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Just dont expect SSD performance basically ... expect HDD performance!

Yes, they plug in, the appear to Windows as another drive and will take the next available drive letter (unless you specify one in particular). The only word of caution may be that some USB controllers on very cheap devices may not be that great for sustained transfer of data, but bigger brand makes will probably be fine.

Any reason why you cant fit an HDD into the machine itself ? Even ditch the 2 SSD's and replace with a single larger one, then add a 2.5"hdd into the machine instead ?
 
For general data, etc. they work fine but don't be surprised if things like games become very slow loading from a USB HDD. Also some external USB HDD drives use aggressive built in power management which usually can't be controlled which results in them going into a dormant state and/or spinning down when not being accessed which can result in periodic stutter or pauses in games when they try to load new data.

An esata external enclosure might be an option if your system has a connector for it - a lot of motherboards do.
 
You can get trim supporting external ssds as well as ssd enclosures so long as you have a modern usb 3.1 + port you can get max speed from SSD (SATA obviously but NVMe ones exist also but top out at about 2x sata SSD due to USB3 limit) so it becomes very convenient for transferring big files etc.

personally I have a usb3 external hdd dock which I can plug any number of disks in 2.5/3.5 etc but that is because I am always fixing someones old hardware, no very pretty though as the drive is not enclosed.convenient for back ups though.
 
I don't notice any really speed difference with the external Sata SSD I mean benchmarks show it has lost some ultimate performance 450Mb as vs 550 but it would certainly be quicker than a HDD, is it as fast as native sata no, but its much better than normal HDD.

I have noticed it can slow down mouse response if raping the drive on same controller as keyboard and mouse, only with hardcore benching though haven't noticed it in real use but just incase I moved to another port which is on the CPU USB controller and it was fine.

esata is also a fair shout, you can use a PCie card or if you have spare internal sata sports, you can get adaptors to make them to esata ports in a pci slot header and use them with a powered esata enclosure.
 
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sandys said:
esata is also a fair shout, you can use a PCie card or if you have spare internal sata sports, you can get adaptors to make them to esata ports in a pci slot header and use them with a powered esata enclosure.
Click to expand...

Several of my systems have a dual function USB/eSATA port as standard (can only use it as one of those at a time not both) and eSATA works pretty well in my experience with a powered enclosure.
 
Buy a full size external HDD, remove it from the enclosure (very carefully without breaking any of the plastic tabs) then drop it into your desktop.

Any problems in the future put the drive back in the enclosure before returning to place of purchase.

This way you can get up to a 12tb WD Red/White label for less than £200.
 
If you have an AMD system and haven't used StoreMI yet then on an esata or internal slow spinner of a HDD you could add a small upto 256Gb SSD for free to boost performance, I have been testing this on my daughters machine and it works really well.
 
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