Are USB powered external HDD OK?

longwalks1

am redoing my home office and a bit short on wall sockets, and was wondering are USB powered external hard drives just as reliable?

pappa_golf

as reliable as what? , hard drives that use a separate PSU? , as in larger 3.5 drives.


yes the "drives" (2.5 in) will be as reliable , however is the equipment that they are plugged into , capable of powering them

londonTiger

laptops tend to have 1 usb port that provides full power and rest of them provide less power. I have an USB external second screen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoHfEBqAJqE It only works on 1 USB port out of the 3 I have on my laptop. Also My external CD drive works fine off that 1 USB. But if I try to power it from an of the other USB drives I need to plug in dual USB, one for data and the other for extra power.

Oblivion

britishboy wrote: »

am redoing my home office and a bit short on wall sockets, and was wondering are USB powered external hard drives just as reliable?

I use Western Digital (WD) My Passport external USB 2TB hard drives for making backups and they have proved very reliable for that. I certainly wouldn't want to use them permanently connected however as they get quite warm in a short space of time. That will be true of any HD in an enclosure without fan assisted cooling and will shorten their operating life if not their reliability in the short term.

onomatopoeia99

USB powered is fine, they will use drives that can run on the power that the USB spec says the port must deliver (was always 500mA, but don't know if this has changed for USB3).

If you have any doubts, just get one of those four gang trailing leads, solves the problem of lacking wall sockets.

agrinnall

I haven't had a laptop/USB-powered HD that has had an issue with enough power for many years, and the last one that did came with a Y cable so that it could be connected to two USB ports anyway. I would think if your computer is reasonably up to date it'll be absolutely fine.

googler

Oblivion wrote: »

I use Western Digital (WD) My Passport external USB 2TB hard drives for making backups and they have proved very reliable for that. I certainly wouldn't want to use them permanently connected however as they get quite warm in a short space of time.

When I'm doing heavy copying to them, I leave a fan blowing cold air around them. Do this and they cool down equally quickly.

I find that they cool off with a lack of activity, too

psychic_teabag

Oblivion wrote: »

I certainly wouldn't want to use them permanently connected however as they get quite warm in a short space of time. That will be true of any HD in an enclosure without fan assisted cooling and will shorten their operating life if not their reliability in the short term.

I've had a (samsung) usb disk permanently attached to a raspberry-pi media centre for a couple of years, without any fans or anything, with no obvious problems. It does spin itself down when it's idle, though, so it's not generating heat all the time. And i think they tend to spin slower than desktop drives anyway. And rpi only has USB 2 so data transfers aren't super-fast.

Moving them about could also pose a risk, actually - the cables tend to be quite short and thick, so trying to unplug it while it's spinning is a bit of a danger. So that is one possible benefit of having it permanently attached to an isolated machine.

kwikbreaks

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

USB powered is fine, they will use drives that can run on the power that the USB spec says the port must deliver (was always 500mA, but don't know if this has changed for USB3)..

USB3 is 900ma.
Any drive supplied with a single plug lead will run on 500ma. With the Y lead ones I plug the two leads in before connecting the drive at the other end.
I've used quite a few different USB drives from purpose built USB3 Seagate ones to Hong Kong special enclosures with old laptop drives in them and never had a problem of any sort with any of them apart from one of the Seagate ones which started giving errors and was replaced under warranty.

Strider590

2.5" HDD are much sturdier than 3.5", they're better equipped to handle the sort of abuse they're subjected to in a laptop. From being dropped, to exposure to higher than normal temperatures.

pappa_golf

m.2 card with adaptor rules , low currant , shockproof , but flippin expensive!