The better external HDD to choose? Portable/Desktop?

JustAnotherSaver

Just connected the HDD to a USB 2.0 port ......... keyboard works fine when this is the case.

Not best impressed as it's USB 3.0 connectivity i want, not 2.0.

Stompa

Oblivion wrote: »

30Mb/sec is not too shabby. Had you gone for the Seagate you would be looking at something nearer to 3Mb/sec :eek:

Out of curiousity I couldn't resist testing my Seagate 2TB USB 3.0 desktop drive, with the following results:

Read: 48.2MB/s
Write: 65.8MB/s

Oblivion

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

Just connected the HDD to a USB 2.0 port ......... keyboard works fine when this is the case.

Not best impressed as it's USB 3.0 connectivity i want, not 2.0.

Yes, very frustrating and rather baffling. Do you by any chance have any USB ports in your monitor you could try the keyboard dongle in? My Dell monitor has 4, 2 at the back and 2 on the side and I use one of the latter to power my Bluetooth headphone dongle.

Oblivion

Stompa wrote: »

Out of curiousity I couldn't resist testing my Seagate 2TB USB 3.0 desktop drive, with the following results:

Read: 48.2MB/s
Write: 65.8MB/s

Crikey, I can only dream of speeds like that! Is your Seagate one of the Expansion models the OP was considering and which I regrettably bought?


http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/data-storage/hard-drives/desktop-external-hard-drives/seagate-expansion-sgr39211-external-hard-drive-2tb-black-16787143-pdt.html

Stompa

Oblivion wrote: »

Crikey, I can only dream of speeds like that! Is your Seagate one of the Expansion models the OP was considering and which I regrettably bought?


http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/data-storage/hard-drives/desktop-external-hard-drives/seagate-expansion-sgr39211-external-hard-drive-2tb-black-16787143-pdt.html

No, mine's a different model number, one of these:

http://www.seagate.com/em/en/external-hard-drives/desktop-hard-drives/expansion-hard-drive/?sku=STBV2000200

I wouldn't have thought there'd be much difference though.

Oblivion

Stompa wrote: »

No, mine's a different model number, one of these:

http://www.seagate.com/em/en/external-hard-drives/desktop-hard-drives/expansion-hard-drive/?sku=STBV2000200

I wouldn't have thought there'd be much difference though.

Well that is exactly the same model number as my two, but even with my fastest machine Dell XPS-12 with SSD and USB3 ports the best I can get is around 3MB/s. Very strange.

Stompa

Oblivion wrote: »

Well that is exactly the same model number as my two, but even with my fastest machine Dell XPS-12 with SSD and USB3 ports the best I can get is around 3MB/s. Very strange.

Very odd. Given that you've experienced the same issue with both Seagate drives, the USB3 port on the PC would seem the most likely problem. But presumably your WD drives are working fast when plugged into the same ports? Have you tried the Seagate drives on another USB3 capable PC?

almillar

datostar - yes, I've bought external drives to use the drive internally. You can then put an old drive into the enclosure to use for backup.
The answer to your question, is sometimes. Especially with USB3 coming along, some drives may come with eSATA or USB3 interfaces, rather than the standard desktop SATA I'd be after. You should also note that you don't know exactly what drive you get in the enclosure - likely to be a lower power or lower speed, or less cache, version than you would get 'naked'.
Best to check out Amazon comments and have a Google to see what other people have got, and how easy the enclosure is to take apart...

Oblivion

Stompa wrote: »

Very odd. Given that you've experienced the same issue with both Seagate drives, the USB3 port on the PC would seem the most likely problem. But presumably your WD drives are working fast when plugged into the same ports? Have you tried the Seagate drives on another USB3 capable PC?

I've tried both the Seagates on all 3 of our PCs that have USB3 and they are just as bad on all of them.


I've just been doing some googling and it seems these Seagate Expansion drives are, as I suspected, fatally flawed. There are an incredible number of people with the same issue as me. My fault, they were an impulse buy and I really should have done more research.


I'll stick with Western Digital in future.

karvala

Oblivion wrote: »

Well that is exactly the same model number as my two, but even with my fastest machine Dell XPS-12 with SSD and USB3 ports the best I can get is around 3MB/s. Very strange.

I would class that as faulty, and I suspect a problem with the cache memory. If you're doing a sequential transfer, even the oldest, poorest HDD over USB 2.0 should perform much better than that. Have you tested it with Seatools (the hope being that it will fail and you can RMA it)?