external hard drives...any clear champion?

i need one for work (and home). talking about usb 2.0 i guess. gonna use it as an archive at work...

anyone hear of la cie?
 
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If you just buy an enclosure, I think many have the same internals, and if you are using a 2.5" hdd then you will not have to worry about the interface slowing it down since the hdd itself is already slow enough. $10.00 will get you a fine enclosure.
 
thanks.

i picked up a 100G Seagate 2.5" USB 2.0....$165 from best buy. need if for some archiving...first at work, then at home.

just archived my 1.5G of work data (sys admin is doing a reimage on me this week cause they apparently are unable to harass me remotely)

anyway took about 5 - 10 minutes id say.

well anyway, now i have a pretty decent method of transporting files around. and archiving important stuff.

things about the size of a wallet. i hope it's durable (it says so on the packaging!)

i was going for the la cie (it was on sale) but it was sold out.

the other (external hd) choice was maxtor
 
I know a lot of people with Lacie 250 giggers who are very happy with them. They look pretty cool and seem to be a solid, no-frills package at a reasonable price. I hear there have been problems with the Maxtor versions though, probably related to the drive.

I like my 2.5" external too. Such a handy size.
 
before this i only had one of those 256M usb flash things...about the size of 1/2 an index finger. which is okay for light work i guess.

100G...thought it would be somewhat larger. nice aluminum body. stays cool. should have come with a carry case.

has a y usb plug 1 is data/power (usb 2.0) and 1 boost (power only) if it doesn't power up with 1 plug. is that for usb 1 or something? kinda odd.
 
It's just for older systems that have weaker USB ports. I've had to use both mine on a few friends 'puters to get it to work, but only one with mine.

I can't believe how long I lived without one of these, it's my third favorite geek tool right behind my reversing phillips/flathead screwdriver and my mini flashlight.
 
I use a IEEE version of a compusa drive enclosure and it just smokes the USB2 version. I use a 40GB 7200rpm drive that I keep all of my downloaded patches and stuff on.....
 
USB2 is rated at 60mb/s I am sorry to tell you but there is not 2.5" hdd that can come anywhere near to saturating that.

Now if you are using the ati chipset with their poor usb throughput you might notice a slow down, but the usb interface is definitely not the weak link on a 2.5" hdd.

If you put a raptor in a 3.5" enclosure you may notice something.

I have an enclosure btw that has firewire and usb2 and there is no difference whasoever in transfer speed.

http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.html
The Windows PC implementation of USB 2.0 puts the Mac to shame. Today we tested the same USB 2.0 drive/enclosure on a Windows PC (3GHz Pentium 4) with built-in USB 2.0 on the motherboard, similar to Apple's approach. We measured 33MB/s READ and 27MB/s WRITE

2.5" hdd's are slow enough that the above numbers are plenty high.

Now if you use a USB 1 connection well I pity you :)
 
Sxotty said:
Now if you use a USB 1 connection well I pity you :)
Oh man, I hear that! I have a friend who only had USB1 and they'd hook up my drive and just leave it overnight to get 1Gb off it, they invested in a USB2 card just to speed up things with my lil HD.

It's nice to use for drivers and such though on USB1. :)
 
Sxotty said:
USB2 is rated at 60mb/s I am sorry to tell you but there is not 2.5" hdd that can come anywhere near to saturating that.

Now if you are using the ati chipset with their poor usb throughput you might notice a slow down, but the usb interface is definitely not the weak link on a 2.5" hdd.

If you put a raptor in a 3.5" enclosure you may notice something.

I have an enclosure btw that has firewire and usb2 and there is no difference whasoever in transfer speed.

http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.html


2.5" hdd's are slow enough that the above numbers are plenty high.

Now if you use a USB 1 connection well I pity you :)


Overhead on USB 2.0 is greater than that of of IEEE Firewire...and that's where the advantage come in at

http://www.usb-ware.com/firewire-vs-usb.htm
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
Firewire 400 is at a minimum 16% faster than US 2.0 There is no competition between Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 when it comes to HDD based external storage......

http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.html <- posted for firewire 800 results
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/usb20vsfirewire/

Do you own a mac? Why are you posting graphs with macs then? It says in the paragraph below "Windows pcs put macs to shame"


This is the short of it like I said before.

If you use a 2.5" hdd it doesn't matter at all. Therefore USB2 wins as most computers have it on the front.

If you are using a decent 3.5" hdd as YeuEmMaiMai is then there is an argument for firewire, but you run into compatibility issues i.e. does the computer you are hooking up to have usb2? So you get a combo enclosure that has both.

P.S. what is your name? (it reminds me of vietnamese for some reason)
 
Sxotty said:
Do you own a mac? Why are you posting graphs with macs then? It says in the paragraph below "Windows pcs put macs to shame"


This is the short of it like I said before.

If you use a 2.5" hdd it doesn't matter at all. Therefore USB2 wins as most computers have it on the front.

If you are using a decent 3.5" hdd as YeuEmMaiMai is then there is an argument for firewire, but you run into compatibility issues i.e. does the computer you are hooking up to have usb2? So you get a combo enclosure that has both.

P.S. what is your name? (it reminds me of vietnamese for some reason)

I posted the mac results for firewire 800 results just as i indicated in the revious post. The newer drives can easily saturate the Firewire 400 bus and can give the 800 bus a good workout. these same High performacne drives can easily get chocked .....
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
I posted the mac results for firewire 800 results just as i indicated in the revious post. The newer drives can easily saturate the Firewire 400 bus and can give the 800 bus a good workout. these same High performacne drives can easily get chocked .....

What HDDs can choke a FW800 or USB2.0 bus?

Believe me, I'm a fan of FW myself (my external is hooked up via FW) but I thought that HDDs don't even come close to saturating either of them.
 
Ty said:
What HDDs can choke a FW800 or USB2.0 bus?

Believe me, I'm a fan of FW myself (my external is hooked up via FW) but I thought that HDDs don't even come close to saturating either of them.

any drive that is capable of transferring more than 480Mbits ber second..........

Did you not take a look any any of the links? (this is from the second link)

Connection Direct USB 2.0 FireWire

Disk Winmark6510 4870 6040
Hi-End Winmark 21300 139001 8500
Transfer Begin 41700 12400 27400
Transfer End 25600 12300 25400
CPU usage 17% 15.7% 12%
Access time ms 12.5% 13.3% 12.8%
 
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