What storage solution?

leaskovski · 23 Feb 2009 at 21:43

Hi people,

Well basically I am getting rid of my desktop as I hardly ever play any games on it anymore, and I find myself using my work laptop to do all my home computing on. Now my desktop has a ton of junk on it that I want to keep and thus I need to look for a storage solution as the work laptop only has 40GB disk space.

Now should I be looking at a NAS drive or a USB drive? Im thinking I should really get a USB drive as they are more portable (like the laptop), plus maybe I should go for one of the ones that run off of the USB power. The only downside for this though is access speed. If I go for a USB portable drive (500GB one) will I see a performance hit than if I went for a drive with a power brick?

Plus, I really want to be able to run programs off of the disk as well (for example some of the older games that I have, or some of the portable apps that you can get).

Much help in making this choice is welcome!

Cheers all

leaskovski · 23 Feb 2009 at 21:51

Yeah, the 500GB mark has been hit....

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-054-FC&groupid=701&catid=1240&subcat=1394

Edit: Are the firewire ones any good or are they slower than USB2? Gawd, I really need to keep in touch with hardware. This is probably as I am not the avid gamer anymore!

leaskovski · 25 Feb 2009 at 13:25

Good work guys. Very interesting to say the least. Maybe I should just get an external housing system and use the spare 250Gb SATA disk I have. Thats the cheapest solution as well.

Edit:

Okay I think I have narrowed it down to these two boxes...

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-008-AK
Akasa Elite eSATA/USB 2.0 3.5" Hard Drive Enclosure (AK-IC010-BK) - This allows running of off of USB power (im assuming two usb connectiosn to power it)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-005-AK
Akasa Integral P2 eSATA/USB 2.0 3.5" Hard Drive Enclosure - Blue - This does the same as above, maybe not as big, but not sure if this is powered by a brick or via USB connections.

leaskovski · 25 Feb 2009 at 13:59

According to OcUK, "http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=HD-008-AK" says it is powered by USB, however "http://www.akasa.co.uk/akasa_english/spec_page/storage/spec_ak_ic010_bkeu.htm" doesnt say it is!

is OcUK lying!?

leaskovski · 25 Feb 2009 at 16:31

I have just had a thought. Looking through the product descriptions on Akasa webpage there is a dick enclosure solution that has a USB and network connection option. Does anyone know of other solutions such as this? E.g one with a Network interface, a USB2 interface and a eSATA interface (that uses a 3.5 SATA disk)?

Cheers

This might be what I want as I can leave it pluded into my network most of the time, but then when I go away I can unplug and use the USB or SATA interface on the road.