General Q: External Hard Drives & Shock

[peachsnowfalling]

I have a general question concerning external hard drives. Taking a digital video course in college this semester, students were suggested to get external hard drives for the large amount of video footage we'd be using. I personally have a 512MB jumpdrive and thought I'd just use CD-RWs for bigger stuff. Sadly, Toast gives me repeated problems; I verify a just-burned comp, receive a sector unreadable error, and the G5 won't even let me erase the damn things.. on my PC the discs verify each time and I've had no burning problems.

When I asked a hardware-savvy friend casually about external hard drives and mentioned the number of students bringing them to class every day, he immediately discouraged me from that course, saying they couldn't handle any shock at all; at most, moving them once or twice, but not the kind of shock they're subjected to on a daily basis going to and from home. He did suggest some new type of SCSI hard drive, though.

As I know less on hardware and technical matters than I sometimes wish were the case, can someone here enlighten me? Is it as dire as my friend says and would I basically be throwing my money away by buying something as fragile as that? Are SCSIs better, and why?

Please, go easy on this neophyte. Also, I love this icon (haven't visited the forums in a while) --> :ff: :cool:

Cheers,

peachsnowfalling.

 

[Addis]

There are quite a few external drives which are good for moving around. As long as you don't drop them, the anti-shock casings usually protect them from all the day to day uses.

A SCSI is just the interface of the drive, like USB or EIDE, and so i can't see why getting a SCSI would help at all in terms of shock protection.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=external+drive+shock&btnG=Google+Search

 

[peachsnowfalling]

There are quite a few external drives which are good for moving around. As long as you don't drop them, the anti-shock casings usually protect them from all the day to day uses.

A SCSI is just the interface of the drive, like USB or EIDE, and so i can't see why getting a SCSI would help at all in terms of shock protection.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=external+drive+shock&btnG=Google+Search

Thanks. I'll have to ask my friend to clarify about why he spoke so poorly of the casings and about the SCSI drives as well (I don't know much about hardware, but I did know that it's just an interface, as you pointed out). I suppose I didn't want to seem stupid by asking him in the first place (so I appear stupid to total strangers :O).

peachsnowfalling.