External Hard Drive / USB

Llama

Llama

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I'm looking into one of these since my current HDD is on the wee side (80gb)

I'm on a similarly teeny budget (?70-90 or less) so I need to know a few things before I buy one.

1) Does an external HDD need for a certain brand for a certain brand of HDD?

2) Would a USB HDD slow down my games if I ran them off of it?

3) How do I know which USB ports are 1.1 and which are 2.0? Would this make a difference in running games?

4) What sort of size and storage space could I get for my moneh? I don't need 400gb, for example, but I am looking for over 160 odd.

Sorry if I sound like a total noob...because I am one :P
 
I don't have any experience with an external HDD, but the external DVD drive that I got was more trouble than it was worth. It was too noisy to be left on when it wasn't in use. HDD's might be different, but I don't think you could get a large, quality drive at $80. Internal you could easily. Hell, 500GB internal is only around $120.
 
Well I've looked around (www.play.com ftw) and For ?70 I could pick up a 250gb drive, but I still have issues with no idea what i'm doing XD
 
If your PC is not really old then it surely has USB2.0 support. The back ports are almost guaranteed to be 2.0. Front ports on PC may only be 1.1. You would have to check with the case manual to see if they are 2.0 or 1.1. (just because the front case USB ports are connected to USB 2.0 pins on the motherboard does not mean it will run at 2.0 speeds)
Hi-Speed 2.0 = theoretical 480mbps
1.1 = 12mbps

I have my external off almost all the time. It is a little loud and can vibrate a bit on my desk. lol
I'd suggest just using it for storage overflow or stuff you want access to on more than 1 PC. I mean, you could put games on there (but don't expect games that require an entry in the windows registry to run on another PC) and if your PC supports booting from USB then you could even put an OS on there. But it would be slower than internal drives.
 
I suppose I could put a lot of my old games on it (Half Life, Age of Empires, etc etc) since the performance decrease would be negligible?

Also, I've checked and I have a 2.0, so I'd connect it to that. How do I know how slow / fast a drive actually is?
 
It would just be slower when loading really but that would be for all games/data. It shouldn't affect your FPS unless the game tries to load a lot while playing.
Just plug it into that 2.0 port and you are good to go. Know how fast it actually is? Either check out benchmarks online for the model or buy the drive and try it out. hehe

Like this 120GB Seagate external has a read speed of about 27MB/s. A lot of newer internal drives are 50-70 MB/s.

WD MyBook Pro hits 30MB/s on USB 2.0, almost 40 on Firewire 400, 60-70 with Firewire800. The external interface that is limiting these drives. So getting an internal drive and putting it into an external enclosure would not help for performance. But you might get more space for the same price.
 
If you know how to read and follow instructions, and work a phillips head screwdriver (+), then you can install an internal drive.

Cheaper, more reliable, and probably significantly faster.

It's up to you.

I had never installed one before a few years ago, and just by using the little instruction sheet that came with the drive, it took about 10 minutes, and it was fully working.

I would get a big one if you go internal, it can get very troublesome and problematic if you have to install greater than 2 internal drives (in my experience)
 
Do you mean opening the PC case and installing it or installing an internal one outside the case with a external thingy? (God I'm a noob :P)

If I did that, would the type of HDD depend on my current HDD?
 
Llama said:
Do you mean opening the PC case and installing it or installing an internal one outside the case with a external thingy? (God I'm a noob :P)

If I did that, would the type of HDD depend on my current HDD?
Click to expand...

Have you got a camera and can upload any pictures? If you took the side panel off and showed us some pictures we could tell you what type of drive you need, but there are other ways to do this.

Don't worry about all of your questions, we'll make sure you get the answers you need, and things that you don't understand will become clearer later. Yea, you're going to put it inside your case. Internal drives have another advantage in that they don't require space on your desk (or whatever) like external drives do.



Basically, there are 2 types of internal HDD's. SATA and PATA. You'll want SATA if your mobo can use it.

Off the top of my head, I'm still unsure how to display if your motherboard has SATA slots.

someone else may help you more.
 
I don't have anything to take pictures with, though I had SiS Sandra on my computer, would that be any help?

The mainboard is a GA-8SIMLNF
The current hard disk is a ST380011A

Do those help?
 
Look I have a mybook 320 drive. It has no fan, but it never runs super hot. It doesn't vibrate and I keep and run all my games from it.
I regularly play CS and BF2 and it loads fast as do movies and pictures.

