Buying an External HDD - Any Tips Welcomed!

Andrewgosu

Andrewgosu

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Hello,

Like the title says, I'm going to buy myself an external HDD and because it's my first time doing so, I might as well ask some tips. I'm planning to use it in conjunction with my laptop; price range 100...150$; I haven't decided on whether to get a "tower" or a more portable (with no extra power-feed) one; basically I want something more reliable even if it's not as big in size as other less reliable counterparts (e.g. 750GB more reliable beats 1.5TB less reliable).

Of course, any general tips are also welcomed (2.5'' vs 3.5'', I have no idea).

Andrewgosu
 
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Sevion

The DIY Ninja
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If your laptop has an eSATA port I would recommend getting just a hard drive. Tis what I'm doing (except min is in a case that isn't really an "external" case o_o It's the caging from inside my friend's computer case which happens to be identical to mine :D).

It works pretty well and you can cool it with USB powered fans :D

I did this and it's a pretty sick setup.

If you don't have eSATA, you could just get any old HDD and get your own case.

If you've got cash to spend, I would recommend at least a 10000 RPM HDD and, if you can find one, a 3.0 USB enclosure. I'm not sure if 3.0 enclosures are out there yet though.

Otherwise, generally any external HDD works fine, but the thing you would want is the fastest transfer rate or you'll be waiting ages copying files back and forth.
 
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Sevion

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Cool!

I'm not really sure if that's a good price as USB 3.0 is new, however it seems reasonable for an external hard drive with a casing already and USB 3.0.
 
Andrewgosu

Andrewgosu

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What do you mean by "good price"?

I'm not buying that from ebay but from a local store -- it's a bit more expensive there, though.
 
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Sevion

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Good price as in are you getting a good deal for it :p

I.E. Are you getting overcharged or not.

I can't be sure because USB 3.0 is new and I haven't seen much of it.

The only USB 3.0 I have is my laptop which has a single USB 3.0 port.
 
Andrewgosu

Andrewgosu

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Ah, I see.

The price for a similar adapter via ExpressCard slot varies from 25-30€ as much as I have seen
-- ebay or some other online shops sell it a bit cheaper but you have to pay extra for transport services so roughly it makes the same price.
 
Andrewgosu

Andrewgosu

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Now if I think about it, wouldn't the capabilities of my laptop HDD affect the transfer rates, as well? To put it metaphorically, wouldn't the circumference of the narrowest point of a pipe determine the speed of the flow?
 
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Sevion

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Only if the laptop's hard drive read/write speed is lower than the external hard drive.

USB 3.0 is not faster than the hard drive :)
 
Andrewgosu

Andrewgosu

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My laptop has this HDD:
HITACHI Travelstar 5K500.B

It has a SATA 3.0Gb/s interface and according to wikipedia "the maximum uncoded transfer rate is 2.4 Gbit/s (300 MB/s)".

Again, according to wikipedia USB 3.0 with SuperSpeed feature is "reasonable to achieve 3.2 Gbit/s (0.4 GB/s or 400 MB/s)".

Though yes, I'm going to use an adaptor plugged into my laptop's ExpressCard slot and it's going to be slower than native USB 3.0 ports.

Maybe I am wrong because my knowledge at the moment is just based on the research I have done.

SATA 3.0Gb/s is faster than USB 3.0?


Here's another question:

The above mentioned speeds sound really nice, but can they be somehow achieved in reality?

I mean, I tested my laptop's HDD and its transfer rate is around 12MB/s (read) with DiskBench (around 8.5MB/s when copying a file; file used: a normal 720p quality 4.7GB movie).

Of course I'm not expecting to achieve the theoretical maximum speeds but 12MB/s feels a bit slow after I've seen the numbers.
 
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Sevion

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Not really sure :p I'm not a hardware engineer, but I'd say that it's reasonable to believe that your HDD will either not bottleneck anything or it'll be unnoticeable. Like by kilobytes.
 
Rapmaster

Rapmaster

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If you want speed, go for one of the solid state disks (SSD) that are out now. Not really worth it for just archiving stuff on an external disk but good for stuff you will commonly be accessing.
 
Andrewgosu

Andrewgosu

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Yeah, I think it will balance out in the end.

As for solid state disks -- yes, they're great and fast but I'm going to store vast amounts of data and just need capacity over high-speed.

Though I'm keeping my eye on them, as I might build a computer in the future and booting from a SSD sounds nice.
 
Blackveiled

Blackveiled

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What's the point in buying a USB 3.0 connector when it plugs into a USB 2.0? You're not going to transfer data any quicker. The USB 3.0 connectors in the harddrive are backwards compatible to 2.0.

Yeah, 3.0 is fast. Capable of speeds of 5gbps transfer, but that doesn't factor in that your harddrive can't if its a SATA. Maybe if it's a Solid State Harddrive, but no other reason. Plus the external harddrive isnt a SSD either.
 
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