choosing a hard drive

S0litaire

Speed of the hard drive is not an issue when running via USB2.

If you are going with a big 3.5 inch drive (Desktop) then you will need to get one that's powered externally.
If you are going with a 2.5 inch drive (Laptop size) then those can be powered direct from the USB socket.

Check around, it might be cheaper looking for a separate drive and enclosure (You can pick up a USB enclosure for a 2.5" drive for £2!! and a 3.5" enclosure for £8!) you just need the drive to go in it

If you are thinking of upgrading your laptop drive then there are a few progs (Norton's Ghost comes to mind) t


I know my USB drives currently got 3 Old Desktop drives being used in rotation in a Western Digital "My Book" carcase (Backups) as well as 2 old laptop drives being used via a couple of cheap USB enclosures. (used for multimedia storage) .

f1charlie

barjam wrote: »

our laptops are getting so full up with kids rubbish (not rubbish to them:rolleyes: )
so hubby bought this from pc world http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@2139310389.1215940508@@@@&BV_EngineID=cccladeeilfldedcflgceggdhhmdgmk.0&pageFrom=SimpleSearchProducts&page=Product&sku=324729

ordered it online for instore pick up
seems ok so far also got 3 year gaurantee also its mains powered

I've also got this Maxtor model. The only thing I've noticed is that it must spin down after certain period of inactivity, so that when you want to access it, it takes a few seconds extra for it to spin up again.

Remember if you buy a Maxtor or Seagate (or if you've already got a drive from one of these manufacturers in your system) to download their backup software which allows you to make image backups of your drives. It's a cut down version of Acronis - doesn't allow incremental backups, but you can do that through Windows anyway.

esbo

Marty_J wrote: »

USB's maximum raw data speed is 480 Mbit/s. However, the full theoretical real-world speed is about 60 Mbit/s, but most devices actually operate at a much slower speed and 8.33 Mbit/s certainly isn't bad.

If data transfer speeds are an important consideration in an external drive, Firewire 400 will generally provide faster real-world performance than USB 2.

Actually I noticed that when I was copying smaller files it got slower and the CPU
was at 100% so neither a faster drive or connection would have helped there.
However after a reboot I began copying more of those files and the CPU dropped
below 100% and it seemed a lot faster. Prior tothe reboot the system process was
using most of the CPU and out 90% now it has dropped to about 13% explorer
is the highest at 43%. I thouoght anti virus etc might be slowing it up but the avg
stuff was not consuinig much.
It had been copying for hours and seemed to get slower, almost like a human doing
a physical task! I am guessinig that such tasks gradully take longer due to some
sort of system overheads, seems reasonable I guess? It was about 1/2 million
small text files, poker hand hisories. It' seems to be dinig them 10 times faster
after he reboot!

aqueoushumour01

all good info thanks. I think i may take the easy option and get an external drive as it sounds like the programs will run off it ok, and I'd rather not have to reinstall windows and al my programs. still a possibility that there's room for one more hard drive inside my laptop - not sure if that's standard but I'll have a look, and would run an internal drive as a slave in that case

Leopard

Marty_J wrote: »

USB's maximum raw data speed is 480 Mbit/s. However, the full theoretical real-world speed is about 60 Mbit/s, but most devices actually operate at a much slower speed and 8.33 Mbit/s certainly isn't bad.

If data transfer speeds are an important consideration in an external drive, Firewire 400 will generally provide faster real-world performance than USB 2.

Firewire is greatly preferable to USB2 for transferring data.

USB2 draws CPU power to calculate what to do, whereas Firewire does everything natively, leaving the CPU in peace to get on with your computing. (That does mean that it's important to use a Firewire drive enclosure that has a good chipset, though. The Oxford chipset is widely regarded as being the best.)

As Marty says, in reality Firewire 400 is invariably faster than USB2.

And Firewire drives can be daisy-chained: USB2 can't.

Firewire enclosures can run 7,200 rpm hard drives without an external power source. USB2 can't. To run a USB2 drive without an external power source usually needs a Y-cable with two USB plugs - which isn't handy for a laptop.

Best of all, Firewire 800 runs at (about) twice the speed of Firewire 400; so it comprehensively thrashes USB2 on speed. It's marvellous.

It's hard to find to find a 2.5" SATA external drive enclosure with Firewire 800 though. Best one I've discovered so far is from OWC in Woodstock, Illinois.

Nevertheless, eSATA and even faster Firewire are the way forward.

aqueoushumour01 wrote: »

All good info thanks. I think i may take the easy option and get an external drive as it sounds like the programs will run off it ok, and I'd rather not have to reinstall windows and al my programs. still a possibility that there's room for one more hard drive inside my laptop - not sure if that's standard but I'll have a look, and would run an internal drive as a slave in that case

Bear in mind that if you run your laptop's internal drive as a slave to an external drive, you probably won't have all the information you need on it if you go travelling with it. It would be cumbersome to have to take your external drive with you wherever you go.

