Topic: External Hard Drives Questions

[MysterD]

Yeah, so almost ALL of my 320 GB are filled up on my C and F drives. Ain't got anymore much room on my hard drives. And inside the machine, no more real room to put in another internal HD. So, as a quick fix, I'm thinking of buying an external HD, since they don't seem to be that expensive these days and age.

So, who here uses External HD's to store like games and stuff??

How are the external HD's in general -- especially USB ones?? Are they as good as the internal HD's??? As fast??? A little slower? Better?

Will all I really need for most of these is just to simply say installed some CD Drivers likely for the drive and then say plug the external HD right into my USB port??? There anything else to it really?? Won't need anything else

I have Seagates for  my Internal HD's -- SATA based. Probably would like to stick w/ Seagate, if their externals are as good as their internals. What do you think is a good Seagate external HD?

Any other brands you'd reccommend for an External HD?

[WindAndConfusion]

Why do you use so many question marks???????????????

[gpw11]

I likewise have a question:  are all external drives pretty small?  I ask because my sister wants one for xmas.  I want to spend around $100, but all I can really find are ones large in capacity and seemingly large in dimensions.  In fact, it seems that external hard drives themselves are pretty rare these days.  Do people mainly just use enclosures now?

[idolminds]

320GB? You could, like, uninstall some shit.

[WindAndConfusion]

In fact, it seems that external hard drives themselves are pretty rare these days.  Do people mainly just use enclosures now?

Your question makes no sense. A typical external hard drive is just an enclosure with a drive in it, packaged up and usually sold without a markup compared to an OEM drive and a similar enclosure. It's usually quite easy to disassemble them and remove/replace the drive inside.

[MysterD]

320GB? You could, like, uninstall some shit.

More like I need to finish some shit...heh!

[gpw11]

Your question makes no sense. A typical external hard drive is just an enclosure with a drive in it, packaged up and usually sold without a markup compared to an OEM drive and a similar enclosure. It's usually quite easy to disassemble them and remove/replace the drive inside.

I see, so basically if I were to buy a drive and enclosure there'd be no difference once it's all put together. 

The main thing is that for the price range I'm looking at it'd be a much better option.

[Jedi]

As far as I'm aware (unless you're looking at a NAS solution) an external HD is just a common run of the mill HD be it SATA, IDE or a notebook HD in an enclosure - which is what C&W said. D all you need to do is find an enclosure and find a large drive - done. As for USB you'd want USB 2 which is probably all you're going to get the only factor is does your machine have USB2 ports.

[Cobra951]

I have several external drives, accumulated over years.  My most recent one happened as a result of one PC dying.  It seems to be beyond repair, so I took out its hard drive and housed it in a USB enclosure.

You can go one of 2 routes, enclosure + OEM HDD (take your pick, as long as the enclosure supports it) or dedicated external drive.  Obviously it's easier to go buy a WD MyBook than to scope out competent enclosures, drives, and then assemble the components.  That's up to you.  The market for external drives has increased notably, so there are good options either way.  If you go the enclosure route, get one that supports the drive type and size you intend to get for it, and that it supports the best possible internal data speed for that drive.  [Example: UDMA 6 for UATA drives.]  You also want it to support USB 2.0, and if you can use it, firewire.  Now there's a firewire 800 too, with the old standby now being dubbed firewire 400.  That's Mbps, as in bits, not bytes.  If your motherboard supports it (doubt it), there's also a new 3Gbps eSATA standard.  WD makes some externals which support it.

USB 2.0 gives you 480 Mbps, or 60 MB/sec.  Standard firewire is 400 (50 MB/s) but it is said to provide better sustained rates.  These numbers are roughly the best throughput you're likely to see out of a UATA drive.  SATA, though, is a good deal faster.  I don't know what you have right now.

An enclosure consists of the case, an interface to a normal drive's power and data plugs on one side, and USB or whatever else you opt for on the other.  You install the drive in the little case, plug in the cables, close it up, attach the AC power and external connection cable, and you're good to go.  At this point you can partition it and format it.

Once the drive is performing to your satisfaction, you can go into device manager and optimize it for performance.  By default, Windows does not cache external drives, so you can unplug them at any time without risk of data loss.  I've been having Windows cache all my externals for years, and I have yet to lose one byte because of it.  The performance is markedly improved by this, as you might imagine.

I think I'll stop here for now.  If you look at my "Help! dead computer" (or similar) thread, I get into a discussion about some techie details, if you care.  I don't think it's necessary.

[Raisa]

I have an enclosure, a western digital external, and a USB external.  I like the western digital the most.. it works really well.. I have 8 different ports i think - SD, USB, fire, etc etc...

