speed of external hard drives
Home > Home Recording Forum > Computers & Software > speed of external hard drives
Posted on Dec 06, 2005 06:48 pm
fortymile
Member Since: Jan 18, 2003
wanna get one. is it 4200 and 7200 rpm? is that the only stat i need to look at, and/or is there some other measurement of speed like gbps and mbps and stuff; also what do i have to know about the buffer?
[ Back to Top ]
Dec 06, 2005 09:52 pm forty, I'd suggest avoiding 4200rpm. That's pretty dang slow. What's your interface going to be? USB? Firewire? I'd avoid USB 1.0 for sure, but I doubt if many drives sold today aren't USB 2.0.
Your transfer rate maximums will be determined by your interface type (480mb/s for USB 2.0, 400mb/s for firewire 1394A, 800mb/s for 1394b, etc) as well as your disk rpms. Also, you want the lower seek time (rated in milliseconds). For the buffer, it's generally proportional to the size of the disk. Only the really cheapo drives will have too small buffers. See what the name brand drives have and stick to that.
Dec 06, 2005 10:01 pm USB 2.0. i hope 7200 is all i need to be looking for. sounds like seek times are important too though.
Noize2uCzar of MidiAdministrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002
Dec 06, 2005 11:16 pm Yep, 7200 will do but definately look for th fastest seek time ya can. Not that it will matter a whole lot as USB can only attain certain speed's as of yet.
Dec 07, 2005 02:36 am k thanx
el musicoFreeleance Producer/Engineer/GtrMember
Since: Aug 11, 2002
Dec 07, 2005 02:48 am Look up FW800 (FireWire 800) drives... Even an app as picky as Pro Tools has qualified these for read/write drives.
Dec 07, 2005 04:38 pm i don think my computer has a firewire port. i dont know what they look like though.
Dec 08, 2005 08:40 am you might want to wait before you buy. eSATA is supposed to be the norm soon.....you can get a 4oo gig, 7200rpm, slap in a PCI sata card and have some serious speed.
Dec 08, 2005 08:51 am eSATA will increase the possible length of the cable about 6 feet (2 meters for your foreignors:-) the next generation xSATA will quadriple that plus add some new connection type called "ClickConnect".
eSATA is already in production, xSATA will be shortly...given the cable issue, is primary targetted for external drives.
an eSATA expension card appears to sell for around $80-$90...
Welcome to HRC, BlackCatBonz
Dec 08, 2005 08:52 am I second the recommendation to go firewire if it is an option. Although the throughput is a nominal 400Mb(its)per second vs 480Mbs for USB2.0 the way in which it accesses data will still give you better performance for A/V applications.
Furthermore firewire has less CPU overhead.
I recomend adaptecs products for their driver support/compatability.
www.pricegrabber.com/sear...type=bottomline
If you are a little handy then you may just consider buying a external harddrive enclosure and putting your own hd in there.
