Hard Disk Drives, Hard Drive Docks, External Enclosures and Linux Ubuntu and Meerkat

[MSwhip]

The nature of my question will indicate how raw I am with Computer Hardware, peripherals and Software in general and Linux versions in particular. I own a Dell Studio 540 Desktop running Windows 7 Home 64-bit

Here it is: when buying hard disk drives , Drive Docks and External Enclosures for those drives, do i have to concern Myself about different brands models and specifications with regards to support Linux Ubuntu 10 and the newest meerkat?

My preferences so far are with WD Sata II and III Hard drives 64MB cache Black Caviar, both inside the tower as Disks 0 and 1 (Master and slave), a large 2TB Western Digital Green, WD Blue 16 MB Cache plus a Hitachi 32MB of cache and purely for storage and back up all 3 inside a SansDigital TR4M(-B)P 4 bay Raid Tower with sata 3 capability via a 6 Mb/s controller card with 2 Esata ports in the back of the PC tower. All the hard drives -except the Green- are of the 7200rpm variety and have been serving me very well with my Windows environment
I have one more slot to use inside the Enclosure.

So would those 5 drives support Linux and/or be able to be supporterd by Linux (I have trouble understanding who supports who and who is the 'suportee')

It is very important to Me to know the facts, cause should there be some imcompatibility issue between drives and Linux I want to make sure I have at least one disk that would be compatible with Linux. so the last slot would be dedicated for whenever I start using Linux in the near future. (the sooner I get rid of my dependency from Microsoft Corporation the better)

Sorry about my lack of knowledge, so i thought I would join this Computer forum to get better educated.

I would now appreciate words of tech wisdom from competent Forum members.

Thank you kindly

 

[MindoverMaster]

You are fine. How do you think you can boot Linux off a hard drive? I have 4 drives on my Linux home server. Big businesses' servers use Linux as well, and they have a heck more HDDs.

 

[kmote]

You won't run into any incompatibility problems with HDDs. According to an article I read recently (that's my version of a citation), the hardware that most people have trouble with is graphics, followed by wifi, some distance behind that was sound. Of course, more people have graphics than wifi.
In general I would say that if you have wifi, it should be your biggest concern, if you don't then it should be your graphics. I should also note that wifi and graphics have worked fine for me without any messing about.

 

[MindoverMaster]

Ditto. graphics and wifi worked fine for me. Think all were Atheros brands.

 

[MSwhip]

Thank you both for your prompt replies. I will now start researching everything about SSD's
So when their ridiculously high prices come down to earth as in Somewhat close to 1 dollar per GB. Does anyone think it will happen anytime soon say by the end of 2011?
At that time I will probably buy a 120 GB to act as a Master of another one: a mechanical WD Black Caviar.
Speaking about SSD, does anyone know if other that 2.5 (with brackets for 3.5) for Desktops use, are manufacturers also selling 3.5 inch ones for Desktops?
Can those be loaded with an OS be it Win7 Home 64-bit and/or Linux and work together with an internal WD Black Caviar? if the answer is yes,
what speed would the concoction render? a. the speed of the SSD... or b. the speed of the weakest link e.g. the Black caviar? or c. somewhere in between the speeds of a and b?


Thank you again

 

[MindoverMaster]

No one can say what will happen. I'm afraid you just will have to wait.

No one, to my knowledge, sells 3.5" SSD's.

You can run any OS on SSD's. The system just sees it as another HDD. The speed of the SSD and SATA will tell you.