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#11
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POST: Why to never buy 3.5" external HDD's
flo-rate wrote
Interesting post. Nope. Is he right not to buy external 3.5 HDDs? Nope, mine all work fine. ++++ http://forum.piriform.com/?showtopic=37513 Posted 24 December 2012 - 05:15 PM Why to never buy 3.5" external HDD's? A good number of reasons. But 2.5" are ok. If I haven't warned you guys & gals before then read up! 1- The drives that go into these external enclosures, like the WD MyBook series for example, are sub-standard. Bull****. 2- More surface errors. Externals have more errors on the surface right out of the factory than their equivalent desktop models do. Mindlessly silly. Every single HDD ever made in the entire world has surface defects. That isnt necessarily true of the lowest density original ones. But externals have more than their desktop counterparts. Mindlessly silly. Every HDD comes with a bad sector map. Yes, The defective spots are recorded in a chart and the drive skips over them, substituting a bad sector with one from a reserve area. Not always, often its just difference in the mapping between logical blocks and the head/cylinder/sector. Thus the disk "presents" a 100% error free drive to the OS. Yes. And in the old days, you had to manually enter the defective sector list by hand according to certification chart taped to the drive at time of mfg. Stuck too, not usually taped to. Today it is stored in th firmware. Yes. Accessing these spare areas takes a few mSec more than a normal sequential sector - because the head has to swing to the reserve area. Not when its all done in the mapping between LBA and HCS. This latency (for external disks) is buried out of sight deep inside the USB interface. And in fact is swamped by the lack of speed in the USB interface with the USB that was current at the time this **** was written. But on a hi-performace Enterprise class drive, speed loss due to defect remappings are noticable and thus they get the best platters. Not when there are no spare sectors and its all done in the LBA HCS mapping. 3- Balance. You'll note that on average external drives generate more vibration. Even sillier and more pig ignorant than you usually manage. This is from sub-standard bearings in the motor/spindle They are EXACTLY the same motor/spindles as with internal drives because they are just the internal drives in an external case. and out of round platters. They are EXACTLY the same platters as with internal drives because they are just the internal drives in an external case. While each HDD (if you take it apart) seems ultra-precise, there's a real difference when looking at their tolerances on a microscopic scale. Not between internal and external drives. 4- Cheaper engineering. You'll find less cache in externals along with single processor cores as opposed to 2 and 4 core controllers. They are EXACTLY the same caches and logic cards as with internal drives because they are just the internal drives in an external case. That, and number of heads. They are EXACTLY the same number of heads as with internal drives because they are just the internal drives in an external case. As the number of heads increase, the reliability decreases. There are no more heads with external drives. The desktop equivalent will have less surfaces, Wrong, as always. thus less parts to fail, and fail they do! Surfaces hardly ever do anymore. 5- Overall machining tolerances and materials are worse in the externals. They are EXACTLY the same drives as with internal drives because they are just the internal drives in an external case. The materials are more sensitive to temperature changes, They are EXACTLY the same materials as with internal drives because they are just the internal drives in an external case. parts expand and contract more, Only if the external case isnt as well cooled as the internal drive. producing different geometries of the heads and surfaces, and therefore requiring more compensation from the electronics to keep things on track. Even more pig ignorant than you usually manage. In fact with modern embedded servo tracks, the system completely automatically handles any changes to the platters due to thermal effects. Incidentally, this creates more heat. Even more pig ignorant than you usually manage. Typically 5-10`C. Even more pig ignorant than you usually manage. What does often see external drives run hotter than internal drives is just the inevitable poorer cooling with external drives because very few have a fan. Might as well throw in +5`C more due to rougher and less than "perfect" machining of the bearings. They are EXACTLY the same bearings as with internal drives because they are just the internal drives in an external case. And unbalanced platters require a bit more current to keep them spinning steadily. They are EXACTLY the same platters as with internal drives because they are just the internal drives in an external case. More stress more heat. Unbalanced platters add about 3`C to overall tempertature gain. They are EXACTLY the same platters as with internal drives because they are just the internal drives in an external case. All this consipires to compound things. The metallic coating (where your data is stored) has its coercivity affected by hotter temps, and presents a less defined magnetic pattern. That utterly mangles the real story too with such small temperature differences. 