wtb: 1tb xternal HD, need some suggestions

[sh4un]

hey ive never owned an xternal drive b4...
how fast are they compared 2 and ide one if i connected through USB

wats the best 1 for a reasonable price.
if any1 knows any info it be greatly appreciated thx!

[neoh]

http://www.bizrate.com/harddrives/la...__sfsk--5.html

the LaCie external drive is good, 7200RPM, firewire, usb2.0.

USB2.0 is 480MB/s
FireWire is 400MB/s

Firewire is faster then usb2.0 though, because FireWire, built from the ground up for speed, uses a "Peer-to-Peer" architecture in which the peripherals are intelligent and can negotiate bus conflicts to determine which device can best control a data transfer

USB 2.0 uses a "Master-Slave" architecture in which the computer handles all arbitration functions and dictates data flow to, from and between the attached peripherals (adding additional system overhead and resulting in slower, less-efficient data flow control)

of course, IDE is faster.

As long as your PC has a usb 2.0 host controller or firewire, your data transfer rates should be pretty good. Bottom line: for downloading torrents, audio development, video editing etc, its plently fast enough nowadays.

Check out NCIX's (stores in langly, burnaby, richmond) selection of 1TB+ external lacie drives here: (http://www.ncix.com/search/?q=lacie+...=0&p=1&s=1&a=0)


I think neoh meant 480mbit/sec (60MB/s), 400mbit/sec (50MB/s). Thats probably burst dtr aswell.

[sh4un]

awesome info thank you guys :)

[beedub]

Depending on what you are wanting to do, you might also want to consider a "Network Attached Storage" type drive box. It plugs into your network such as with a cable into your router and can be accessed by any computer on the network for backups etc. Like having a cheap little file server. More expensive than USB though. And it might be slower but I'm not sure.

I just have a USB hard drive for backing up stuff occasionally, works fine for that and its cheap.