USB HD speeds?

dokko · 18 Jan 2009 at 16:00

For example the:

Western Digital My Passport Essential 320GB USB Portable External Hard Drive

How fast are these in terms of transfer rates compared to normal HD's?

Are they simply usb stick speeds?

thanksd

ChrisLX200 · 18 Jan 2009 at 16:38

yep, although USB2 sticks vary in speed so ymmv.

postmanfw · 18 Jan 2009 at 17:56

Vary in speed but definately a lot faster than most standard usb sticks which are around 20Mb/s wheras the ext usb hd will be about 40ish.

Hd tune should tell you

UberGT · 18 Jan 2009 at 21:10

Realistically you'll be looking at 20mb/s copying files across

brendy · 18 Jan 2009 at 21:40

yup 20mb/s possibly hitting 29-30 at times for better drives and circuit boards. The best USB sticks are on a par with hdds but space wise the hdd is the better option.

dokko · 18 Jan 2009 at 22:07

Hi, thanks for the info.

I'm considering an external storage device for my laptop, would one of these be the best solution?

postmanfw · 19 Jan 2009 at 08:54

There are esata external hard drives but you would need a card to connect it to the laptop.

Totally ignorant of the speeds of them but i am sure someone will know

ChrisLX200 · 19 Jan 2009 at 11:42

Similar speed to any other SATA drive (70 and more) - if you can get eSATA to work reliably. I bought an Expresscard eSATA plug-in module for my laptop but it doesn't work, I haven't totally given up on it as my eSATA WD MyBook doesn't work via eSATA on my desktop either so it might just be that.

dokko · 19 Jan 2009 at 17:20

ChrisLX200 said:
Similar speed to any other SATA drive (70 and more) - if you can get eSATA to work reliably. I bought an Expresscard eSATA plug-in module for my laptop but it doesn't work, I haven't totally given up on it as my eSATA WD MyBook doesn't work via eSATA on my desktop either so it might just be that.

what about a usb esata adapter? Or will that only go at USB speeds?

edgedemon · 19 Jan 2009 at 17:25

I think it also depends on the chipset in your laptop.
I have a dell D820 and 3 WD passport drives ranging from 120Gb upto 500Gb.
I dont think I have ever seen more than 16Mb transfer rate peak, with an average of 10-12Mb/sec.
Spent ages trying to get more speed, especially as the advertised maximum for usb2 is so much more, but gave up in the end. But although slow the drives are still very useful...

ChrisLX200 · 19 Jan 2009 at 17:42

dokko said:
what about a usb esata adapter? Or will that only go at USB speeds?

I think so, USB is the bottleneck. The Expresscard should work fullspeed though.