6- Larger parts, platters, actuator arms, motors, bearings, fly-height adjusters, micro-positioners, voice coils, things like that, it all takes more power to operate. They are just internal drives in an external case. No difference with any of that stuff. 7- Lack of any form of cooling! Another pig ignorant lie. They do in fact cool the drive by conduction. That's correct. Nope. There is no cooling fan anywhere in most external disks! Yes, but that does not mean no cooling at all. You're taking a desktop drive and basically putting it into a box. Yes. No air circulation. There is in fact some air circulation with some external cases. And cooling by conduction with most of them too. You don't do this with your desktop drives do you? I do actually. You've got some kind of airflow, No I do not. or if not, you've got the disk attached to a metal frame that absorbs some heat. Just as true of many external drives. In an external USB-style drive you don't any of those two cooling mechanisms. Wrong, as always. You might as well put the disk in a baggie and then a shoe box. Wrong, as always. This one factor alone is responsible for the high failure rate of external disks! Wrong, as always. Externals can typically run 20-30`C higher than their desktop cousins. Mine don't. A hotter running disk from the get-go, trapped in a box with no ventilation, is just asking for trouble. Which might just be why some have some ventilation and why plenty more have metal cases with conduction of the heat from the drive to the air outside the case and even you can put your hand on the metal case and feel that it is warmer than something else that doesn't have a hard drive running inside it. And manufacturers know this! Evidenced by the shorter warranty 1-year vs. 3 or 5 years! There are plenty of internal drives with only a 1 year warranty and some external drives with 3 or 5 year warrantys. They know the disks will fail, they know about the lack of cooling as the #1 reason. The #1 reason is in fact the drive getting knocked over or knocked off the table top etc or being slapped down on the table top. They are too cheap to put in a $5 fan, citing a number of excuses - one of which, ironically, is extra moving parts. --------------- I've seen Western Digital external drives run at a blistering 68`C !! Sure, but not all external drives do that. How can you expect a cheap consumer grade product to operate reliably under those conditions. You can't! So don't use such badly designed external drives. Mine don't. And I have to say that over the years I've had many drives both professionally and personally, and without a doubt, every single Western Digital 3.5" external disk that has no cooling fan has died prematurely. ALL OF THEM! 100% fail. So don't use such badly designed external drives. None of mine have failed. Manufacturers expect this. They expect a short lifespan. They know this. Remember that 1-year warranty as opposed to 3-years or 5-years! There are plenty of internal drives with only a 1 year warranty and some external drives with 3 or 5 year warrantys. It should be noted that 2.5" disks don't exhibit many of those cascading failure scenarios. Even sillier than you usually manage. They are engineered to work in an enclosed compartment with no ventilation. A laptop! Plenty of laptops do have an internal fan. They handle vibration better. And handle being dropped better too. Parts are smaller, better spec'd. Less stress, less power consumption. And cost quite a bit more for the same capacity. Better surface verification procedures. BULL****. All a necessity with the higher density of 2.5" platters and portable environment. And you pay for that. So if you're looking for external USB disks buy only 2.5", No thanks. afterall these smaller drives were engineered for the portable environment from the ground up. Yes, but if you know what you are doing, 3.5" external drives can work fine too. And are too big to put in your pocket so you are much less likely to cart them around too. They were not afterthoughts and hey let's do this types of hacks. Even sillier than you usually manage. And eventually, once SSD's become ready for the consumer market, They have been for a long time now. then I will recommend those. No one cares what fools like you do or do not recommend. For now, stick with 1TB 2.5" externals for your cost-effective storage needs. Go and **** yourself. Get two 1TB 2.5" disks as opposed to a single 2TB 3.5" external. No thanks, costs much more. |
#12
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POST: Why to never buy 3.5" external HDD's
