HDD for External USB storage

mithrandir · 4 Sep 2011 at 19:02

Just wanting to find out whether the 'green' drives will deliver the same sort of write speeds as 7200rpm drives when in an external caddy using usb 3.0?

mikeo · 4 Sep 2011 at 20:48

In a word... no.

If it was me, I would want the fastest mechanical hard drive. So that means something like an SpinPoint F3, or a WD black. As to the connection method. No mechanical HD will come anywhere near saturating eSATA (3Gbps), let alone USB3 (5Gbps)!

Surveyor · 4 Sep 2011 at 21:24

In a word (well 2)... near enough.

As long as you buy the right drive and considering the WD 2TB is more than twice as expensive as the Samsung F4.

Samsung SpinPoint F4 EcoGreen 2TB connected with USB 3.0:

Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB:

mithrandir · 4 Sep 2011 at 21:32

Thanks mikeo, I thought so.

mithrandir · 4 Sep 2011 at 21:36

Thanks for the stats surveyor. The Sammy looks good.

Surveyor · 4 Sep 2011 at 21:39

mithrandir said:
Thanks for the stats surveyor. The Sammy looks good.

It does.

That's why I've got 4 of them.

Until Wednesday morning it's only £55.99 compared to £119.99 for the WD Black.

rikky · 4 Sep 2011 at 22:34

The Samsung F4's are hard to touch for the price - does anybody know if the 3yr Warranty on the OCUK stock is direct with Samsung or do OCUK deal with it themselves??

Surveyor · 4 Sep 2011 at 22:44

rikky said:
The Samsung F4's are hard to touch for the price - does anybody know if the 3yr Warranty on the OCUK stock is direct with Samsung or do OCUK deal with it themselves??

It depends.

Samsung offer a direct service after 28 days but you can go through OcUK within the first year.

I say it depends as some of the drives sold aren't intended for the UK market so Samsung won't offer a warranty service. OcUK would be responsible for the whole 3 years.

Unfortunately you won't know if this is the case until you get the drive and check the serial number here.

mikeo · 4 Sep 2011 at 23:04

I stand corrected.

Though traditionally the eco/green drives have not been in the past the fastest drives around. Just goes to show how things change / move on.

Certainly impressive seq. read/writes.

beejjacobs · 5 Sep 2011 at 00:10

Looks good, was looking at getting a F4 myself for an external HDD backup! Thanks

Mr Krugga · 5 Sep 2011 at 15:00

delete

Hotwired · 7 Sep 2011 at 23:22

A SPCR user is getting different results for those two drives - showing the 2TB WD as notably faster: sauce

Surveyor · 7 Sep 2011 at 23:46

Hotwired said:
A SPCR user is getting different results for those two drives - showing the 2TB WD as notably faster:

skip

Such is the nature of benchmarking.

And for a drive costing twice the price it isn't that much better.

Horses for courses.

If you want the absolute fastest 2TB drive then £117 for the WD Black.

If you want a reasonably priced 2TB drive which still offers good performance then £64 for the Samsung.