Question on Hard Drives

I am looking to buy a 3.5" internal hard drive that I can buy an enclosure for and convert into an External Drive for my laptop. I have decided that the largest capacity I can get in my price range is 320GB. (price range is under 100$)
My biggest questions are:

1: What is the difference between a OEM and a regular Hard Drive?

2: Will it make a difference if I get a 7200 RPM HD, since I will be running it through USB.

3: What is the difference between an 8mb buffer and a 16 mb buffer?

4: If I get an enclosure with a FireWire and a USB plugin, will the FireWire be noticably faster than USB 2.0?

Thanks

 

I can answer #4 for you...


It depends on the firewire. If it's firewire 400, it will be slightly faster than USB 2.0 but not a huge increase, good for streaming video or something though.

If you get firewire 800, it will rival eSATA 1500, which is very fast. You can get these pcmcia adapters on newegg.



I just researched the same exact thing a couple weeks ago, and decided on eSATA interface. It will have 3.0gbp transfer through an expresscard in the laptop.

fyi: here's what I'm getting:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16839229001
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817171019
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148140

The good thing about that enclosure is that it has both eSATA and USB so it can be both versatile and super fast (over 2 times faster than my laptop's internal 5400rpm drive)

 

I will mainly be using this device to store TV episodes that I record with a TV Tuner. So I don't think I need to spend the extra 40 bucks or so for a esata expresscard thingy.

 

Can anyone answer the other questions for me?

 

2: 7200RPM does make a difference as USB 2.0 is not a bottleneck. I have a 160GB, 3.5 inch enclosed HDD spinning at 7200RPM and a 120GB 2.5 inch spinning at 5400RPM. The performance increase for reading/writing is noticeable.

 

will it be a difference for me? If i'm transferring from my 5400 rpm 2.5" e1505 hard drive to the external one, wont the transfer only be as fast as my 2.5" will let it?

anyways, anyone know questions 1 and 3?

 

also

5: Whats the difference between SATA and EIDE etc?

 

Quick answers

#1 Nothing that I'm aware of, packaging might be a bit different
#2 Speed (obviously) depends how much you plan to use it, and how much the speed of transfer will really matter, if you really need fast speed go 7200, otherwise 5400 might be just fine
#3 See above, it's all speed
#4 If you have USB 2.0 and Firewire, then probably not so much
#5 Different types of interface, SATA is the new type, EIDE is older, a lot of newer ones are going to SATA now (from what I can see)

 

I'll chime in here too . . .

1. OEM is the bare drive, retail is the full box with the manuals, etc. Save yourself the couple of dollars and get the OEM.
2. Depends on the needs. If you want to video edit using that drive, then go for as fast of a drive as you get. But for just storage and regular tasks, get a 5400RPM drive.
3. Probably not that much, but that's a guess. I can't imagine there is a big difference going from 8MB > 16MB. Going from 2MB > 8MB, sure, but the performance increases get less and less as you go up.
4. The Firewire will provide higher sustained data transfer rates. Using Firewire will also free up a USB port, so that's a plus.

 

Will whether its a SATA or an EIDE drive affect me while picking out enclosures?

Do they make enclosures that have BOTH USB and FireWire ports? In case Im on a computer that doesn't have firewire.

 

Usually some if not all OEM HDs come with only 90 days warranty. Most 3.5" HD are 7200RPM anyways. Yes there are enclosures that have both USB and firewire. If you have to intention to use the HD in a desktop, get a SATA. SATA is newer technology.

 

SATA Is the newer technology, but if you can get an PATA/IDE HDD for cheaper, then go for the IDE drive. USB 2.0 can no where near reach the data trasnfer rates of SATA and PATA, so it wont make any difference at all really.

USB 2.0 is generally faster if you want to transfer little files, but Firewire is faster if you are transferring large files generally larger than 1.5/2 GB. Such as videos in your case.

I would highly recommend an eSATA PC/Express card however. It will increase your data htroughout speed from the HDD to the laptop by up to 10 times.

 

Ok I will probably get the SATA one since I dont see much of a price difference. I beleive that Western Digital and Seagate have the better drives? Correct me if I'm wrong.

I have an older Dell Dimension 2400 desktop, would a SATA drive work with this?

 

Ok, let's see if we can clarify this for you a bit.

I would first pick the enclosure with the features I wanted - and then based on whatever standard it supports for the hard drive (SATA or PATA), I would pick whatever drive I liked that would fit that interface, since there's not much price difference if any. Your computer doesn't care about whether the external drive is PATA or SATA - only the enclosure does, since it's doing the translation to communicate with your computer. Your computer only sees the drive through whatever interface you plug it in as (e.g. USB 2.0 or Firewire) - therefore, your 'older' model Dell will be fine.

With respect to 7200 vs. 5400 performance: a previous poster mentioned that their 2.5" 5400RPM was noticeably slower than their 3.5" 7200RPM. This is very true, but exaggerated because they are comparing different drive sizes (2.5" vs 3.5"). These days, despite what was posted by someone else, both USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 (USB 2 more so than Firewire) are bottlenecks for 3.5" 7200RPM hard drives - any recent one has the ability to transfer data much faster than those interfaces can handle. If you're planning to install applications on the external drive or store a lot of small files, then the 7200RPM will be faster because of access time, but if you're just going to store a bunch of large files, it will make no real difference. In any case... finding a 3.5" 5400RPM hard drive is pretty tough right now, so really, these arguments apply more if you are planning on going the 2.5" route instead.

 

OEM drives will generally not come with the same warranty as a retail boxed drive. Be sure to check this out before buying a drive. The OEM drives are cheaper specifically because they come with minimal to no warranty. This is because the computer maker will provide their own warranty & service not the drive mfg. Most OEM/bare drives come with a 30-90 warranty. Some might come with a full mfg warranty...jya ust gotta check.

It might help to be aware of that part of buying.

 

yes, some accomodate IDE (ATA), others SATA. If you're buying an SATA drive, buy and SATA enclosure, and vice-versa.

Just do a search on tigerdirect or a similar site and scan through their selection, you'll find what you're looking for.