It's unlikely that that you'll find your laptop has a second internal hard drive bay.

What you do need to consider is that it's preferable to have a fully up-to-date external hard drive sitting safely at home on your desk rather than travelling with you. (Eggs in baskets, etc.)

The best solution really is to buy an external 2.5" hard drive with a large capacity, clone your existing system on to it and then swap the drives over, putting the new one into your laptop and putting the old one in to the external enclosure to use for backing up.

esbo

S0litaire wrote: »

Speed of the hard drive is not an issue when running via USB2.

If you are going with a big 3.5 inch drive (Desktop) then you will need to get one that's powered externally.
If you are going with a 2.5 inch drive (Laptop size) then those can be powered direct from the USB socket.

Check around, it might be cheaper looking for a separate drive and enclosure (You can pick up a USB enclosure for a 2.5" drive for £2!! and a 3.5" enclosure for £8!) you just need the drive to go in it

If you are thinking of upgrading your laptop drive then there are a few progs (Norton's Ghost comes to mind) t


I know my USB drives currently got 3 Old Desktop drives being used in rotation in a Western Digital "My Book" carcase (Backups) as well as 2 old laptop drives being used via a couple of cheap USB enclosures. (used for multimedia storage) .

The cheapest 500gb hard drive I could find at local retailers was £58, my external
was £60, and the external maxtor is £59, so there is nothing in it pricewise especially
if the enclosure costs £8.
I take it then that if I open up my Iomega external drive I will find a pretty 'bog standard' internal hard drive which I can easilly remove, and then use it as an
internal drive if I so wished? Mine appears to contain a Western Digital
drive according to Aida32, a hardware infor porgram. It comes up as
WDC WD50 00AAVS-00ZB0.

Leopard

esbo wrote: »

The cheapest 500gb hard drive I could find at local retailers was £58, my external
was £60, and the external maxtor is £59, so there is nothing in it pricewise especially
if the enclosure costs £8.
I take it then that if I open up my Iomega external drive I will find a pretty 'bog standard' internal hard drive which I can easilly remove, and then use it as an
internal drive if I so wished? Mine appears to contain a Western Digital
drive according to Aida32, a hardware infor porgram. It comes up as
WDC WD50 00AAVS-00ZB0.

With respect, all these prices are meaningless without knowing the speed and cache size of the drives concerned. Nor whether they are PATA or SATA, 2.5" or 3.5".

esbo

Leopard wrote: »

With respect, all these prices are meaningless without knowing the speed and cache size of the drives concerned. Nor whether they are PATA or SATA, 2.5" or 3.5".

I don't think they are meaningless at all.
I mean as far as I am aware ther are only 2 speeds anyway, 5400 and 7200.
Cache size too seems rather irrelvant too the 8 meg in mine pales into significance
compared to my my 1.25 gig of memory.
Anyhow they are both bottom of the range drives.
If you are saying you the drives in external drives are cheap drives then those
cheap drives would also be available as internal drives andI am pretty sure
they are, ableit with a different 'badge' on them.

S0litaire

esbo wrote: »

The cheapest 500gb hard drive I could find at local retailers was £58, my external
was £60, and the external maxtor is £59, so there is nothing in it pricewise especially
if the enclosure costs £8.
I take it then that if I open up my Iomega external drive I will find a pretty 'bog standard' internal hard drive which I can easilly remove, and then use it as an
internal drive if I so wished? Mine appears to contain a Western Digital
drive according to Aida32, a hardware infor porgram. It comes up as
WDC WD50 00AAVS-00ZB0.

I get what you're saying. I'm the mirror to what you're suggesting.....
My Internal Windows drive on my desktop (RIP! ) ended up my main external USB Drive for my Linux install.

But if you are anything like me (and have a half dozen HDD laying around ) :D
it's best to get a empty Drive unit and stick in HDD's as required. But I did start off with a working WD MyBook 250Gb which i still use..

Leopard

esbo wrote: »

I don't think they are meaningless at all.
I mean as far as I am aware ther are only 2 speeds anyway, 5400 and 7200.
Cache size too seems rather irrelvant too the 8 meg in mine pales into significance
compared to my my 1.25 gig of memory.
Anyhow they are both bottom of the range drives.
If you are saying you the drives in external drives are cheap drives then those
cheap drives would also be available as internal drives andI am pretty sure
they are, ableit with a different 'badge' on them.

What I'm saying is that nobody can work out whether the prices you've quoted are good value or not because you haven't given any indication as to what type of drive you'd be getting for the money.

Without that, nobody can make any valid comparisons.

Some current drives, incidentally, and particularly in 2.5" size, still run at 4,200 rpm.