USB 3.0 drives

[MaxBurn]

I am fairly sure the disk I have is a 5400 RPM drive, both of the 1TB options on samsungs site for the 2 or 3 platter models are 5400 RPM unless I am missing something. Willing to bet this is the older 3 platter relatively tall 12mm height one.

 

[CougTek]

There are no visible screws or lever points.

That's because, like most of the 2.5" hard drive enclosures, it's snapped so you end up screwed instead of the enclosure.

 

[LunarMist]

Many of the recent external 2.5 inch drives have the USB integrated on the board, so it's not like you can accomplish much in the way of repair anyway.

 

[MaxBurn]

Many of the recent external 2.5 inch drives have the USB integrated on the board, so it's not like you can accomplish much in the way of repair anyway.

Did not know that. I was thinking about cracking it open and using some esata cables with it too.

 

[LunarMist]

I can't prove it's 7200 rpm, that's just what most of the references say.

It could well be just a fast 5400rpm drive, after all, the F4 EcoGreen is pretty quick.

On the other hand, Samsung released a 640GB 2-platter 7200rpm 2.5" drive about 15 months ago. A 1TB model would be essentially just a 3-platter version of that.

Anyone have any idea how you could tell, given the drive is behind an interface converter?

An audio tach should work, if you happen to have access to one.

 

[LunarMist]

Did not know that. I was thinking about cracking it open and using some esata cables with it too.

I'm not sure about that one, but I had an experience with a WD Passaport. eSATA isn't practically any faster than UBS 3.0 for slow drives.

 

[CougTek]

As is reading press releases from the major players of the industry. I'm not aware of ANY 7200rpm 1TB 2.5" drive. If there was one, from anyone, the manufacturer's chief marketing puppet would be screaming it while running naked during baseball games. It hasn't happened, therefore, there are no 1TB 7200rpm 2.5" drive.

The Samsung is a 5400rpm or perhaps even a 5200rpm drive. End of story.

 

[MaxBurn]

I'm not sure about that one, but I had an experience with a WD Passaport. eSATA isn't practically any faster than UBS 3.0 for slow drives.

Mostly I wanted it for the work machine which has no USB3 but does have eSATA. Meh, not worth destroying a drive for it.

 

[Adcadet]

FYI, I'm happy with my 1 TB Toshiba Canvio 2.5" USB3 drive. I copy large backups to it (~600 GB), and get 100 MB/s at the beginning and 80 MB/s at the end. I went with USB3 because I wanted something that didn't require two plugs (data+power) to use.

 

[Adcadet]

Toshiba has new drives, now with cloud storage:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/USB-3.0-cloud-storage-Canvio-BackupNow-EZ-Maciek-Brzeski,13517.html

Oh oh. Check out the text from their webpage (http://us.toshiba.com/computers/storage/portable/canvio-3):

Cloud Backup Capabilities1
Put your backups on the cloud and your concerns on hold. Our latest Canvio 3.0 portable hard drives come with integrated cloud backup capabilities that simplify taking advantage of this latest innovation.
1 Free 30-day trial of cloud backup included on select models only

 

[ddrueding]

Interesting to see if anyone takes that to the next logical step, offering a "5TB backup drive*" that is in fact a 500GB drive that acts as cache to a "cloud" backup service.

 

[Adcadet]

Why would the HD need to act as a cache? I doubt anybody has an upload speed that get approaches that of USB 2.0 - unless of course, it's just a marketing gimmick. And I suppose that's precisely your point. But hey, I would prefer my family use a marketing gimmick, assuming it's not too expensive and does work, and have their stuff backed up.

Wonder if anybody is thinking of making a backup appliance that connects to the PC via USB3 or eSATA or something else, and also has an ethernet port on the back to upload a backup (of the backup) to the cloud. Although I suppose with software you could just use the PC's ethernet connection anyway.

Is anybody using one of the external drives that includes some cloud storage?

 

[Mercutio]

You can kind of roll your own sort of thing if you feel like messing around with high-end NASes. Synology products are all kinds of extensible, for example.

 

[Sol]

Why would the HD need to act as a cache?

Because the USB connection to the drive is much faster than the Internet connection to the cloud service. So you could turn your computer off and the drive would finish uploading the cached backup to the cloud in its own time.

 

[Howell]

I really like what symform.com is doing. You can even designate a particular node to keep all of your bits so you will have a local copy on site. It used to be too expensive for the home user but it looks like they recently changed their pricing model. It also just occured to me that we might be able to organize some kind of SF group buy.

 

[Handruin]

Bitcasa is another form of cloud storage. It's not a distributed model like symform, but they offer their own unique way of handling the cost and sustainability.

 

[Adcadet]

symform, RAID 96? Is this a joke?

 

[Mercutio]

I've got a couple different USB3 enclosures and I've been using them a little bit for the last couple days. One of them seems to top out at around 60MB/s and the other around 70MB/sec.

That's... disappointing.