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Miscellaneous Purchasing Advice/Recommendations

As I may have mentioned before, I am currently working on updating an elderly neighbour from her (now dead) ancient PC to an iPad (Air), which (she thinks) is just for email and a bit of web browsing, but no doubt will become more useful than that as time goes on. There are legacy files on the PC which I intend to transfer onto some kind of NAS that something like File Manager on the iPad will be able to access, view, and download if necessary.

I am in a quandary about a WiFi router. The old setup has a cable modem, which I intend to connect to the WAN port of a router. There are routers on Amazon from less than £20, but they all seem to have a fair proportion of negative reviews - and the last thing I need is an out-stationed unreliable router. On the other hand, I'm spending somebody else's money.

Then there is the question of the NAS. Routers at that end of the price bracket don't have USB ports for connecting an external hard drive (some claim to in the Amazon blurb, but when examined carefully it turns out they don't). On the other hand, actual NAS drives are a lot more expensive than a USB drive, so even if I have to spend more on the router to get that facility, there will be an economy made by including a USB drive rather than providing a self-contained NAS.

I don't have to buy from Amazon, but it would be convenient.

Recommendations?
 
Anyone recommend a powered USB hub? They seem thin on the ground (for a reasonable price, anyway). I don't care if it has to be USB2.

Searching for a "powered usb hub" produces loads of hits for unpowered hubs (ie they draw their power and the power for connected devices from the host connection) or multi-port chargers (with no data functionality). So far as I am concerned, this is misrepresentation (the former is not "powered", and the latter is not a "hub").
 
Seen in the specials aisle in Lidl today:

Auto-ranging digital multimeter, £12.99. I was tempted, but I already have an adequate meter (or two), albeit not auto-ranging. Very good if you don't already have one.

Satellite "finder" (ie signal strength meter, useful for aligning a dish), £6.99.
 
Black Hole said:
Satellite "finder" (ie signal strength meter, useful for aligning a dish), £6.99.
Click to expand...
Pretty much completely useless devices in my experience of using a similar device when caravanning.

I used the Foxsat-HDR meter, a compass and sometimes the sat-finder app to ensure the view wasn't obscured by trees etc.,..
 
Black Hole said:
This seems too good to be true:
Click to expand...
They arrived yesterday.

I had found a report on t'Web that similar things are just smaller devices hacked to appear to be 2TB to the operating system, but so far I have put 90GB onto one. I suppose the next thing should be to try one as a recording drive on a HD-FOX.

As for performance: that leaves something to be desired. I did a 40GB transfer comprising a folder containing a few subfolders and files including video files. The first 2GB transferred at a blistering pace: about 15s, in excess of 100MB/s (I'm doing this on a USB3 port using my AMD Ryzen Linux machine)... but then at 2GB it practically ground to a halt.

The transfer continues and completes, but with ever decreasing reported transfer rate (which is presumably the simple average calculated from data transferred so far divided by time taken). The figures are consistent with there being a 2GB fast cache and a sustained write rate around 3.5MB/s once the cache is exhausted. I wonder what's going on here – what would happen if the UPD were unmounted, or simply unplugged without unmounting, before the presumed cache is purged.

Another 40GB duplicate transfer proceeded in much the same way, and so far as I can see completed successfully. A third is in progress. So this "2TB" UPD has at least 100GB capacity. I will try to fill one up, but that's a long job (2TB @ 3.5MB/s = about a week!).

To do: test the read rate; try one as a recording drive on a HD-FOX.

So what are these then, given that a 512GB UPD costs more like £100, and there are no 2TB UPDs available at all (from a reputable source)? Beats me.
 
Black Hole said:
similar things are just smaller devices hacked to appear to be 2TB to the operating system
Click to expand...
Do you get the same data back as you wrote? Or are the apparent multiple blocks just mapped on to a single smaller set?
The figures are consistent with there being a 2GB fast cache and a sustained write rate around 3.5MB/s once the cache is exhausted.
Click to expand...
So not really the claimed "high speed" then.
what would happen if the UPD were unmounted, or simply unplugged without unmounting, before the presumed cache is purged.
Click to expand...
I expect you lose your data.
 
Black Hole said:
This seems too good to be true:

View attachment 6667
...but for that money I'll see how long it lasts on a HD-FOX!
Click to expand...
I'll be suspicious of the claimed attributes.
If I purchase this, I'll use utilities to check for the claimed (fake?) capacity and performance. Although using them may shorten the life of the drive a little. It should be faster writing one large file rather than hundreds/thousands of small files.
 
bottletop said:
I wouldn't take any reported capacity at face value for this device.
Click to expand...
I was aware of that before purchase, but so far no complaints (122GB).

I just started a read-back and the first 2GB was practically instant (confusing - how could a cache get primed that fast?), but then tailed off to what looks like is heading for 20MB/s.

(Note these tests are also throttled by data rates off and on a spinny disk on SATA)
 
Well now!

It does a very good job of looking as if it works, but the actual data is garbage. One 450MB video file plays, the rest start in VLC but just confuse it (Cylon bar never ending), or Mint's file manager (Nemo) claims the file is executable.

Yes I have checked the original data, and it all works as expected. I'll try one of the tools Bottletop pointed to - I fancy qt/f3 but it needs compiling so that's not happening just now...
 
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