External Hard Drives

  • Thread starter Thread starter James
  • Start date Start date
J

James

Hi,

I'm looking for an external hard drive for my laptop, which doesn't have USB
2, anyone have any suggestions about models and where to buy etc? I'm in
the UK.

Thanks!
 
James said:
Hi,

I'm looking for an external hard drive for my laptop, which doesn't
have USB 2, anyone have any suggestions about models and where to buy
etc? I'm in the UK.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

USB2 drives should work just fine with USB 1.1 ports, I move my USB2 drive
around from USB1 to USB2 systems without problems.
 
USB2 drives should work just fine with USB 1.1 ports, I move my USB2 drive
around from USB1 to USB2 systems without problems.
Click to expand...


You can buy a USB2 PCMCIA card for a few bucks. Backup with USB1.1
works, but fast really better. Buy a USB2 disk. It will work with
USB1.1, and if you want more speed you can always buy the PCMCIA card.
 
Nik said:
USB2 drives should work just fine with USB 1.1 ports, I move my USB2
drive around from USB1 to USB2 systems without problems.
Click to expand...

Oh they'll work, but you can measure the data transfer time on a geological
timescale!
 
Hi,

I'm looking for an external hard drive for my laptop, which doesn't have USB
2, anyone have any suggestions about models and where to buy etc? I'm in
the UK.
Click to expand...

Do you have firewire ports on the laptop? (If so, go
with an external firewire drive.)

Other options are to simply hang a NAS box off of the
network hub (or use a cross-over cable). Transfer rate
will be a lot faster then the slow USB 1.x (USB 1.x on
my laptop eats up the CPU, making it near-impossible to
do anything during a transfer).

There are also PCMCIA cards that you can plug in that
will provide USB 2.0 (and possibly firewire) connectors.

Or there's a 5GB laptop drive that is the size of a Type
II (type III?) PCMCIA double-thickness card. Takes up
both PCMCIA slots and is a tad pricey.
 
Miss said:
Oh they'll work, but you can measure the data transfer time on a
geological timescale!
Click to expand...

Transfer rates don't seem that bad, of course it depends on how you want to
use the drive, but for the purposes of moving some files around its
acceptable IMHO.
 
Nik Simpson said:
Transfer rates don't seem that bad, of course it depends on how you want to
use the drive, but for the purposes of moving some files around its
acceptable IMHO.
Click to expand...

No need to qualify that opinion: it's entirely acceptable for much or even
most use. Far faster than a broadband download, no noticeable delay at all
for smallish files (up to 100 - 200 KB), fast enough to stream audio and
most streaming video.

Only when moving data around in bulk (multi-MB files that aren't too
fragmented) will the 1.5 MB/sec transfer speed seem a bit leisurely. No,
you might not want to use it to perform a full-disk image copy (though I've
used it with Partition Magic to back up my laptop's half-full 2 GB system
partition to a spare 3.5" disk: well worth the wait if I ever need it).

- bill
 
Hi again,

Thanks to everyone who replied. Decided to buy a drive and a PCMCIA card
which gives 5 USB 2 (reversible) ports, and this gives me extra ports
aswell. Found what I was looking for on Amazon.
 
Hi,

I'm looking for an external hard drive for my laptop, which doesn't have USB
2, anyone have any suggestions about models and where to buy etc? I'm in
the UK.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Does the laptop have firewire (1394)?
That is the preferred interface, it is faster than USB2 in use.
If you also needed another USB2 port, then USB might be a good
compromise solution, but if the only real need is the external
drive, get a firewire card and enclosure... keeping in mind that
you'd also need firewire on a desktop (if drive is to be moved
around), which some have but others don't.
 
Can you cite a reference for that assertion?
Click to expand...

Sorry but I didn't collect links. You can find benchmarks the
same way I did, Google search.


USB2 isn't a lot slower in some cases, perhaps even faster in a
few, but overall it is slower than the better USB2 chipsets, let
alone the poor ones like Via's first attempt.
 
kony said:
Sorry but I didn't collect links. You can find benchmarks the
same way I did, Google search.


