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External USB HDD

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Post #1 last edited
I'm thinking of buying an external USB HDD. Actually I just have to tell the model to a friend and he'll buy it for me :) Money is not a problem… I want one of 500GB but have no idea what model. Anyone got experience with external HDDs? I also want it to have medium/fast read/write speed. It would be nice if anyone can find info about read/write speed tests of external HDDs. P.S. forgot to say that I want a pocket size one, like 10cm in width, 15cm in height or something.
Post #4
PCI (E) Usb cards are available from about $20 -30 US dollars They are easy to fit and the USB3 often can give a great speed improvemnet over USB 2…. at least X2 and often more…. However you could use a Firewire or fast Firewire connection if you prefer. Regards paws
Post #5
Excuse me, what is a PCI (E) Usb card? Is it something that will enable me to use USB 3.0 even though my motherboard doesn't support USB 3.0? And if you care to explain more about firewire connection :)
Post #7 last edited
usb 3 is about 10x faster than usb 2 paws, 400MBs to 48MBs

there's a good comparison chart towards the bottom about different speeds for different connection types here:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

so if you need fast transfer rates it's a good investment to get a usb3 card in my opinion.

now i think with a pci card(if they make them) your only going to get around 250MBs out of the usb3's capable 400MBs(still a lot faster than usb2's 48 MBs) but with a pci-e card i think you'll be able to get the full 400MB's from usb3.

there's a chart here that tell's you what speed's the maximum for each bus type:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bit_rates

example of a pci-e card with 2 usb3 ports on it:- http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?h…ed=0CC8Q8wIwAg#

now at the minute in real world a fast normal hard drive achieves about 100+MBs transfer rates while a ssd can achieve about 200+MB's, so in reality your going to be able to use the drives full capabilities with any connection type except usb2.

:popcorn:
Post #9

usb 3 is about 10x faster than usb 2 paws, 400MBs to 48MBs

That is quite correct…….. I.e in theory……
but in practice the likely increase in speed (E.G copying read writing files) is usually a lot lower than that and nearer the figures that I quoted originally.
Regards
paws
Post #10
Thank you all for the replies… I'm thinking of getting Western Digital's My Passport 500GB… but do they support only USB 2.0? Can I use that HDD with a PCI card? Also, this PCI card… where's her place, on the motherboard? Sorry for my stupid questions, I'm not really much of a hardware guy :P
Post #11 last edited
yes only usb2 so no you can not use that drive with any speed gain on a usb 3 port,
so wouldn't even worry about getting a usb3 card or where it would go.

:popcorn:

pci card slots :- http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http…ved=0CCcQ9QEwAw

pci-e card slots :- http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http…ved=0CCEQ9QEwAg

now with pci-e you can put the card in whatever pci-e slot(not pci or any other type) it will physically fit into and it will work,
so if the card had a pci-e x1 connection type you could fit it into any of the pci-e slots you have on your motherboard upto and including a spare pci-e x16 slot that's usually used for graphics cards.

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