"Mr. Man-wai Chang" wrote in message ... On 1/04/2016 9:11 PM, flo-rate wrote: Interesting post. Is he right not to buy external 3.5 HDDs? Most 2.5 inch external hard disk are 5400RPM. I supposed 3.5 inch ones could go 7200RPM. But then USB 3.0 might not be fast enough to handle the increased data transfer rate. Anyway, there are USB 3.0 and/or eSATA docking stations for both 2.5 and 3.5 inches ones, if you don't mind running a hard disk naked. And you can always have a sign saying that children should avert their eyes. |
#13
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POST: Why to never buy 3.5" external HDD's
"Mr. Man-wai Chang" wrote in message ... On 1/04/2016 9:11 PM, flo-rate wrote: Get two 1TB 2.5" disks as opposed to a single 2TB 3.5" external. What if you need to backup more than 1TB of data? You use a backup app that can handle removable media, stupid. How do you draw the line? Right between his eyes, and aim for that. |
#14
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POST: Why to never buy 3.5" external HDD's
"flo-rate" wrote in message . .. On Sat, 2 Apr 2016 10:35:06 -0500, VanguardLH wrote : flo-rate wrote: One answer could be to buy a known internal 2.5 inch drive whose spec you like and mount it in an external USB enclosure. At newegg.com, I can find a 3.5" 8 TB 7200 RPM drive at $440. For a 2.5" 7200 RPM laptop HDD, the biggest they carry is 2 TB costing $990. With the 3.5" form factor, I get 4 times the capacity at less than half the cost. Yeah, 2.5" is technically doable but at a much greater cost per byte. Of course, a 2.5" external HDD will probably fit [tightly] in your shirt pocket (as long as there is no fan) but you'll need to tote the 3.5". Who carries their 2.5" external HDD in their shirt pocket? Check those prices. Here are a 3.5 and a 2.5 drive chosen at random. Both of the same capacity for comparison. A Seagate 3.5-Inch 4TB Desktop HDD costs $115. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B99JU4S/ A Samsung Momentus 4TB 2.5-inch Hard Drive costs $140. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B99JU4S/ Now try that with 8TB drives. |
#15
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POST: Why to never buy 3.5" external HDD's
"flo-rate" wrote in message . .. On Fri, 1 Apr 2016 11:37:43 -0500, VanguardLH wrote : flo-rate wrote: Interesting post. Is he right not to buy external 3.5 HDDs? ++++ http://forum.piriform.com/?showtopic=37513 Posted 24 December 2012 - 05:15 PM Why to never buy 3.5" external HDD's? A good number of reasons. But 2.5" are ok. If I haven't warned you guys & gals before then read up! 1- The drives that go into these external enclosures, like the WD MyBook series for example, are sub-standard. 2- More surface errors. Externals have more errors on the surface right out of the factory than their equivalent desktop models do. Every single HDD ever made in the entire world has surface defects. But externals have more than their desktop counterparts. Every HDD comes with a bad sector map. The defective spots are recorded in a chart and the drive skips over them, substituting a bad sector with one from a reserve area. Thus the disk "presents" a 100% error free drive to the OS. And in the old days, you had to manually enter the defective sector list by hand according to certification chart taped to the drive at time of mfg. Today it is stored in th firmware. Accessing these spare areas takes a few mSec more than a normal sequential sector - because the head has to swing to the reserve area. This latency (for external disks) is buried out of sight deep inside the USB interface. But on a hi-performace Enterprise class drive, speed loss due to defect remappings are noticable and thus they get the best platters. 3- Balance. You'll note that on average external drives generate more vibration. This is from sub-standard bearings in the motor/spindle and out of round platters. While each HDD (if you take it apart) seems ultra- precise, there's a real difference when looking at their tolerances on a microscopic scale. 4- Cheaper engineering. You'll find less cache in externals along with single processor cores as opposed to 2 and 4 core controllers. That, and number of heads. As the number of heads increase, the reliability decreases. The desktop equivalent will have less surfaces, thus less parts to fail, and fail they do! 5- Overall machining tolerances and materials are worse in the externals. The materials are more sensitive to temperature changes, parts expand and contract more, producing different geometries of the heads and surfaces, and therefore requiring more compensation from the electronics to keep things on track. Incidentally, this creates more heat. Typically 5-10`C. Might as well throw in +5`C more due to rougher and less than "perfect" machining of the bearings. And unbalanced platters require a bit more current to keep them spinning steadily. More stress more heat. Unbalanced platters add about 3`C to overall tempertature gain. All this consipires to compound things. The metallic coating (where your data is stored) has its coercivity affected by hotter temps, and presents a less defined magnetic pattern. 6- Larger parts, platters, actuator arms, motors, bearings, fly-height adjusters, micro-positioners, voice coils, things like that, it all takes more power to operate. 