Two Tech Items Required
 

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

Two Tech Items Required (continued)
 

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

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.)

Hi LOTR

Replying to your thought: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.