhat apprehensive about going down the whole external USB HD drives again, plus the device I am looking at seems somewhat flimsy.

And I guess that no matter how much disk space I purchase I will always find stuff to fill them with. Back in the day when a 40MB HD was considered to be "very big" I had to delete stuff from my HDs to keep them running. Now, I seem to keep everything, I should probably re-learn the art of editing and deleting stuff.


UK

PS. Archiving is just another form of keeping old stuff.

PPS. There is a way around WinXP's 2TB limit but only for internal drives.