7- Lack of any form of cooling! That's correct. There is no cooling fan anywhere in most external disks! You're taking a desktop drive and basically putting it into a box. No air circulation. You don't do this with your desktop drives do you? You've got some kind of airflow, or if not, you've got the disk attached to a metal frame that absorbs some heat. In an external USB-style drive you don't any of those two cooling mechanisms. You might as well put the disk in a baggie and then a shoe box. This one factor alone is responsible for the high failure rate of external disks! Externals can typically run 20-30`C higher than their desktop cousins. A hotter running disk from the get-go, trapped in a box with no ventilation, is just asking for trouble. And manufacturers know this! Evidenced by the shorter warranty 1-year vs. 3 or 5 years! They know the disks will fail, they know about the lack of cooling as the #1 reason. They are too cheap to put in a $5 fan, citing a number of excuses - one of which, ironically, is extra moving parts. --------------- I've seen Western Digital external drives run at a blistering 68`C !! How can you expect a cheap consumer grade product to operate reliably under those conditions. You can't! And I have to say that over the years I've had many drives both professionally and personally, and without a doubt, every single Western Digital 3.5" external disk that has no cooling fan has died prematurely. ALL OF THEM! 100% fail. Manufacturers expect this. They expect a short lifespan. They know this. Remember that 1-year warranty as opposed to 3-years or 5-years! It should be noted that 2.5" disks don't exhibit many of those cascading failure scenarios. They are engineered to work in an enclosed compartment with no ventilation. A laptop! They handle vibration better. Parts are smaller, better spec'd. Less stress, less power consumption. Better surface verification procedures. All a necessity with the higher density of 2.5" platters and portable environment. So if you're looking for external USB disks buy only 2.5", afterall these smaller drives were engineered for the portable environment from the ground up. They were not afterthoughts and hey let's do this types of hacks. And eventually, once SSD's become ready for the consumer market, then I will recommend those. For now, stick with 1TB 2.5" externals for your cost-effective storage needs. Get two 1TB 2.5" disks as opposed to a single 2TB 3.5" external. The problem with your analysis is that you imply there is a separate production line with all the extra costs of additional tooling and manpower to produce sub-standard external 3.5" HDDs. Those are produced one the same assembly line using the same personnel using the same tooling and the same parts as the internal 3.5" HDDs. The testing of the finished product determines in which cost market the item gets sold. This is the same with CPUs: those that can test at higher speed are priced higher, those that fail the standard test but pass at slower speed are priced lower. Same production line but resulting in different grades of products. Nothing new here. Also, the way you present your arguments is that a 3.5" or 2.5" external drive requires that it be pre-built by someone else. Build your own. Then you get to determine the quality of all the components. That's why I still build my own home PC and why we build are own test rigs at work for the alpha lab. They don't end up being cheaper than pre-builts which are constructed based on specifications (so quality and brand and model of components change depending on what the purchasing agent decided to get cheapest that week). Instead of paying someone else their overhead and profit margin for a pre-built, buy the components at higher quality and, of course, higher priced. When you get done, your own-built will be the same price, or a bit higher, because you aren't charging yourself for your time and effort to build the thing but you have higher-priced higher-quality gear. Pre-built external HDDs are often built to be green. They power off or spin down to save power. Some external HDDs have "green" drives which make it impossible to use them for long backup jobs as the program will eventually hang or timeout because the HDD won't wake up or take too long to wakeup. Because of the cooling problem (with no fan and non-ventilated cases), they need to keep the HDD spun down as often as possible. Spinning up an HDD taxes its components: surge current through the motor that experiences higher torque to start spinning the stopped platters, heads no longer flying off the platter surface, surge current through the electronics, and thermal flex due to change in temperature. More power cycling an HDD results in a shorter lifespan. If you build your own, you can stay away from green drives and use those that are designed for 24x7 constant spinning usage. You can also pay more money for enterprise-grade HDDs but your build won't be more expensive because you're not paying you to build the external HDD. You