USB2 isn't a lot slower in some cases, perhaps even faster in a
few, but overall it is slower than the better USB2 chipsets, let
alone the poor ones like Via's first attempt.
Click to expand...

That sounds like an overall nothing. Recent USB2 just just as well as
Firewire performance wise.
 
Can you cite a reference for that assertion?
Click to expand...

I don't know about the OP, but I've found that USB2 seems a bit shonky
when compared to FW. Occasional hangs in apps, that sort of thing. Possibly
it's just bad drivers of the fact that there's both USB1.1 and USB2 devices
on the same bus while Firewire tends to only have storage attached.
been avoiding FW these days.
 
That sounds like an overall nothing. Recent USB2 just just as well as
Firewire performance wise.
Click to expand...

My above post was a mess.
Reworded it should've read:

USB2 isn't a lot slower in some cases, perhaps even faster in a
few, but overall it (even the better USB2 chipsets, let
alone the poor ones like Via's first attempt) is slower.

------------------------------------

The newest USB2 chipsets, when combined with a decent enclosure
chip, can be near the same speed as firewire, but still firewire
has an edge. Unless the USB2 chipsets are known to be the
faster ones it could be a lot slower than firewire. If you have
a list of products proven to bench at higher performance than
average that might be useful info for the OP, but otherwise just
buying something with no detail beyond "USB2" is certainly not
any assurance it will be nearly as fast as firewire.
 
kony said:
Sorry but I didn't collect links. You can find benchmarks the
same way I did, Google search.


USB2 isn't a lot slower in some cases, perhaps even faster in a
few, but overall it is slower than the better USB2 chipsets, let
alone the poor ones like Via's first attempt.
Click to expand...

FireWire vs USB2 is like DSL vs cable. With FireWire/DSL - you have a
constant speed as the bus/line isn't being shared with anyone/thing else.
USB2, OTOH, shares the bus with everything - so if you have 12 devices, then
the speed may not be any faster than USB1.1. Like cable. If you're the only
one logged on, then, yes, it's quicker than DSL. If the entire street
decides to log on simultaneously, then the speed could slow to almost
dial-up.

So, if you have only one device, go USB2. Many? FireWire. Unfortunately,
motherboards are shipped with more USB ports than FireWire (I have 12 USB2
ports on mine - but only four FireWire (one on the board, on on a plug-in
port 'card' that came with the board (and is accessed via a 'trapdoor' in
the top of the case) and two on my soundcard (one on the card itself, and
one on the front-case control panel)
 
Miss said:
FireWire vs USB2 is like DSL vs cable. With FireWire/DSL - you have a
constant speed as the bus/line isn't being shared with anyone/thing else.
USB2, OTOH, shares the bus with everything - so if you have 12 devices, then
the speed may not be any faster than USB1.1.
Click to expand...

Well, the important thing is that USB is host controlled and FireWire is
multi master.

Bandwidth wise it makes little difference. FireWire and USB hubs share
bandwidth - multiple controllers can mean non shared bandwidth for both.

As with cable or DSL the result is determined by implementation. If your
DSL provider has too little bandwidth to the DSLAM, you will notice
neighbours's traffic. Likewise if your cable co sells 20 people 1.5 Mbit
each from 30 Mbit available on a channel, you're not really going to notice.

Having an extra bottleneck is something extra to manage, but does not
imply lower performance. But on USB, I do not even see where that
bottleneck would be. The root hub?


Thomas
 
That sounds like an overall nothing. Recent USB2 just just as well as
Firewire performance wise.
Click to expand...

Hi:
I have two 250GB Maxtor One Touch USB2/fw external Ultra ATA-133
7200RPM HDDs.
One is using firewire via an OrangeLink FireWire 800/1394b (1394a
+ b) PCI card.
The other is using a USB2 port on my Asus P4T533-C s478/i850e
motherboard.

WinXP HE SP1
P4 2.8b/1GB OCZ PC1066 RIMM/etc

If there is a difference in performance. I don't notice it.

Happy trails,
 
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