Are some HD enclosures faster than others?

[Chris2wire]

Ive always thought external hard drive enclosures that connect via usb/firewire were the same when it came to speed... I now read about how they use different chipsets inside.

Does anyone know if theres a specific chipset/enclosure that is faster than others? Im doing a lot of data transferring and want to buy the best one...

ALso, Id like it to have firewire and usb 2.0, but only usb 2.0 is fine too...

Thanks!

 

[corkyg]

They are all limited by the throughput ceiling of the connection link. The anomaly is that Firewire with a rating of 400 will beat USB 2 with a rating of 480 on a sustained basis for large files. And, eSATA will trounce 'em both

 

[Blain]

Firewire 1394B... She's fast too.
Got to have a 1394B connection, but you'd also have to have an eSATA connection to use that also.

 

[Sensai]

i think he's talking about like, is the NEC USB2.0 320 chipset inside one enclosure faster than NEC 220 in some other brand or against a Realtek xxx chipset.. any by like how much of a real world difference.

 

[CalvinHobbes]

Someone just did a test of 9 different ext. enclosures. I think it was xbitlabs.

 

[DasFox]

This Vantec I recently bought and put in a Segate 300GB SATA is running real nice.

# Transfer Rates Up to 3Gbps W/ eSATA
# Transfer Rates Up to 480Mbps W/ Usb 2.0 (12Mbps W/ USB1.1)

I highly recommend it.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=370895

ALOHA

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: Sensai
i think he's talking about like, is the NEC USB2.0 320 chipset inside one enclosure faster than NEC 220 in some other brand or against a Realtek xxx chipset.. any by like how much of a real world difference.

Probably you are correct - however, the differences perceivable by a user with normal applications are not really significant. So, I opted to speak to those differences that really do make a difference.

 

[HyunYu]

Originally posted by: DasFox
This Vantec I recently bought and put in a Segate 300GB SATA is running real nice.

# Transfer Rates Up to 3Gbps W/ eSATA
# Transfer Rates Up to 480Mbps W/ Usb 2.0 (12Mbps W/ USB1.1)

I highly recommend it.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=370895

ALOHA

Not that I doubt that it's a nice setup, but the numbers you posted are theoretical maximums, not real-life numbers. Consider:

3Gbps per sec = 3,000,000,000 bits per second, which is approx. 357MB per second.
Or about 21GB per minute.
Or about 1.2TB per hour.

In actuality, the 7200.10 Seagate drives I have can achieve about 65MB per second internally, and about 25MB per sec via USB2.

 

[DasFox]

Originally posted by: HyunYu

Originally posted by: DasFox
This Vantec I recently bought and put in a Segate 300GB SATA is running real nice.

# Transfer Rates Up to 3Gbps W/ eSATA
# Transfer Rates Up to 480Mbps W/ Usb 2.0 (12Mbps W/ USB1.1)

I highly recommend it.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=370895

ALOHA

Not that I doubt that it's a nice setup, but the numbers you posted are theoretical maximums, not real-life numbers. Consider:

3Gbps per sec = 3,000,000,000 bits per second, which is approx. 357MB per second.
Or about 21GB per minute.
Or about 1.2TB per hour.

In actuality, the 7200.10 Seagate drives I have can achieve about 65MB per second internally, and about 25MB per sec via USB2.

I just posted what Vantec posts for the specs, not me.

ALOHA

 

[Goi]

I think the difference would probably be in the transfer of small files. The faster/better ones would probably do better than the cheaper ones. In the sequential transfer of large files, I don't think there'd be much of a difference.