just pay for the parts. Note that external HDDs rarely have active air circulation. There is no fan (unless you build your own using a case that has a fan). That's why pre-built external HDDs have slower rotating platters: less heat. The pre-builts rely solely on convection to move the hot air away from the HDD. When building your own, you can get a case with better passive circulation (more and bigger ventilation holes) or even use a case with a fan. Build your own and you get to choose the specifications and quality of the parts that go into your build. External HDDs are pretty easy to build. All pre-builts are sub-standard to what YOU can build for the same cost to you. So how hard is it to build your own external HDD (whether using good quality 2.5" or 3.5" HDDs)? Not very. Slide the HDD inside the case, connect the cables or slide the HDD into the connector, and close. The hardest part is probably getting the tiny case screws to stay in place until you get at them with the tiny screwdriver (so you'll need one if not supplied). Of course, if YOU buy the cheapest components for the build then you are doing the same thing the pre-builts are doing except then they tack on their profit margin and overhead. Which is better for quality: a pre-built sandwich you get out of a vending machine or one you build yourself at home? The post I quoted says lower spec hard drives get supplied as 3.5 inch external drives. And that was always a pig ignorant lie. This is very unlikely to be done by running different production lines of different qualities There isnt any other way to do that with the original stupid claim about inferior bearings and more heads and surfaces. but by tests to determine which are substandard for use as an internal drive. In fact if you do that with heads and surfaces, you get LESS heads and surfaces in the external drives because the substandard ones are the ones that don't have a viable head or surface and are sold with those disabled. In practice what actually happens is that the drives which have all the heads and surfaces working fine are sold as the largest drives in the series and the ones with a defective head or surface are sold as lower total capacity drives with the bad head or surface disabled. That's how I read it More fool you with bearings and heads and surfaces. and that's what he is describing. No he's not. He doesn't have a ****ing clue about the basics. As you say, you could get around this problem by buying your own internal 3.5 inch drive and mounting it in a carrier with USB lead. But when external drives can sell for less than the same drive sold without the case, that doesn't necessarily make any sense. That is in fact why I have a couple of Samsung 2TB external drives, they were in fact cheaper than the same bare internal drive so I bought them because I knew I could take the drive out and use it in the HDD docking station that I use for most of my TB drives if I didn't like the way the case was done. Turned out that it's a very well designed metal case that cools the drive by conduction to the metal case so the drives done get any hotter than they do when used internally, so I use them as external drives and if the USB/SATA bridge ever does die, I can still just remove the drive and use it in the drive docking station along with all the other drives. The author suggests it's better still to buy an external 2.5 inch drive. He is just plain wrong unless you need to carry it around in your pocket. 3.5" drives are a bit too big for that and you normally need to carry the power cable or wall wart for them too. With a 2.5" drive most of those can get the power they need from the USB cable so the only thing you need to carry around is the drive itself. In other words, external 3.5 inch drives are low spec drives derived from a design for internal use That was always a pig ignorant lie. but external 2.5 inch drives are designed to do a better job Yes, but there is a significant price to be paid for that. and they seem to do it. One big problem is if you look inside what is supplied as an external 2.5 inch drive then it's anyone's guess which particular model/manufacturer drive was been used. Its trivially easy to see what drive is inside it using the SMART data. E.G. Seagate changes between using Samsung Spinpoint or Seagate Barracuda drives for the same capacity enclosure. And trivially easy to see which has been used from the SMART report. Also there are additonal variations from 2.5 inch drive thickness which is likely determined by the number of platters and, in turn, the platter density. So, even accepting, the poster's proposition that external 2.5 inch drives in general are better than 3.5 inch external drives, I don't, particularly with the larger drives. there is no easy way of telling what is inside an external 2.5 inch drive's enclosure that a particular review is testing. But with the retailers that do accept free returns, you can always buy the drive, see what is inside it using the SMART report and return the drive when you don't like the drive that has been used. This would affect transfer