Jump to content

Photo

Fast External Hard Drives?


  • Please log in to reply
10 replies to this topic

#1 Cukeman

Cukeman

    "Tra la la, look for Sahasrahla. ... ... ..."

  • Banned
  • Location:Hyrule/USA

Posted 19 September 2016 - 03:25 PM

So I recently bought a Mac with USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt ports (capable of 10 GBps and 20 GBps), but I see that many external hard drives sold are compatible with USB 3.0, but don't perform any faster than USB 2.0 because of the speed of the mechanism in the hard drive itself which does the writing and reading processes. Any advice on how to find a hard drive which performs close to 10 GBps?



#2 thepsynergist

thepsynergist

    thepsynergist

  • Members
  • Real Name:Jeff Lee
  • Location:California, USA

Posted 19 September 2016 - 04:36 PM

http://www.newegg.co...ategory/ID-2022



#3 Cukeman

Cukeman

    "Tra la la, look for Sahasrahla. ... ... ..."

  • Banned
  • Location:Hyrule/USA

Posted 19 September 2016 - 05:04 PM

Wow, dem prices! Guess the tech has some catching up to do



#4 Ben

Ben

    a very grumpy

  • Members

Posted 19 September 2016 - 06:10 PM

SSDs are your best bet. By the middle of 2018 they should hopefully be close to the same price per gigabyte as a mechanical drive, because not only are SSDs super fast, they also last longer and are incredibly reliable. They slow down gradually over time (after several terabytes of writes to the drive which for an average user would take several years), but even a really worn-out SSD is still somewhat faster than a 7200rpm hard disk.

 

You should see the speeds you can get with one running off of a PCI Express bus instead of SATA or USB, though -- if you want to cold boot your iMac in under four seconds you can get them preinstalled! But they're not cheap. A mechanical drive is way slower but is also way cheaper and generally more capacious. These days you'll want to run your OS and frequent programs off an SSD (even a small 64GB one works for a lot of people and is fairly affordable) and then use a mechanical drive for other storage where speed isn't really a factor.


  • ShadowTiger, Cukeman and Kivitoe like this

#5 Nicholas Steel

Nicholas Steel

    Hero of Time

  • Members
  • Location:Australia

Posted 20 September 2016 - 01:30 AM

USB 3 will yield significant performance increases for external mechanical HDD's so long as the external HDD is actually built for USB 3.0 and isn't touting USB 3.0 support in terms of USB 2.0 being forward compatible with USB 3.0.

 

USB 2.0 = 012 MB/s

USB 3.0 = 625 MB/s

Mechanical HDD fluctuates up to around 140 MB/s for reading data (if data is defragmented).

 

USB 3.0 should allow a USB 3.0 mechanical HDD to perform as well as an internal SATA 2 mechanical HDD. SATA 3 however is largely pointless for a mechanical HDD (compared to SATA 2), the main benefit for a mechanical HDD with SATA 3 is NCQ (Native Command Queuing) support. NCQ is as far as I know, some kind of on-the-fly defragmentation or maybe a priority schedular.


Edited by Nicholas Steel, 31 October 2016 - 10:31 AM.

  • ShadowTiger likes this

#6 Cukeman

Cukeman

    "Tra la la, look for Sahasrahla. ... ... ..."

  • Banned
  • Location:Hyrule/USA

Posted 29 December 2016 - 12:57 AM

So I bought a 500GB SSD USB 3 drive, but it doesn't seem any faster. I'm pretty upset.

Any idea why I'm not getting the speeds (Up to 450MB/s) listed on the box?



#7 Magi_Hero

Magi_Hero

    gubgub

  • Members
  • Real Name:Tim
  • Location:NJ

Posted 29 December 2016 - 02:09 AM

So I bought a 500GB SSD USB 3 drive, but it doesn't seem any faster. I'm pretty upset.
Any idea why I'm not getting the speeds (Up to 450MB/s) listed on the box?

You likely have slower USB (2.0) or an older motherboard that doesn't have a fast bus.

#8 thepsynergist

thepsynergist

    thepsynergist

  • Members
  • Real Name:Jeff Lee
  • Location:California, USA

Posted 29 December 2016 - 02:10 AM

Do you have a USB 3.0 slot you have it plugged into?

 

-ninjaed.


Edited by thepsynergist, 29 December 2016 - 02:10 AM.


#9 Cukeman

Cukeman

    "Tra la la, look for Sahasrahla. ... ... ..."

  • Banned
  • Location:Hyrule/USA

Posted 29 December 2016 - 04:05 PM

Yeah, this is a new computer (bought it this fall) with USB 3.0 ports



#10 thepsynergist

thepsynergist

    thepsynergist

  • Members
  • Real Name:Jeff Lee
  • Location:California, USA

Posted 29 December 2016 - 07:20 PM

Did the hard drive come with drivers on a CD?  It shouldn't need them, but you never know.


Edited by thepsynergist, 29 December 2016 - 07:21 PM.


#11 Cukeman

Cukeman

    "Tra la la, look for Sahasrahla. ... ... ..."

  • Banned
  • Location:Hyrule/USA

Posted 01 January 2017 - 04:41 PM

There's no discs in the package (the package is not even as wide as a disc).

 

Inside there was the unit (Samsung Portable SSD T3 500GB) the port is a USB Type-C connector

and a USB 3.1 cable

 

The files on the unit are for installing a security program

 

The booklet says "Samsung Portable SSD T3 is a safe and portable solid-state drive based on flash memory, which makes high-speed data transfer possible in Apple OS X or Microsoft Windows PCs that support USB 3.1 (Gen.1 5Gbps)."

 

My computer ports may be 3.0 rather than 3.1, but would that be relevant? I should be getting 3.0 speeds at least, right?




0 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users