UKC

It seems that SSDs which are faster, only come as internal drives and since my laptop is not brand new,I am not sure if it would be worth all the trouble of swapping hard drives internally.
I want an external hard drive and want to buy something that is fast and hopefully somewhat future proof.I also want to be able to use it between machines.
Maybe external HDs in the form of SSDs are going to come along in the future,but not now?
All you IT aware people are probably saying what a stupid question....

In reply to veteye:

Have a google for "2.5inch external drive enclosure", buy that along with your SSD and put one inside the other.

Cezza

In reply to veteye:

External drives are limited by the connector - usually slower than an internal connection.
If it's an old laptop have a look on ifixit and see how easy it is to replace the internal drive. Less to forget/drop/trip over etc.

You can get external 2.5' BUS powered enclosures and pop in an SSD.

B

In reply to veteye:

You don't understand how an SSD works.

The reason they are fast is because of the way they store and transmit data. If you're using one as an external drive you'll be using it via a USB port, in your case not even the most recent USB standard (you'll be using usb2 instead of usb3). Therefore you'll bottleneck the speeds of the drive down to that of a normal external. Since that's the case you may as well get a normal external drive for the same price and it'll hold 20x the data if not more.

In reply to Removed User:

Agreed.

I use an external SSD as my boot drive, but I run it through USB3 which means I still see a significant performance increase over a mechanical hard drive. If I used USB2 it would be agonisingly slow.

In reply to veteye:

Thats the best reason to change it. An SSD gives an old laptop a serious performance boost.


There are some external SSD drives or you can buy a caddy. However part of the reason there are so few specialised ones is they blur into USB flash thumb drives. In most cases, for storage, there really isnt much difference (that would interest anyone apart from serious gearheads).

Question is how much storage are you looking for? SSD/flash drives get expensive fast for storage. Far better than it was but still painful. Unless you are going to be doing lots and lots of copying data/its your main drive/you going to be using it whilst being bounced around I would stick with a hard drive.

In reply to dissonance:

Thank you for all the answers.
I think that I will have to mull things over as to which way to go.
I understand the business of USB 2 vs USB 3.In fact I have got at least one USB 3 stick.(I understand that it may not gain me anything on the current machine).
When did USB 3 inputs appear on computers?I presume in the last 18-24 months.

In reply to veteye:

What laptop is it you are wanting to upgrade?

As mentioned above, putting an SSD into an old laptop is the single most effective upgrade you can make. Way better than another few Gb of RAM. But cost:benefit is best for small drives eg 60 - 120Gb, and drops dramatically when getting up to the 0.5Tb range.

I have put SSDs in to a couple of 7 year old MacBook Pros and they are very responsive machines now. Ditto an SSD in a 2006 MacBook - now 8 years old but quicker to boot and open programs than a couple of w7 laptops at work.

b

In reply to veteye:

If memory serves early 2010 or so for 3.0.

In reply to ben b:

Laptop is a Q320 Samsung.
I had been interested in the 840 series Samsung SSD that has 1 TB capacity.
I also note that there are hybrid discs now.

In reply to veteye:

If you have a lot of spare money an external SSD would be great, especially if you have a thunderbolt interface.

If you don't have a lot of spare money, then I wouldn't.

If you do buy a an enclosure, and are limited to USB, make sure to go USB3 - you can still get pretty fast performance through USB3 (take http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2013/11/02/transcend-esd200-usb-3-... for instance).


The IO characteristics of your workload are something we haven't mentioned. If you're looking to get something fast because the current something is not performing adequately, might be worth mentioning a bit about what the current something is.

In reply to Removed User:

Forgive me, but neither do you.

There are good reasons why SSDs don't make good external drives, regardless of interface. They are essentially flash memory, which isn't stable over long periods without power. Flash memory is constantly repairing sectors it knows are about to fail, it must do this efficiently as any flash memory only has a fixed finite number of writes it can perform (so it likely wont last as long as a HDD either). Ever left a USB stick in a drawer for months to find it is corrupted? Same thing. So if you have an external SSD (which despite the OP, are readily available), then it's best to leave it attached as much as possible.

In reply to veteye:

Get an internal. It will likely come with cloning software to make the transition easy, they've thought of these things.

If you have a Mac, then it is obscenely easy; back up to time machine, swap internal drives, power up, restore OS from time machine.

In reply to veteye:
Mis-read this as STD.... was struggling for a moment as to what an external HD might be..

In reply to Only a hill:
Plus ssds arent good for sequential writes, only random so its always best to analyse your workloads

In reply to Jonny2vests:

I have a Mac as well as the Samsung and the idea was to be able to use the Ext HD between the two if the OS of each could accommodate that.