rate, seek times, power requirement, etc. With an external drive, that is often swamped by the speed of the interface standard used, even with USB 3 For this reason it may be better to follow your suggestion and buy an internal 3.5 inch drive of known performance (from reviews) and use it as an external drive. I personally use HDD docking stations but I don't have cats and little kids around so that works fine for me. But who want an heavy old hot clunker of a 3.5 inch drive with it's own external power supply? I like my Samsung 3.5" external drives that not only aren't anything like heavy, or hot or clunkers, but are in fact not much heavier than the internal drives, run quite cool even when I haven't got around to turning the aircon on because I am quite happy with an air temp of 30C and only turn the aircon on when its over that, and don't clunk at all. I couldn't care less about the power supply, it just sits in the massive great pile of them that power everything else except the desktop system itself. One answer could be to buy a known internal 2.5 inch drive whose spec you like and mount it in an external USB enclosure. Or buy decent external 3.5" external drive and get much better $/GB that way, particularly with 6 and 8TB drives. |
#16
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Why not use drive adapters? (was POST: Why to never buy 3.5" external HDD's)
Instead of enclosures and docking stations, how about those
cable adapters? They would work any drives including 2.5" and 3.5". -- Quote of the Week: "When I look up and see the sun shining on the patch of white clouds up in the blue, I begin to think how it would feel to be up somewhere above it winging swiftly thought the clear air, watching the earth below, and the men on it, no bigger than ants." --Eddie Rickenbacker Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly. /\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.home.dhs.org (Personal Web Site) / /\ /\ \ Ant's Quality Foraged Links: http://aqfl.net | |o o| | \ _ / Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail privately. If credit- ( ) ing, then please kindly use Ant nickname and AQFL URL/link. |
#17
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POST: Why to never buy 3.5" external HDD's
Rod Speed wrote:
3.5" drives are a bit too big for that and you normally need to carry the power cable or wall wart for them too. With a 2.5" drive most of those can get the power they need from the USB cable so the only thing you need to carry around is the drive itself. Some 2.5" external drives won't run on a single USB2 port. Not enough power from just 1 USB2 port. They come with a Y-adapter cable to plug them into 2 USB2 ports to get enough power. USB3 is not a problem but that portable drive might be getting connected to older computers that only have USB2 ports. So mind the peak power spec of the drive you put into your external case. I personally use HDD docking stations but I don't have cats and little kids around so that works fine for me. Yeah, those can take both 2.5" and 3.5" HDDs. Use what you like at home. Twould be a problem using them elsewhere so portability is an issue unless you drag along your docking station and its power wart. I had one and it was great to use in one location with a drawer-full of old drives of either form factor. often a slot is shared with both drive sizes. The 3.5" gets good support but the 2.5" just dangles there with a spring-loaded dust cover over the extra/dead space in the slot. One answer could be to buy a known internal 2.5 inch drive whose spec you like and mount it in an external USB enclosure. Or buy decent external 3.5" external drive and get much better $/GB that way, particularly with 6 and 8TB drives. Just be sure the external case allows decent cooling. A fan helps but is noisy, especially since it is small diameter which generates more turbulence which is more noise, and a stack of them will make a lot of noise. A 7200RPM WDC Black drive spins faster (than 5400RPM drives) and generates more heat than, say, their Blue drives (or their Green drives but I wouldn't waste my time with those power-saving drives that keep power cycling down too soon, take too long to cycle back up). Too many external cases don't even have ventilation holes, and those that claim the case is a heat sink are lying because obviously you aren't applying thermal paste between the HDD case and the enclosure. A docking station eliminate the cooling problem since the HDDs are exposed to the air with plenty of circulation. However, they aren't easily transported so those raw HDDs aren't really portable, just easily swappable. |
#18
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Why not use drive adapters? (was POST: Why to never buy 3.5" external HDD's)
Ant wrote
Instead of enclosures and docking stations, how about those cable adapters? They would work any drives including 2.5" and 3.5". The main problem with those is that the drive isnt protected at all and so can get physically damaged, particularly the logic card. I don’t have any cats inside the house and don’t let little kids that show up with visitors fiddle with the hard drive docking station and find those much more convenient to use than those cable adapters because you just drop the drive in the slot in the top of them. |
