USB 3.0 external hard drive?

[Calorsjee]

Today I was check

http://www.just4deal.com

where I now see that they're selling external Seagate SSD USB 3.0 drives (3TB size) for an attractive $200 price.

However they don't have any USB 3.0 computers. A rep indicates that they should be out next month.

Do you guys have anything to add to this?

 

[Lemon13]

external Seagate SSD USB 3.0 drives (3TB size) for an attractive $200 price."

No way, if so i order 100!



M. Knorr

MCSE, MCTS, MCSA, CCNA

 

[rclarke250]

I could not find any external 3 tb ssd drives of any flavor. However, I did find the 3 TB seagate flex, this is an external drive with both usb 2.0 and 3.0, retails for 249.99 USD. There are plenty of system boards of both the intel and amd variety that have USB 3.0 built in, there are also external PCIe add in cards that will give you USB 3.0 on older computers.

 

[paparazi]

I think he meant 30gig...was the only SSD I could find.

Martin

On wings like angels whispers sweet
my heart it feels a broken beat
Touched soul and hurt lay wounded deep
Brown eyes are lost afar and sleep

 

[goombawaho]

I'm going to be curmudgeon here. Why are you letting a peripheral storage device dictate that you need a new computer?? That's sort of like putting the cart before the horse.

Maybe tell us what you are trying to accomplish first - massive copying speed, massive storage???

 

[Lemon13]

USB3.0 is backward compatible to USB2.0, so its an investment in future technologies. There is no need to update the whole rig for now, unless you rely on the max. speed you can get.

M. Knorr

MCSE, MCTS, MCSA, CCNA

 

[goombawaho]

That's what I wanted to know.

 

[cdogg]

==> ...I now see that they're selling external Seagate SSD USB 3.0 drives (3TB size)...

If it said 3TB, then it wasn't an SSD. As rclarke said you were probably looking at the GoFlex from Seagate:

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/external-hard-drive/desktop-hard-drive/

==> However they don't have any USB 3.0 computers.

Sure they do. USB 3.0 has been out for almost a year now. You can also add it to your existing PC if you have PCI-E slots on your motherboard.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/186566/usb_30_finally_arrives.html

Keep in mind though that even though the 3.0 interface is about 8 times faster, don't expect to see a huge jump in performance with a traditional spindle drive. Only when dealing with external SSD drives is it absolutely necessary to upgrade to USB 3.0.

~cdogg
"All generalizations are false, including this one." - Mark Twain
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[jsteph]

Top put my 2 cents in--in another post here I mentioned what I found in my situation with a USB 3.0 drive:

I got a WD Mybook 2TB drive (USB 3.0 capable) and had it hooked up to an on-board USB 2.0 slot.

With 2.0, I got HD Tach times of 35 MBps for both sequential read and for Burst--about the limit of the USB 2.0 spec.

I installed a USB 3.0 pci-e card and plugged it in and got HD Tach times of 110 sequential read and 135 MBps Burst.

Not 8x but nearly 4x faster--but I don't even think that HD itself is capable of 8x the USB 2.0 standard.

This was also borne out in real-world file-copying timings I did on large test folders of randomly sized files.

So I think USB 3.0 is worth it--the card was about $19.
--Jim

 

[cdogg]

Jim,
Thanks for sharing. I didn't realize that some marks would be up to 4x faster. That's impressive and definitely shows the advantage USB 3.0 can have.

I did a little digging and found this online comparison as well that supports your findings:

http://www.cdrlabs.com/Reviews/seag...ormance-CrystalDiskMark-HD-Tach-and-ATTO.html

It is important to note, however, that random read and write performance will not be 4x faster but will still be a noticeable improvement on USB 3.0. Also you can bet that an SSD drive (especially the high-end models) will show even more impressive results.

~cdogg
"All generalizations are false, including this one." - Mark Twain
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.