GPW, you can get a 300 GB one for $90.  A nice small one..  I saw some new models from seagate recently and they got some pocketsize ones

I got my USB external for about $60 a couple years ago, 40 gig only.. was expensive.. Sony... I don't use it as much but it still works really well.

[MysterD]

This must be the Thread Cobra was referring to

Anyways, I'm looking at Staples, which got this
500 GB Seagate FreeAgent External HD for $130 on sale ONLY in store.
 
Throw on top of that, I got a coupon for $20 off any total-purchase over $100, as well.
That'd be pretty cheap.

So, what do y'all know about this exact external drive???

I read some reviews on Amazon and other places from users of it -- some love it and had no problems ever with it; meanwhile others have had it die in anywhere from from 10 days to 1 month due to normally some heat issues.

So, do all of these type of externals got heat issues???
How can you keep such a thing cool all the time??

Should I always keep this a device hooked to my USB?
Should I unplug it from time to time???

Should I be actually running games directly off it???
Or just throw back-up data on the drive??

That's what it looks like.

[Cobra951]

Personally, I don't trust Seagate.  They used to be *the* brand to get at one time.  I don't know if my perception is justified.  I keep hearing about Seagate failures here and elsewhere.

I have never had an external die on me, ever--not the ones I put together, and not the pre-built ones.  None of them are Seagates.  None of them have "heat issues".

[MysterD]

I have also never had a HD die on me -- all internals.
Never had an external.

Over the years, I've had for HD's these:
Western Digital (first PC, 1996)
Maxtor (second PC, 2000)
and TWO Seagates (third PC, 2004) for internals.

Never had issues w/ any of them...

Hmmmmm...

[beo]

i ended up buying one a couple of weeks back. i saw the seagate external thing, but did a search and found people on a forum who were having problems with theirs. windows not detecting the drive, or it becoming "disconnected" for no reason. i opted for a LaCie drive instead. it works great, no issues at all so far and it's completely silent.

[Raisa]

I bought a small Maxtor recently.. seems to be working okay.. my western digital one (media center version) is just lovely... problem i have with it is the size and weight..

[MysterD]

Does anyone here have a WD MyBook External HD???
If so, what do you think of them???

Had any troubles, issues, or any problem w/ them???

[Xessive]

I have the External WD MyBook 500 GB and it works like a charm. Very handy space and decent speed, the only slow down is the "wake-up" time when I haven't accessed it in about an hour it takes a few extra seconds to load something from it.

My friend has the exact same Seagate model you listed and he has no complaints about it.

I find external HD's are great for media storage i.e. videos, pictures, audio etc. but not necessarily for high access stuff like games etc.

Keep in mind that these two models (WD MyBook and Seagate FreeAgent) require a power supply.

The little HD's that draw power through the USB are "Passport drives" (at least according to WD, but it's the term I've come to use for them).

I have a WD Passport as well and it's alright.

[scottws]

My g/f's mom has a WD MyBook.  I think it is huge, loud, and slow (USB 2.0).  Then again I think I'm on record that I hate external hard drives.

I'd only ever use one for portability and in that case I'd get something like a Passport.

[Cobra951]

No problems with mine.  I don't like the non-defeatable sleep mode after about 10 minutes of no use.  I wish I could at least make the timeout much longer.

[WindAndConfusion]

The little HD's that draw power through the USB are "Passport drives" (at least according to WD, but it's the term I've come to use for them).

Those are 2.5" (laptop) drives. They have a lower power draw, so they can run straight off of USB. But they cost 3-4 times as much for a given capacity, compared to 3.5" drives.

[poomcgoo]

This must be the Thread Cobra was referring to

Anyways, I'm looking at Staples, which got this
500 GB Seagate FreeAgent External HD for $130 on sale ONLY in store.
 
Throw on top of that, I got a coupon for $20 off any total-purchase over $100, as well.
That'd be pretty cheap.

So, what do y'all know about this exact external drive???

I read some reviews on Amazon and other places from users of it -- some love it and had no problems ever with it; meanwhile others have had it die in anywhere from from 10 days to 1 month due to normally some heat issues.

So, do all of these type of externals got heat issues???
How can you keep such a thing cool all the time??

Should I always keep this a device hooked to my USB?
Should I unplug it from time to time???

Should I be actually running games directly off it???
Or just throw back-up data on the drive??

That's what it looks like.

I have this exact model and it's one of the best purchases I've made in a long time.  No problems with it whatsoever, and I've been having a hell of a time trying to fill it up.

