Using external HD for Torrents

[vivienne]

Hi

First, I must write that I am extremely fond of Transmission

I did try that other one for a while, name begins with "u" but I have come back to Transmission.

Anyway I have a rather silly question, I know, but do people ever have problems when using external hard-drives for torrents?

The reason I ask is that I had been using an external hard-drive connected by FireWire 400 for all torrents and a couple of days ago it died

It was only a couple of months old and replacement will not be a problem. It was a LaCie d2 Quadra. One of seven d2 Quadras I own.

So, was it 100% coincidence that it was the external hard-drive that I was using for torrents that died?

Should I go ahead and start using a different external hard drive with no fear?

Thank you.

Viv

[TheBang]

I can't think of any plausible way that a normal piece of software could be the cause of a hardware failure, like a hard drive dying. I would say it was 100% coincidence. You shouldn't have any problems using an external drive.

[The Guv]

As I dislike lacie D2 hard drives because they had a tendency to crash on me and were extremely difficult to make it work seamlessly, I would guess that it's just the drive.

[vivienne]

Thank you TheBang and TheGuv.

You have confirmed what I'd thought so I will continue using an external hard-drive for torrents.

Viv

[macpro]

Torrenting definitely gives a hard drive a workout. But it shouldn't cause drive failure as long as the drive is staying cool.

But many LaCie external drives have insufficient cooling and run hotter than is healthy for a hard drive. In my work as a computer tech, I have seen a lot of them die.

I never torrent on my main system drive (because of fragmentation) and my current torrenting machine is a mac mini with 2 external LaCie firewire drives. (I bought them because i got a great deal on them, knowing going into it that they would run hot.)

To keep the drives healthy, I use a quiet table fan placed near my torrenting computer that blows across the external drives.

These drives have been running 24/7 for 3 years now (with the fan also running round the clock) and they're still running great.

I also have a fan that blows on my wireless router and it makes a tremendous difference in stability. Before I put it in place, the router ran quite hot and I had to reboot it weekly due to freeze ups or extreme slowness (I do a heavy amount of torrenting 24/7). After putting it the fan in, my router can go for 3 or 4 months before I feel the need to reboot it.