Hi Michael: While I agree that eSATA may be more stable, I've never had any problems with USB connected hard drives. You can easily partition and reformat the disk in ext3 format via the USB connection. At least you getting the data stability a journaling system would offer you if there was a USB crash. If you will be primarily running media off this drive, consider the slower speed/lower power "Green" drives on the market. (I've seen some articles on these drives set to run at 5900 RPM.) Although not as fast at random access, they will consume less on power and have much lower standby power. Peter From: "Michael Walma" <michael [ at ] walma [ dot ] org> To: "OCLUG Technical" <linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca> Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:42:59 -0400 Subject: [OCLUG-Tech] Recommendations for big external disk? Hello there, I am in the market for a largish ( >= 1T ) external drive which plays nicely with linux. I am guessing it will be USB 2.0 but I wouldn't rule out network attached storage if the price/performance were attractive. If it is USB, I would likely reformat ext3 or similar. I would be using it a the core file server for my home network, including my media library. Any recommendations and reports of experiences, postive or negative, either to me directly or to the list, would be welcome. Thanks in advance, Michael