Thinking about this Hard Drive.

Combusted · 14 Jan 2009 at 22:56

So, first of all, I run World of Warcraft off of my external (It seems to run fine, and the USB2.0 transfers at 480Mbps (or 60MB/s) I didn't think this'd be enough as the program is 16GB)

I have two questions really;

1. Is there anyway to find out the rate at which the data is being used?
(So i can find out how much information the external is having to send, to see if it is doing 60MB/s or if WoW doesn't need that much at all. I know it's running fine, i'm just that kind of guy that likes to know.)

I've been looking at
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...re 400 External Hard Drive (ST305004FPD2E3-RK)
As i need more storage, since I'm running most games and Music off of one 320GB, and is somehow full...
However, my question is
2. I have no E-SATA slot on my motherboard... and i searched OCUK for esata and there appear to be only 2 old AM2 motherboards which have it.
Why is this not becoming a switchover from USB2.0 for recent Components, and where can i get a e-SATA slot?

Combusted · 14 Jan 2009 at 22:59

Ok, So I looked ta individual motherboard, and most P45/X48 boards actually have e-SATA... I must have a pretty old board. Searching esata doesn't seem to be useful.

However question 1 still applies.

malcolm · 14 Jan 2009 at 23:18

If you have an un-used sata port on your motherboard you can buy a SATA to eSATA cable with a backing plate and add an e-sata port to your machine. Your controller may not support 'hot-plugging' of the eSATA drive, but most do.

bledd · 15 Jan 2009 at 13:59

first off, usb2 speeds are ~ 30-35 mb/s in reality, and that's the read speed

Combusted · 17 Jan 2009 at 00:46

Ah ok. Well it seems to be enough to run World of Warcraft off of... Strange, thought it'd have to Read a lot more than that to run a 16GB game

miniyazz · 18 Jan 2009 at 03:18

Combusted said:
Ah ok. Well it seems to be enough to run World of Warcraft off of... Strange, thought it'd have to Read a lot more than that to run a 16GB game

I don't play WoW myself, but from what I've heard it loads the textures needed on a per level basis, so that might spread out the actual amount it has to load quite a bit.
Also, I've heard reports that because WoW reads so many small files to load, running it off an SSD can do wonders. I dunno how long it takes for the levels to load for you, but it might be worthwhile getting a cheapo (lol) Core v1 30GB SSD or something like that. Might be one of those things you don't notice until suddenly there's no waiting around, you could google it if you're interested to see the difference.