Need a new External Drive

That must be the eSATA one. Yes, with eSATA you get a much higher rate than a USB 2.0, but you need a eSATA port on your computer.

In my previous post, I was actually referring to the drive inside. When you buy the drive and enclosure separately, then you need to make sure the enclosure is compatible with the drive. Get a SATA enclosure for SATA drive and IDE enclosure for IDE drive, and if in this case, the enclosure can only connect to your PC through USB 2.0 then it does not matter whether you get a SATA or IDE as the transfer speed will be limited by the USB 2.0

 

My comments were also based on a WD drive (500 GB) purchased for a friend about 2 years ago. I can not remember the exact model but it was a USB 2.0 only drive and did not have a power switch on the drive. The only way to power the drive down was to physically disconnect the power plug from the outlet. Since mostly people put their power extensions somewhere out of the way, mostly under the table, so it was a huge problem to go underneath the table to connect or disconnect the drive after each use.

The drive manual said that the drive powers itself down after a period of inactivity, the length of this period I can not remember now. There were some problems with this approach.

-Most people would not prefer to have their drives powered for 30-60 minutes after they are done using them.

-Even when the drive powered down after some period of inactivity, the LED circle, it was blue on my drive, kept on blinking to indicate that the drive was in standby mode. If you have the drive in your bedroom, it is really annoying as you can not sleep at night in a room where a light is blinking constantly.

-Since the drive is still connected and visible in your computer so all it needs is either you or any software on your pc, like an antivirus, to access the drive accidentally and the drive promptly powers back on and remains powered for another 30-60 minutes. If you use the "safely remove the drive option", the drive will not power on accidentally but now you have another problem, as in order to make the drive visible again in your PC you need to either unplug and replug the USB cable or the power supply, so you again need to crawl underneath your table, where most people put their CPU's as well as their power extensions, to get the drive to work again.

All in all I had a nightmare of an experience with WD Mybook, luckily the drive was for a friend and I was only visiting. WD might have made improvements to their drives in the 2 year time, or they might have a power switch for their better models of Mybook, I do not know. Anyway, I prefer to buy my drives and enclosures separately.

 

Actually I was not clear in my question.

You know that 2.5 inch USB external hard drives don,t need a power supply cable. They depend upon a single USB connection for both power and data transfer. My question is: " Does same apply to 2.5 inch HD Docks?"

 

I always have it plug in to the power to make the dock work! USB power is not enough even for the 2.5 drives!

TH

 

Thanks.

 

This dock configuration probably needs an external power source but 2.5 drives inside a single external enclosure are powered by the USB port only.

 

True this unit needs power because I use it with 2.5 inch drives from my laptop and have to plug it in to a power source!

TH

 

Oakville is real nice, all the benefits of the city yet still feels like a town, Mind you the traffic by the Ford plant is something else. Could do without that.

 

I just realized that I never did check if my PC has a sata port or not. Probably a good thing the store would have had to order the drive and I went with the WD USB device. Eventually all PC will have sata ports even if they don't now but it would have been extra cash for nothing (possibly).

Is there any way to add a sata port to a Tablet PC?

 

idk about laptops, but the ULTRA enclosure i showed earlier in this thread comes with a bracket so that if u desktop doesnt have a SATA output port, u just hook up that bracket and uve now got a sata port

 

I haven't e-sata ports on my desktops either but like you said it can connect with the ''bracket'' that comes with the enclosure,what i not fully understand is how you connect in some way to the expansion card on the Mobo without a output port on the back or front of the desktop ??

 

What you get is a bracket with a SATA connector only, not an expansion card. The bracket has a eSATA out-port, but inside is only a SATA connector. You connect the bracket at the back of your CPU in the placeholder of an empty card slot and on the inside you connect the SATA connector to an available SATA port on your motherboard. You need to have an available SATA port or you need to share your existing port with your internal SATA drive. Then on the outside you connect your external hard drive with a eSATA cable to the eSATA port of the bracket.

 

Oke Thanks Raza for explaining.

 

Thanks from me too.

 

You are both welcome.

I wanted to add one more thing here. For external drives I recommend the 2.5" ones over the 3.5" ones. Here too, I recommend you buy the drive separately and the enclosure separately. These 2.5 " external drives have a small footprint (you can put them in your front shirt pocket), are USB powered (you do not need an external power supply) and they give you same performance as a USB 2.0 3.5" external drive. In fact, from now on I will purchase 2.5" external drives only. The only reason not to buy them would be if I need a faster transfer rate, like eSATA, or I need a drive with a large capacity, like 2 TB.

 

Hi firzen,

I went with your suggestion, bought a Velocity enclosure with eSata/USB connectors, that came bundled with a 750 GB Seagate h/drive for $90 after an instant rebate, also tacked on a 3 yr in-store product replacement for $6 for some additional peace of mind and I'm very happy with this setup Thanks!

 

np glad ur as satisfied as i am.

 

warranty on disk is relative,can somebody give me warranty on data if disk go south ?

i mean your personal data is what counts,you can replace disk but not personal stuff if not backed up to a second location.

 

Of course thats true and thats why its a good idea to backup to multiple drives and to keep one backup off site. Of course you can never be 100% secure. While highly unlikely it is conceivable that all drives will die at the same time. For example in the event of a pulse bomb being detonated or some such.

 

There is no warranty on personal data. But the idea is that the drives that have a longer warranty are good quality to begin with and chances of such drives failing are rare. In my experience, a drive that lasts longer than 6 months under heavy use will not fail for the duration of its lifetime, if it is used properly.

Of course, the drives that are good quality to begin with and have longer warranties, are more expensive than the drives with shorter warranties.

 

FWIW, I've become a major fan of Netgear ReadyNAS boxes. Although the ReadyNAS Duo with two WD 1TB RE3 SATA drives (~0.9TB capacity) will cost several hundred dollars, which is rather more than a basic external USB drive, it's very reliable, in my experience. I've had one lose a drive, and it was totally no problem. It e-mailed me when the drive started to report errors, which gave me over a week warning to get a replacement. It rebuilt the array in the background after I replaced the bad drive (hot swap, of course).

I also have a ReadyNAS Pro with six WD 1TB RE3 SATA drives in RAID6, partitioned as two 1.9TB volumes. It's even cooler than the Duo, and cost well under $2K. It has two teamable 1Gbps NICs, and I've seen over 700Mbps throughput (admittedly, with a fast server with four teamed 1 Gbps NICs and 15Krpm SAS arrays).

 

I've been reading the thread and y'all have me convinced to buy the stand alone HD and enclosure. However, I'm still a bit confused on how to put it together.

If I got the same set up as firzen on the first page, I noticed that Tiger Direct says it's OEM without any cables,etc. Will I need to get any to set it up or will the enclosure have everything I need to put it together. I watched the video on that site and it seemed you just hooked the HD into two different slots in the enclosure and you were ready to go?

Also, just to be sure, I can connect it to my computer(windows 7 OS) through an USB port, right? I'm not familar with the SATA and don't want to bother everyone with that lack of knowledge. For my purpose, I think the USB connect would be fine.

Main thing is a little wary of my ability to put the HD in the enclosure and get it working right and to make sure everything I need will be included if I buy those two items on the first page.

Thanks for indulging me.

 

SATA is between the HD and the controller, from the controller to your computer its USB, and the controller comes inside the enclosure.

i'm sure you can do it, sorry for the comparison, a monkey can do it.

 

I am sure a monkey can,t do it.

 

It has both ports, USB n e-SATA. You can use either one according to your PC. USB is common, e-SATA is not.