External HDD

[Constantine A. Murenin]

On 08/02/07, Fluffles <etc at fluffles.net> wrote:
> Andrew Pantyukhin wrote:
> > BTW, many 2,5" enclosures I've seen require two usb
> > ports, the second one just to get more power.
>
> Hm well with a Samsung drive you won't need an extra cable; at least not
> with proper enclosure like i have. Works perfectly with one cable.

Just because it works with one motherboard, doesn't mean it will work
with another. :)

Samsung drives are nothing special as far as power consumption goes,
in fact, they consume more power AND they work slower than HGST drives
do -- just check the specs. So in reality, you get much better
performance per watt with HGST than with Samsung, as well as you can
actually lower the wattage with HGST. :)

[...]

> >> > drives and I prefer using Seagate drives inside.
> >>
> >> Seagate gets rather hot; Samsung is a lot better in that respect.
> > > I have a Sarotech Hardbox enclosure for 3.5"
> >
> > That's what I'm saying, Seagate is hot! But seriously,
> > fanless enclosures are a problem with any drive.
>
> With a 2,5" Samsung drive you won't have any problems with heat; these
> drives do 0,6W; very power-efficient i would say.

Where have you got this figure from? Let's just pick the first two
cheapest Samsung drives that are available at NewEgg.com [0]:

http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/SpinPointMSeries/HardDiskDrive_SpinpointMseries_MP0402H_sp.htm
http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/SpinPointMSeries/HardDiskDrive_SpinpointMseries_MP0603H_sp.htm

both of these Samsung drives require 5.0 W for spin-up, and then they
consume 2.4 W on reads and writes, and 0.85 W on low-power idle, and
their maximum media transfer rate is 431Mbit/s. (I.e. even their
read/write wattage barely fits into the 2.5W allowance of a single USB
port, but remember that the enclosure itself consumes some of that 2.5
W, too...)

Now let's take a look at the first two cheapest HGST drives on
newegg.com, which actually come from a single HGST series -- these
HGST drives have the same 5400 RPM and size parameters as the above
Samsung drives, and their prices are only 2 USD apart from the Samsung
counterparts:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/5k100/5k100.htm

and we can see that the 5K100 series, which is a rather old one BTW,
consumes also 5.0 W on start-up, but only 2.0 W on reads and writes,
with low-power idle at 0.60 W, and their maximum media transfer rate
is 493Mbit/s. I.e. better in all aspects from the above Samsung
drives. And the new 5k120 series has even better characteristics than
5k100.

[0] http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?Submit=ENE&N=2010150380&Subcategory=380