external hard drive options

[mycomputersucks]

instead of looking up all the benchmarks and comparisons, i thought i'd ask here (cuz i'm lazy )


ok, so i'm looking for an external hard drive. i have an old ata66 5400rpm 20Gb drive that i'm not using and i was considering just getting an enclosure for it. I want to use the drive to transport media files and play world of warcraft at work(apparently you can just copy the folder over). I know the load times will be long on wow but my friend plays wow on an old laptop w/ a 4200rpm drive just fine. From what i remember, the transfer rate of ata66 is about equal to usb 2.0 so that won't be a bottleneck, however, i also have the firewire option.

Given my desired usage, would it be ok to save the money and use my old drive or should i look at an enclosure+7200rpm sata drive? or a pre-constructed external hard drive?

 

[drizzt81]

From what i remember, the transfer rate of ata66 is about equal to usb 2.0 so that won't be a bottleneck, however, i also have the firewire option.

FYI:
USB2 (bulk or interrupt transfers) ~24MB/s (uncompressed)
ATA66 ~ 66MB/s

Given my desired usage, would it be ok to save the money and use my old drive or should i look at an enclosure+7200rpm sata drive? or a pre-constructed external hard drive?

I would get a PATA enclosure and give the old drive a whirl. If you think it's "too slow" you can always get a newer drive for the enclosure.

 

[mycomputersucks]

FYI:
USB2 (bulk or interrupt transfers) ~24MB/s (uncompressed)
ATA66 ~ 66MB/s

I would get a PATA enclosure and give the old drive a whirl. If you think it's "too slow" you can always get a newer drive for the enclosure.

cool, thanks for the correction. i went from memory and thought that usb2.0 has a theoretical 60MB/s (480mbps or so).

yeah, i think you're right. thanks for the advice.

 

[drizzt81]

cool, thanks for the correction. i went from memory and thought that usb2.0 has a theoretical 60MB/s (480mbps or so).

yeah, i think you're right. thanks for the advice.

USB 2.0 is 480Mbps, however that bandwidth is not available for transfers that need data integrity and arrival confirmation. Therefore, if people did not care what data is written to their HDD (or if it is written at all) the chipset makers could use isochronous transfers and read/ write (or not) at 60MiB/s. It was a pretty neat trick by the USB standards group to make their standard seem superior to Firewire.