#19
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POST: Why to never buy 3.5" external HDD's
"VanguardLH" wrote in message ... Rod Speed wrote: 3.5" drives are a bit too big for that and you normally need to carry the power cable or wall wart for them too. With a 2.5" drive most of those can get the power they need from the USB cable so the only thing you need to carry around is the drive itself. Some 2.5" external drives won't run on a single USB2 port. Not enough power from just 1 USB2 port. They come with a Y-adapter cable to plug them into 2 USB2 ports to get enough power. Sure, but those don't add much to carry around and the total is quite a bit easier to put in your pocket than a 3.5" external drive alone, let alone its wall wart or power cable. USB3 is not a problem but that portable drive might be getting connected to older computers that only have USB2 ports. So mind the peak power spec of the drive you put into your external case. I personally use HDD docking stations but I don't have cats and little kids around so that works fine for me. Yeah, those can take both 2.5" and 3.5" HDDs. Use what you like at home. I use 3.5" drives because they are much better value $/TB. Twould be a problem using them elsewhere so portability is an issue unless you drag along your docking station and its power wart. Yeah, I don't actually do that sort of thing much. One of the neighbour's kids do get me to get movies and TV series for them using torrents, but the 32GB and 64GB USB sticks are plenty big enough for those. I had one and it was great to use in one location with a drawer-full of old drives of either form factor. often a slot is shared with both drive sizes. The 3.5" gets good support but the 2.5" just dangles there with a spring-loaded dust cover over the extra/dead space in the slot. One answer could be to buy a known internal 2.5 inch drive whose spec you like and mount it in an external USB enclosure. Or buy decent external 3.5" external drive and get much better $/GB that way, particularly with 6 and 8TB drives. Just be sure the external case allows decent cooling. I only get green drives because its mostly just overflows from the PVR that I haven't got around to watching yet that goes on all those drives and the Samsungs that I bought until Seagate took them over run so cool that even in a poor case they still do fine. In fact the Samsungs that I got in their own case have a very well designed metal case that is barely warm to the touch even when the room temp is 30C. I like it warmer than most people and only turn the aircon on when its hotter than that. A fan helps but is noisy, especially since it is small diameter which generates more turbulence which is more noise, and a stack of them will make a lot of noise. Yeah, I never bother with those, hate noisy systems. I don't even bother with fans in the desktop system, don't bother to put the covers on, the only fans in the system are the power supply fan and the cpu fan. Don't have a video card that needs a fan, just a heatsink. The Samsung green drives do fine, only a little warmer than the bare drives in the docking station because there are so many of them stacked adjacent in the 3.5" drive bay stack inside the desktop system. Normally runs at about 40C even when its 30C in the room. A 7200RPM WDC Black drive spins faster (than 5400RPM drives) and generates more heat than, say, their Blue drives (or their Green drives I don't bother with anything other than green drives now and haven't used WDs for many years now. Don't use Seagates either. but I wouldn't waste my time with those power-saving drives that keep power cycling down too soon, take too long to cycle back up). Yeah, I avoid them too. The Samsungs are fine in that regard. Too many external cases don't even have ventilation holes, The Samsungs don't. and those that claim the case is a heat sink are lying Nope. You can feel that the case is warmer when the drive is powered than when its not. because obviously you aren't applying thermal paste between the HDD case and the enclosure. Don't need to to get significant conduction cooling to a well designed metal external case. A docking station eliminate the cooling problem since the HDDs are exposed to the air with plenty of circulation. In fact with the Samsung green drives the external case doesn't see the drives get much hotter than in the docking station, barely warm to the touch even with a room temp of 30C. However, they aren't easily transported so those raw HDDs aren't really portable, just easily swappable. Yeah, don't use hard drives for portable drives much at all now that USB sticks are so cheap and plenty big enough for anything much that I move around. |
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Why not use drive adapters? (was POST: Why to never buy 3.5" external HDD's)
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