In reply to Jonny2vests:

So would one of the hybrid drives serve better?With less need for concern about finite numbers of writes?Or is the hybrid something that falls between two stools and doesn't speed up the rotating disc access, and doesn't sort flash memory repair issue?

As regards someone else's comment that as an external hard drive,an SSD loses its advantage due to the USB connection.The point is that being an external HD it somewhat future proofs things as I may buy a new machine down the line that has a quicker access time for external devices.Such things are bound to develop as has happened going from USB 2 to 3(or more radical changes).

In reply to veteye:

That's my impression, but I know very little about them to be honest.


What do you want it for? If its to run the OS, (which will have by far the biggest impact on speed) then THE best choice is an internal SSD, regardless of any shortcomings. If its for data backup, then speed is rarely an issue, any old external HDD would do unless you are constantly reading and writing tons of data back and forth.

For what its worth, my backup goes nightly to Amazon's S3 service, which is very cheap indeed, less than an external drive for my data and about as worry free as it gets.

If you want an external drive for Windows and a Mac, then you could either pick format it using something they both recognise (like FAT), or have two separate partitions. I guess it depends if you need to be able to reach device A's data from device B and vice versa.

In reply to TheDrunkenBakers:


They are good for sequential writes. It's just that they're really, really, good at random (as compared to traditional HDDs). (Which raises the point that even if you have low bandwidth, you still may still have the reduced latency (seek times)).


Provided you're using USB3, an external SSD can very pretty fast:
http://macperformanceguide.com/images/Thunderbolt/graph-Thunderbolt-vs-USB3... (from http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-OWC-Thunderbay-vs-USB3-SSD.html )
Just and just incase those mac users are bad at measuring...
http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/edge-memory-diskgo-pocket-usb-3-0-s...
Or various other, some higher performing, USB3 drives mentioned here:
http://www.anandtech.com/tag/usb-30


Not all SSDs are equal, there is a large variance in relability and performance, Intel branded ones seem overall to be one of the most reliable brands. I wouldn't worry about wear too much - while a big concern, it's demonstrated to not be much of an issue unless you're doing something unusual. I also wouldn't worry about data retention times if you're not going to leave it on the shelf for a year or more (even then, it'll probably be fine). I say that as you should keep in mind that any single drive is prone to failure. I've seen a lot of dead HDD drives in the enterprise setting, mostly SCSI FC, which cost a small fortune each and apparently have a greater MTBF, I've also had a few consumer level dead at home. (Oddly, I've never lost data off USB sticks or SD cards, I even ran my OS off a 4GB SD card for over 6 months without issue (except for the pitiful write performance. I attribute that a bit to luck.).

S3 is really good in that aspect, I went to a talk by a guy from Amazon around 6 months ago who said that they've never lost an object, which is impressive as they store over 2 trillion. If as a home user you want to not lose something, S3 is a good way to go.

In reply to needvert:

My favorite thing about S3 is it can be as simple (web interface) or as complicated (scriptable) as you want, and they now support versioning too.

In reply to Jonny2vests:

I want the external drive to act as a back up for data, and also as a storage place for photographs.So that is why I would like to have a fairly large disc to avoid changing again in the middle distance future.So yes I want to be able to access the photographs from both machines.

Perhaps I am best just buying a regular Ext HD for now and then swapping the whole lot across to another drive when the set up becomes more of a straight forward upgrade to SSDs or a newer alternative when there are less drawbacks.

My problem with swapping the internal drive is lack of time.It would be a total disaster for me if things did not go smoothly and in a fluid manner in swapping over.I cannot afford to be without my laptop for very long at all.(I know that you will say that I need to change my approach to working and the philosophy of use of computers,but even that needs me to find time in peace and quiet to try and work it out.Time that I just don't have due to the many awkward facets to my life at the moment.)
Otherwise it would seem that it might be worth considering swapping to an internal SSD in order to get the improvement in throughput and to give me experience of how it works.

Rob

In reply to veteye:


I think so too. Or online storage.

In reply to veteye:

If getting an SSD the main advantages are speed and power savings. The way to go would be to switch your current drive for the SSD so your OS and all your apps are on the SSD. The whole thing will boot and start apps much quicker and save power.

Then stick your existing HDD in cage with a USB connector.

SSDs run fastest on the newer SATA III interface but still offer very significant performance increases on SATA II.

The main benefit of using an SSD as an external is that they are more robust (no moving parts) so less likely to go wrong if dropped, but for performance increases use them as the main drive.