Getting External Storage: Questions

Conrad11 · 3 Jan 2007 at 21:13

Hi there,

I am thinking of getting some external storage.

I am getting a 200GB IDE drive and a caddybox type thing.

Questions:

Is it worth going sata, will it be much faster?
Will the drive be hot swappable. ie can i switch it on just when i need it? Or will i have to switch the computer off first then switch it on?

Thanks.

EDIT:

Can anyone confirm that this caddy (Sumvision ENCL-35USB-3.5USB) takes SATA?

rpstewart · 3 Jan 2007 at 21:19

A SATA drive will only be faster if you have either an eSATA port on your mobo or you get a caddy with a bracket which will take one of your internal ports outside. If you use USB2 then you'll be limited by the speed of the USB interface.

Both USB2 and eSATA drives are hot swappable.

Conrad11 · 3 Jan 2007 at 21:20

rpstewart said:
Both USB2 and eSATA drives are hot swappable.

What about external IDE drives?

EDIT:

Can anyone confirm that this caddy (Sumvision ENCL-35USB-3.5USB) takes SATA?

rpstewart · 3 Jan 2007 at 21:29

An external caddy for an IDE drive will use USB2 (usually) for the connection to the host PC and therefore will be hot swappable.

I've no idea if that caddy takes SATA drives but I'd avoid it. It has a cooling fan which will likely be a small 25mm one at front of the unit, these tend to be loud and make no real difference to the drive temperature.

Conrad11 · 3 Jan 2007 at 22:27

What about Sumvision ENCL-35WXT-E825-3.5 (same price)

Does that have a fan?

Also is an ATA/100 drive fast enough? (don't know about the different speeds?)

rpstewart · 3 Jan 2007 at 23:01

Conrad11 said:
What about Sumvision ENCL-35WXT-E825-3.5 (same price)

Does that have a fan?

No idea, the Sumvision web site is broken at the moment

Also is an ATA/100 drive fast enough? (don't know about the different speeds?)

It should be, the USB2 connection is going to be the bottleneck remember.