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    Razer Blade 2014 - high speed storage options?

    Discussion in 'Razer' started by charliemike, May 13, 2014.

  1. charliemike

    charliemike Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hi all,

    I ended up buying a 256GB Blade 2014 from Microsoft yesterday. They didn't have the 512 in stock which would have been my first choice.

    I use my laptop for business as well as pleasure so I tend to carry around a lot of data, on my current Thinkpad I have about 424GB of data. Granted I have about 160GB in games installed on the Thinkpad and about 50GB in dropbox files, so a lot of that can be pared down on the Blade.

    That said, I'm wondering what other folks use for external storage. I read somewhere that some folks are storing their games on external HD's and playing games off of that, is that viable?

    Thanks in advance!
    Mike
     
    charliemike, May 13, 2014
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  2. hfm

    hfm Notebook Prophet

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    It's viable if you use USB3.0 enclosure and an SSD. They get around 300+ MB/s. Someone did a speed test on one here in the forums somewhere.
     
    hfm, May 13, 2014
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  3. charliemike

    charliemike Notebook Enthusiast

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    Thanks hfm! I think 300 MB/s is around where internal SSD's would perform, is that correct?
     
    charliemike, May 13, 2014
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  4. Porter

    Porter Notebook Virtuoso

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    Also, if you want more space using a spinning HD, again make sure its a decent drive and USB3 and you will be ok. I realize that's not "high speed" but wanted you to know that it is an option. I gave in for now and got an external even though I didn't want to. I grabbed a 4TB HD and plan to play games off of it. The drive gets the same speeds through USB3 as it does installed in my desktop so it's no worse off. I can only keep my favorite games on the SSD.

    I'm not sure how well a 2.5" HD powered off the USB can perform. It is definitely more portable but also less space and slower generally.
     
    Porter, May 13, 2014
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  5. Justinus

    Justinus Notebook Geek

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    A quality SSD should run 450+ sequential read and write and will be bandwidth limited by USB 3.0. My solution was to replace my stock 256GB with a new 512GB Crucial M550 drive, but I feel that USB 3.0 is fast enough to run some kind of external enclosure if you don't want to spend that kind of money or don't feel comfortable opening up your blade. An SSD enclosure will definitely be smaller, faster, and generate less heat/noise than a mechanical HDD enclosure but significantly more expensive for the storage space.

    I don't have a need for massive amounts of space so the only external drive I have is a Sandisk Extreme 64GB drive (Which performs awesomely for a thumb drive).

    Edit: Interestingly, this review shows this enclosure achieving ~450 MB/s over USB 3.0: Link

    That enclosure matched with an M500 MSATA drive looks like a decent price/performance combination. Fast enough to install programs and games on without a doubt (Unless there's some additional latency over USB 3.0 I'm not aware of). You could go faster with a Samsung Evo 840 MSATA drive, but I'd think the power loss protection on the Crucial drives might be of use in case the drive gets unplugged or something.
     
    Justinus, May 13, 2014
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