External HD Help

[ume123]

I just recently purchased a Seagate FreeAgent 500gb external hdd its working great,i just don't know what else i can put on the hdd.I transfered all my shared files,pics,vids on it and that freed up alot of space on my internal hdd. Can I put programs,games,etc...on the external hdd? if so how do i go about doing it? I'm using XP home. any advise is greatly appreciated. ;)

[Anteus]

u can put programs etc on it.. but if ur planning to move the external to another comp settings some program makes in the registry and appdata doesnt come along.. but like winrar unplugged works without saving into registry or appdata

[nsane]

it might be a little slow for games too, like what kind of connection does it use USB2 or external SATA? ;)

[ume123]

it might be a little slow for games too, like what kind of connection does it use USB2 or external SATA? ;)

Thanx for the quick reply Anteus. nsane i'm using USB2

[nsane]

yeah, you'll most like have speed issues with HDD read times when trying to play games then (loading textures in realtime etc). because USB2 only has a data rate of 320-480Mbps which is a lot slower than the ~3Gbs rate SATA has for example (forget how fast IDEs are) ;)

[ume123]

yeah, you'll most like have speed issues with HDD read times when trying to play games then (loading textures in realtime etc). because USB2 only has a data rate of 320-480Mbps which is a lot slower than the ~3GBs rate SATA has for example (forget how fast IDEs are) ;)

thanx nsane ;) I'll keep my games where they are.but if i send programs to the exthdd will it just create a duplicate?I'm not sure how to go about doing this.

[Anteus]

What i can see from wiki IDE only manage 133MB/s

[nsane]

still that's more than double the 60MBs USB2 can handle ;)

@ume123 - just uninstall the apps from where they are now and reinstall them to another folder on the external hdd ;)

[Lite]

Just background information:

USB 2.0 has a transfer rate of around 60 MB/s (480Mb/s... )

Firewire is around 400Mb/s (although it is often quicker than USB 2.0 ... mainly owing to the large CPU overhead in the USB system)

IDE can handle upto 133MB/s (realistically you'll get about half of that though ;) )

SATA 2 can handle upto 300MB/s (reastically... this hardly ever happens)

(Don't get your bits and Bytes messed up!)

On topic:

I'd reccomend only to use your external HDD for data storage.... not programs etc

[nsane]

my HDDs SATA3 connection is capable of spitting out ~3Gbs (i noticed my typo from before) ;)

[Samurai]

I recently purchased a 400GB WD "MyBook" which is capable of connecting to USB2 or FireWire only.

I already decided to use the USB2 connection, as I've read on paper (well screen) it is marginally faster.

However, I'm curious about these external HD's that have SATA 2 /3 connections. Are there any good ones at present? I can always sell my unused HD as I haven't used it yet.

[nsane]

well i honestly don't know if they're even on home computers yet. but i do know they have em for servers, so admins can keep big ass RAID assemblies external and prevent them from heating up their server ;)

only reason i even brought it up is because i noticed ume123's HDD supported it...

[Anteus]

SATA: 1,5 Gbit/s, 3 Gbit/s or 187,5 MB/s, 375 MB/s

IDE: 1,064 Gbit/s or 133 MB/s

FireWire: 400 Mbit/s, 800 Mbit/s or 50 MB/s, 100 MB/s

The big "B" stands for Byte and the small "b" stands for bits, 1 B equals 8 b. I think Bit came when they came up with modems (maybe because they wanted it to sound faster or the modem in the begining could take 1 B/s?).

EDIT: shift problems and accendentily wrote GB instead of MB. . to , added FireWire

[JunkInternetMail]

Don't install "heavy" or "hard" installed applications on an external hdd...their performance will suffer and may not work well...

1) Windows XP

2) Photoshop

3) Anything made by Stardock

4) Microsoft Office

All just a few examples.

"Soft" or "portable" installed applications basically extract files to a hdd and run just fine, settings, and all:

1) Winrar

2) FlashFXP

3) PocketTanks Deluxe

Are just a few examples.

NO matter what the numbers are, at the end of the day some programs are written poorly and count on being installed in the typical C:\ or C:\Programs Files or C:\Windows paths.

Of course you could play around and learn from experience...it's really the best way to go about it.

My personal issue with huge hdds? Ok so you have a 500GB hdd? How do you back THAT UP? Another 500GB hdd? ^_^

[nsane]

yup, i'm about to invest in another 300GB HDD (alot cheaper now) then clone and RAID-0 it to my main HDD for backups (it's getting pretty old now) ;)

separate partitions are good tho, seeing as they're sector based and only damage to the spindle itself would cause data loss of the backup partition. basically, an error with your OS and/or it's partition should theoretically be contained to itself as the needle is no where near the backup sector(s).

i also use an encrypted flash card for the REALLY important stuff (ie. passwords, banking/tax info, etc). because there's no moving parts on flash cards so only a VERY strong magnetic field can damage the data ;)