secondary hard drive vs. external hard drive

I am expecting my new Sager NP5760 to arrive on Thursday (am way psyched!). I opted for a secondary hard drive, 100GB Ultra SATA/150 7200 RPM, with my purchase but now am thinking that an external hard drive might be a better solution. My main use for the second hard drive will be to copy television shows and movies directly onto it.

Should I have any problems doing this with an external hard drive? Will the throughput be fast enough? If so, it seems like it would be less expensive not to mention easier than replacing the optical drive every time I want to use it.

If an external hard drive would work would the RPM's make much of a difference? I've seen some 5400 RPM drives at good prices for the capacity. Also, should I worry about the differences between 2.5" and 3.5" disks? I don't really know much about these.

So many questions! Any advice would be greatly appreciated. My sales rep at PowerNotebooks.com, Ron Baird, has graciously agreed to let me return the secondary drive I purchased if I choose a different solution.

BTW, portability in important.

Bret

 

I'd forget about getting a secondary drive and instead just use a cheap, fast, and big 7200 rpm 3.5" external. Buy the drive and enclosure separate to ensure an good quality unit. Transfer rates will probably be around 25 - 30mb/s, but you'll have no problem viewing movies or anything - it will be faster than the optical drive for transfer! Using firewire might speed transfer rates to 30 - 35 mb/s. If it just for storage, that is perfectly acceptable!

 

Thanks, Cheffy, but will I have any problems recording directly to an external hard drive as opposed to recording to my laptop's hard drive and transferring the files over?

Also, I thought enclosures were for internal drives that are being used as external drives. Am I wrong about this? I've never really heard about enclosures for hard drives until today.

 

I can't imagine you'll have any difficulty recording directly to the external drive, maybe slightly slower, but i've never done this personally. I can't think of any reason for concern though.

An external drive is just an internal drive in an enclosure - technically there is no such thing as an external only drive (AFAIK). Most of the pre-packaged externals tend to use cheap components, and while probably fine overall, for about the same price you can usually build a much better one yourself. I used a maxtor diamondmax 250 gb 7200 rpm hd with 16 mb cache I bought for $100 Cdn and a Vantec nexstar 3 usb/firewire enclosure for ~$165. If you're in the US the prices will probably be much cheaper.

 

I was wondering what the price difference was between a usb enclosure and a firewire enclosure (in general). I passed by a local Futureshop (AKA BestBuy) and went to check it out but they only had usb enclosures.

Curious, where did you buy yours?

 

Tigerdirect.ca - the stuff at futureshop and bestbuy blows chunks, generic house brands that will probably give you grief and are more expensive. You can find cheaper firewire enclosures than what I bought, probably around $30 - $40. I went for the one that seemed more reliable in case I knocked it over. The hard drives though are fine from FS and BB, sometimes very cheap on sale.

You could also check out some of the smaller local computer stores, most can order a wide variety of things and will often cut you a deal off the listed price.

 

Thanks for your help, Cheffy! I've learned some new things and feel well enough informed now to make a good decision based on my needs.

 

Onw thing you need to bear in mind is that USB can no where near reach the transfer rates of Serial ATA. One VERY important is how old you PC is. Old PCs have the USB 1.1 Interface, and if so, you'll run into some serious speed issues, and it'll take quite a long time to even transfer small files.

And besides, some SATA 2.5" drives are cheaper than buying a 3.5" HDD AND an enclosure, and even if it's only 20 pound more, its worth buying an Interrnal Drive because itll be a lot quicker on the whole.

 

He's ordering a brand new Sager system, so USB speed is not an issue. It is of course possible to buy a cheaper 2.5" drive than the external with enclosure, however it will hold far less data (e.g. 300 GB vs 100 GB), and unless he's getting a 7200 rpm 2.5" drive the transfer rates will only be about 25-50% better than a 7200 rpm external drive through USB, and even less through firewire. Given what he plans to use it for there is little reason to need anything faster than that. Plus he doesn't have to swap out his optical drive every time, that is a surefire way to break something early on.