EDIT: Oh yeah, to answer your questions:  I keep it plugged in and running at all times.  It shuts off when your computer is off.  I run games, programs, movies etc... right off the hard drive and almost 100% of what I install nowadays I install right to the drive.  Haven't had hitches, slowdowns or any heat problems at all -- it stays pretty cool.  Even when I'm copying or transferring things between my drives, I can still play games, movies (HD or not), etc off the drive with no hitching.  I've heard of failures with it too, but I've had it since May '07 with no problems running nearly 24/7 including transporting it in my laptop case (while off, of course) a number of times.  If it fucks up, send it back for a new one.  It's a solid fucking purchase.

[Xessive]

Those are 2.5" (laptop) drives. They have a lower power draw, so they can run straight off of USB. But they cost 3-4 times as much for a given capacity, compared to 3.5" drives.

Yeah, exactly. So it's really a matter of balancing out what you need and what you're willing to compromise. Portable vs affordable in this case.

[MysterD]

I have the External WD MyBook 500 GB and it works like a charm. Very handy space and decent speed, the only slow down is the "wake-up" time when I haven't accessed it in about an hour it takes a few extra seconds to load something from it.

My friend has the exact same Seagate model you listed and he has no complaints about it.

I find external HD's are great for media storage i.e. videos, pictures, audio etc. but not necessarily for high access stuff like games etc.

You've tried running games off them???

What's the difference in running a game off an External Drive vs. say an Internal HD?
Major?? Small???

Keep in mind that these two models (WD MyBook and Seagate FreeAgent) require a power supply.

Elaborate, please..?

Also, would it really be really beneficial to say reformat a external drive from FAT32 right into NTFS??

[Cobra951]

I reformatted mine to NTFS, from Windows.  FAT32 is needed for wider compatibility, if you care about that.  NTFS makes much more efficient use of large partitions with many files.  It also doesn't have a 4-GB filesize limit.

You're thinking too hard about this.  Once installed (and I recommend you have Windows cache the drive) it will work exactly like an internal drive.  Whatever you can do with an internal drive you can do with an external.  It may be slower, depending on how fast your internals are.  (I'm sure SATA is significantly faster than USB 2.0, but I'm not so sure about UATA.)  I like to offload big data files and collections of data files, and save the internals for programs.  But I've also installed programs on a firewire external, with fine results.

[scottws]

NTFS could be slower.  Jennie's mom's old Dell was fairly low on space, so I converted it from FAT32 to NTFS, which gained about 4 GB free space but made the system crawl.  Not that it was fast before, but it is way slower now.

If you have a relatively modern PC though, the speed difference should be negligible.

[Cobra951]

That's a first for me, the first time I've ever heard anyone say that NTFS is slower than FAT32.  I've never seen a performance problem.  Are you sure something else isn't happening there, Scott?  I've never done a straight-over convert without reformatting.  (My system drives are still FAT32 since Win9X because of my fear of doing this.)  Could that introduce problems?

[scottws]

No the convert doesn't have anything to do with it because about a year later I completely reformatted (full reformat, not quick) and reinstalled Windows XP and performance was still very poor.

Mind you that this system is an old PIII box that originally ran Windows 98 on 128 MB RAM.  I'm not sure it really has any business running Windows XP in the first place, though I did upgrade the system to 512 MB when I reformatted.

I too had never seen the performance issue brought up between FAT32 and NTFS except to say that NTFS should perform better on larger volumes than FAT32.  This was a smaller volume though; it was only 20 GB.

But yes, the system was very noticeably slower after changing the file system to NTFS.

[MysterD]

Okay, I'm looking at this thing - Seagate GoFlex 500 GB External HDD (7200 RPM, 16MB Cache) for $49.99.

I'm thinking of basically loading onto there like my MP3 Music (around 20 GB) and all my gaming back-up files (saves and patches - around another 20 GB).

I'm guessing this device would be fine to play MP3 music off of directly if I wanted, right?

I'm not looking to say run some games off this device - that's what internal HDD's are for.
I really need to free up some HDD space on my C and F drives.

Thoughts?

[Cobra951]

If you look up a few posts, you'll see my thoughts on externals.  In short, once you set them up and have Windows cache them, they work exactly like internal drives, and can have comparatively good performance, depending on the rest of your system.  They get assigned their own drive letter by the system, and off you go.  Having said that, I will add that I don't like Seagate.  I don't know if any Seagate drive I've owned is still running.  They've let me down more than once.  The problem is that these companies gobble up each other, and I really can't say who is making the realiable hardware these days, and who is making the crap.

[MysterD]

Well, I purchased it - gonna go check it out.

Thanks for your thoughts, Cobra. Looks like this thing got a 2-year warranty.

[Pugnate]

Why do you use so many question marks???

Why are you gone?

[iPPi]

500GB for $50 seems kind of expensive to me.  I see 1TBs going for like $70 and 2TBs going for like $110.

I got a 1TB last year for like $80 thanks to price adjustments as well.