[ale] recommendations on external USB drive for Linux, pls

[Robert Story]

On Wed, 1 Nov 2006 07:02:57 -0500 Jerry wrote:
JY> I need to stage backups at a co-lo. A daily full set totals 15G or so. Tape
JY> lib/magazine option is out for now, so an external USB drive sounds good.
 ...
JY>    - it needs to stay on 24x7x365 w/o overheating or burning into ashes

If this is the case, I recommend against USB/Firewire, and would instead go
with external SATA.

1) I'm pretty sure neither USB nor Firewire will let you spin down the drive
when idle. Since this is a backup drive, that will likely be most of the time.

2) I'm very sure that neither USB nor Firewire will let you do SMART
monitoring, so you can know when a drive is starting to fail.

3) I'm 100% positive that SATA will be faster than USB or Firewire.