Do keep in mind my pc is 4 years old. So an external HD is probably a lot slower the the new SATA drives. but seeing your small hd drive I bet you're not used to SATA speeds. So just buy yourself an mybook, it's easy, reliable, fast, and plug & play. The only thing you have to keep in mind, is that it comes formatted in fat32 for compatibility, so you are going to have to reformat it before you use it with win.XP
 
I'm guessing that is a Gigabyte board. I checked their site but no mention of GA-8SIMLNF. They had GA-8SIM* but different letters after that. It looked like there was only PATA (IDE cable) connections on those boards.

On the right side of the board there should be 2 40 pin connectors (IDE). (bottom side in this picture since it's rotated) Probably white and blue. May be a different color. There is also a shorter black one (34 pin floppy), ignore this.

There are IDE cables that only 1 drive can attach to and there are other IDE cables that can use 2 drives. Not sure what is in your PC atm. So with 2 connectors on the board + 2 per cable you can have 4 drives (hard drives and CD/DVD drives).

When you buy a PATA drive that uses IDE, generally it will say "ATA100" or "ATA133" on the box (100 or 133 is the speed of the IDE cable). Normally it won't say PATA.

When installing a PATA drive you will want to look at the back of the drive and there will be maybe 8 pins in the center between the power and IDE pins. There will be a jumper (green part in the pic) which shorts a pair of pins to determine the setting of the drive. One pair of pins sets it to Master. Another will set it to Slave. The diagram on the top label or side of the drive will tell you which pins to put the jumper over for Master/Slave. It's pretty easy and Master/Slave do not determine performance. It is simply for the PC to tell the drives apart on the same cable.

So look at the drive you currently have in the machine and see which pins the jumper is on. Then look at the diagram to see what it is. If the drive in your PC now is Master and you want to put this drive on the same cable then you would want to set the new drive to Slave.

(Cable Select is another option. But instead of one being labeled Master and the other Slave, both drives with Cable Select will automatically be identified by which IDE connector they are using. Personally, I use Master/Slave.)

Questions? lol
 
Yeah I'm pretty sure my HDD is PATA Since it's got ATA in the name when SiS Sandra looks at it :p

Eugh, that post sounds complicated, I may have to print it (your post) off and check.
So wait, where would I put the second disk? And how do I know I've got room? (I still haven't opened the case up, i'll look after this next post ^-^ )
 
Yes, it's a...Packard Bell, according to the label.
It's model is an I-Media 3065
 
I have an external HD because I need it for school and it works as well as a regular hard drive (USB 2.0, of course) in terms of data transfer, or at least the difference in speeds is extremely small.

I try not to have it powered on when it's not in use, because I don't see the need, but then again I wouldn't use it for games, and personally I don't think you should either.

They make great overflow drives for data you still need but especially don't need access to all of the time, or at least have access to it 100% of the time (IE: downloading torrents to it or whatver).

Hard drive failures make god kill kittens. The less you use a hard drive, when possible, the better. But I don't know what sort of data you fill up your current 80 GB with. If you have 15 different games installed and you play a different one on different days then that might be another consideration to make. If that's the case I wouldn't even get an external.

I do realize Asus said some of this already, but hearing it from another person might persuade you to make a more informed decision :D
 
Loading games and other applications on an external HD is a no no. Sure, you can load an OS on it if you really wanted to, but you can also load an OS over lan, it doesn't mean it should be done ;).

Keep all your saved data, all your music, videos, and documents on the extrenal drive. Keep your programs on your main internal drive, with 80GB internal stroage you should have anough to store all of your applications, no?

Also, I would not recommend running 2 PATA hard drives on a single channel. The following specs exist for your mobo:

http://support.packardbell.com/it/item/index.php?i=spec_columbia5p&pi=platform_veloce_ipro

Since you do not have SATA and both your IDE channels are used up your best bet is to go with an external drive since you probably don't have the budget for a PCI raid controller. You have USB 2.0 so your transfer rates will be comparable to the internal IDE channels. 2 PATA disks running on the same channel will greatly degrade your performance. If you must do this hook it up to the same channel the cd/dvd drive is on but be prepared for your CD drive to start running a lot slower, again, I would not recommend this.
 
:S I'm confused now.

I thought I had an IDE free, what's using it up?
 
Llama said:
:S I'm confused now.

I thought I had an IDE free, what's using it up?
Click to expand...

A ATX board with no SATA will have 2 IDE channels. One will be used for your hard drive and the other for your DVD/CD drive.

