I am running out of hard drive space and considering the purchase of an external SATA drive. The Motherboard I have only supports SATA 150 which is 150MB/s. USB 2.0 is 480 Mb/s. Lots of technical glossaries advertise USB 2.0 as 480MB/s which is misleading as compared to SATA this appears as though USB is faster, which of course it isn't. USB 2.0 @ 480Mb/s which is correct = 60MB/s = less than twice as slow.

As of yet I do not have a faster motherboard to support the faster SATA so I am going to upgrade to the SATA 150MB/s with external adapter.

ATM I'm looking at:
Seagate My Book 500GB
Buffalo 500GB
Iomega 500GB

I've had two bad experiences with Seagate (Still sat on my desk - dead!) but as technology has improved somewhat since, what are the Buffalo and Iomega drives like for reliability?

Thanks in advance

Steve

Make your own external from an internal and a housing, I did.

Buying a drive, case, power supply etc (plus P&P) in the SATA configuration isn't going to save me much (if any) money...

Steve

I'm presuming it is esata you are talking about (?)

The figures quoted are maximum throughputs (USB 2.0 – 480 Mbps, SATA 1.5 – 1.5 Gbps, SATA 3.0 – 3.0 Gbps)
and are not sustainable on large read/writes using a single drive anyway so I would not be overly concerned about quoted speeds.

Unless you are transferring a lot of large files, the best option would just be to buy a usb drive, in a single drive configuration it is fast enough and it saves on having to buy another interface, but if you are determined to go external Sata then I'd aim for a WD drive as my preferred option, they do one with USB2 and Esata which is handy for future upgrades.

Neither Buffalo or Iomega make their own drives (not sure buffalo even make an esata device anyway?) although buffalo make some good nas devices.

Hope that helps, but probably about as clear as mud

Cheers

Alex

What is the performance of Firewire external housings like ?

I have just bought an ethernet external housing from Maplin -- haven't tried it yet

Linksys have just brought out a wireless network drive.

LanDisk Network Harddrive Enclosure £34.99


• An easy-to-use hard drive enclosure that allows you to share information around a network
• Just add a hard drive capacity of your choice
• Centralise and share data in your home or office
• Back up files from any computer on the network
• Supports 3.5 inch IDE / FAT32 HDD
• 10/100 Base-T / Auto MDI / MDI-X
• SMB/FTP for LAN / WAN file sharing-system
• DHCP server / client, Auto/static IP
• Web-based management, administrator / password
• USB 2.0 / Ethernet LAN 10/100 connection for PC or MAC
• OS support ME/2000/XP, MAC OS X, Linux



http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=97390&C=Maplin&U=SearchTop&T=NETWORK%20HARD%20DRIVE&doy=26m6

[Edited on 26/6/07 by britishtrident]
Rescued attachment lan.jpg

That looks pretty good value for money!

I'm after a NAS device for media sharing - might be off to Maplin in the morning

quote:

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Originally posted by ecosse
I'm presuming it is esata you are talking about (?)

The figures quoted are maximum throughputs (USB 2.0 – 480 Mbps, SATA 1.5 – 1.5 Gbps, SATA 3.0 – 3.0 Gbps)
and are not sustainable on large read/writes using a single drive anyway so I would not be overly concerned about quoted speeds.

Unless you are transferring a lot of large files, the best option would just be to buy a usb drive, in a single drive configuration it is fast enough and it saves on having to buy another interface, but if you are determined to go external Sata then I'd aim for a WD drive as my preferred option, they do one with USB2 and Esata which is handy for future upgrades.

Neither Buffalo or Iomega make their own drives (not sure buffalo even make an esata device anyway?) although buffalo make some good nas devices.

Hope that helps, but probably about as clear as mud

Cheers

Alex

---

I'm surprised you've had two bad experiences with Seagate HDD's, I don't use anything else these days. I can't remember the last seagate disk I saw fail, they knock the spots off anything else i've had pass through my grubby hands.

The latest generation of HD's are probably far superior to the dead Seagate's I have. I now use Maxtor and have had for the last 4-5 years with no problems at all...

Touch wood....

Steve

Seagate provide a 3 year warranty on most hard drives, which is considerably better than any of the other major drive manufacturers. They are also the only drives I use these days, primarily for this reason.

BT: I have an external drive that supports USB2 and firewire. On paper firewire is a little slower than USB2, but in practice I find that it's actually faster for large data transfers.

[Edited on 2/7/07 by MikeRJ]