So if your computer has a internal cd drive or DVD drive they are both being used, 1 for the CD drive and one for the hard drive iteself. What you can do is hook up 2 different devices to one IDE channel by switching jumper settings on the actual device, but again, I would not recommend this as it will slow down those devices greatly. Go with an extrenal USB 2.0 drive, they are fairly cheap now days. Your system isn't exactly top of the line so I don't think you are running any games that take up huge amounts of storage so keep all your games and applications on your internal C: drive and keep everything else on the external drive. And 99% of the time they are plug and play so you don't really have to worry about all this mumbo jumbo that we are talking about.

As someone else above mentioned what's nice about extrenal drives is you can turn them off when you do use them. This will greatly extend the life of your HD as any HD is powered by a motor, and all motors degrade the more they are used.

Hope that helps.
 
Oh right, so external it is then. I need a good one for ?90 or less, and I don't need more than 80-120 gb storage. What's the best sort of deal I can get?
 
No Limit said:
You have USB 2.0 so your transfer rates will be comparable to the internal IDE channels.
Click to expand...
I disagree. Did you see some of the reviews I posted earlier? The different reviews all showed the USB hard drives at around 30mb/s while internal drives would be 50-70MB/s depending on the model. And with the WD external drive the USB2.0 bottleneck was removed when using Firewire800 since the same drive then jumped up to 70mb/s.

No Limit said:
Also, I would not recommend running 2 PATA hard drives on a single channel. The following specs exist for your mobo:

http://support.packardbell.com/it/item/index.php?i=spec_columbia5p&pi=platform_veloce_ipro

2 PATA disks running on the same channel will greatly degrade your performance. If you must do this hook it up to the same channel the cd/dvd drive is on but be prepared for your CD drive to start running a lot slower, again, I would not recommend this.
Click to expand...
Lets just say for argument that it splits possible bandwidth when both are in use from ATA133 to 66MB/s for each drive. Isn't that faster than 30mb/s that the USB2.0 drives ran at?

Like he said, it would be best to put a new drive on the same cable as with the CD/DVD drive if you were to add an internal drive.

For External, the WD would be best for performance it seems.
 
I disagree. Did you see some of the reviews I posted earlier? The different reviews all showed the USB hard drives at around 30mb/s while internal drives would be 50-70MB/s depending on the model. And with the WD external drive the USB2.0 bottleneck was removed when using Firewire800 since the same drive then jumped up to 70mb/s.
Click to expand...
On paper you are probably absolutely right. But as far as storage of documents, music, and video goes you will not see much of a difference. The datasheet might say 30MB/s transfer rate but that depends on a lot of other factors in your bus. This is why I would not recommend storing applications on an external drive. But to be honest I didn't read any of the links you posted, I just don't have time right now as I am working. I'll check them out later today.

Lets just say for argument that it splits possible bandwidth when both are in use from ATA133 to 66MB/s for each drive. Isn't that faster than 30mb/s that the USB2.0 drives ran at?
Click to expand...
The way it works is it actually doesn't split the bandwdith. When you have 2 devices connected to the same IDE channel both of them get full bandwidth, the performance is actually degraded because you can only perform one operation per channel at a perticular time. So if you have a PATA hard drive hooked up on the same channel as another PATA device your bus will only be able to access one at a time. If you are transfering something to one drive many times the system will wait for that task to completely finish before it can access the other device. This might not seem like it would have much effect as you usually use only one at a time anyway, at least you think you do, but your bus has to constantly send information out to both channels. In additon, when this happens your CPU keeps sending out the same request until it gets processed.

I did this once, and my CD drive was virtually unusable. This is why I would urge you not to use this method. If you must have more IDE channels in your computer your best bet is a simple PCI raid controller which you can get for around $30 now a days, probably even less.
 
Getting a PCI card with more channels would be great. Why not get a SATA card intead of PATA (IDE) and buy a SATA hard drive? Would be nice already having a SATA drive when you get a new PC too.
 
I have very little money. Certainly not enough to bother getting a new OS.
I think i'll just get an external drive and put all my non-gaming stuff on it
 
Asus said:
Getting a PCI card with more channels would be great. Why not get a SATA card intead of PATA (IDE) and buy a SATA hard drive? Would be nice already having a SATA drive when you get a new PC too.
Click to expand...

No doubt, way better deal. I still have no clue how they can offer it for so cheap, I paid $50 for a regular PATA 2 channel raid card at PC Club a month ago. I would have gotten it online but I needed it that day.
 
Planning to get an external drive for backups and storage of tv series/movies. I've set my eye on a WD Elements 500 GB (USB 2.0) for 110 euro. Good choice? And I assume 3.5" is so much cheaper than 2.5" because less data density is required, but are there any other inherent disadvantages to it like noise, reliability or perhaps seek times / transfer rates?
 
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