Internal vs External hdd. SATA 3 vs USB 3

[themirror]

I'm getting a 3TB hard disk for storing my photos, videos and movie collection.(I won't be using it for boot partition)
I'm stuck between internal and external ,seagate backup plus 3tb external STDT3000100 and the seagate barracuda 3tb internal ST3000DM001.(The external one has the same hdd inside.)
For me portability is just optional, I can live without it.If they both perform the same, I will get the external.
Now that both of these disks can hardly saturate the interface speeds(SATa3 and usb3), do you expect any noticeable difference in speeds?
I heard that the usb 3.0 adds some unnecessary overhead making it somewhat slower than sata3. Is it true?

Thanks.

 

[Blain]

Skip the Seagates and go with an external WD (or build your own external with a WD and enclosure).

 

[Charlie98]

Actually, I like the Seagate drives, I bought one of the 2TB drives (by mistake) and it's doing well. The only thing I don't like about it is it requires a power adapter along with the USB cable, unlike my Seagate portable drives (which is what I thought I was buying) which run off the USB cable alone.

Unless you just have to have 3TB, my suggestion would be to get a 2TB portable; it would give you the simplicity of a single cable with the benefit of smaller size and genuine portability. Otherwise I would just go internal.

As an aside, what I wound up doing was breaking open the enclosure, pulling the Barracuda out and putting it in my HTPC, and then putting an old Hitachi 500GB drive back in. Still works just fine and it is part of my everyday backup scheme.

 

[mikeymikec]

If you go with an external WD hard drive, avoid WD Smartware (their software which is usually bundled on the drive), IMO.

I just removed it from a customer's laptop, mainly because it would cause processor usage to go up 80% because files were being copied.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Both.

Unless you have another backup strategy, get one of each: an internal drive for your storage needs, and an external drive for backing it up. For backup purposes, USB will be more than sufficient.

 

[themirror]

Skip the Seagates and go with an external WD (or build your own external with a WD and enclosure).

I'm from India, I don't have choices here. Though we have WD, the product range is quite limited and are somewhat pricier than seagate.I never had a problem with seagate drives(A 20GB seagate IDE drive I bought in 2000 still works fine).

Actually, I like the Seagate drives, I bought one of the 2TB drives (by mistake) and it's doing well. The only thing I don't like about it is it requires a power adapter along with the USB cable, unlike my Seagate portable drives (which is what I thought I was buying) which run off the USB cable alone.

Unless you just have to have 3TB, my suggestion would be to get a 2TB portable; it would give you the simplicity of a single cable with the benefit of smaller size and genuine portability. Otherwise I would just go internal.

As an aside, what I wound up doing was breaking open the enclosure, pulling the Barracuda out and putting it in my HTPC, and then putting an old Hitachi 500GB drive back in. Still works just fine and it is part of my everyday backup scheme.

No, I need 3TB and the 2tb portable ones aren't available here.

Both.

Unless you have another backup strategy, get one of each: an internal drive for your storage needs, and an external drive for backing it up. For backup purposes, USB will be more than sufficient.

Budget constraints,will be adding another in a couple of months though.

Can anyone answer my actual query?

 

[It's Not Lupus]

No real difference.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Budget constraints,will be adding another in a couple of months though.

Can anyone answer my actual query?

Which question?

It would really suck to lose something like 3TB of important data because you don't think you can afford a backup solution.

My preference is to use an internal drive unless there's a need for portability. In most cases it's faster, it requires no external boxes and no external cables. It's just much neater.

In your case, though, an external drive might be preferable. If you had an emergency and there's a flood, or a fire, or a tornado, and you have to get out quickly, it would be easier to grab the external drive as you're making your way out the door in your underwear. :\

 

[themirror]

Which question?

It would really suck to lose something like 3TB of important data because you don't think you can afford a backup solution.

My preference is to use an internal drive unless there's a need for portability. In most cases it's faster, it requires no external boxes and no external cables. It's just much neater.

In your case, though, an external drive might be preferable. If you had an emergency and there's a flood, or a fire, or a tornado, and you have to get out quickly, it would be easier to grab the external drive as you're making your way out the door in your underwear. :\

My question was about the performance difference between internal and external due to different interfaces, if any.

 

[smitbret]

My question was about the performance difference between internal and external due to different interfaces, if any.

SATA (internal) is faster than USB 3.0. SATA II and SATA III connections are much faster than any HDD, capable of hundreds of MB/s. USB 3.0 should max out somewhere in the 120-140MB/s range.

Most any external HDD that you purchase will probably not be limited by USB 3.0. Most of them are 5400-5900rpm drives, often with older platter technology and seem to max out a little below the USB 3.0 ceiling. The smaller, external HDDs that are USB powered use laptop HDDs that sacrifice performance for heat and power consumption. Their speed will be even slower and the speed of the inteface will never evenbe a consideration.

In short, just get a USB 3.0 external HDD. In many cases, they will be cheaper than the same size internal HDD. If it does limit the speed of the HDD it will be measureable by a few seconds or maybe a couple of minutes for a large data transfer. Plus, you can unplug and move it giving even greater security.

 

[mikeymikec]

SATA 3Gbps/6Gbps should beat USB3 in terms of performance, at the very least because I doubt that NCQ gets utilised via USB. It might perform better in terms of latency as well.

I would only expect NCQ to make a difference if the disk is under greater load. For example, I would expect the Windows boot routine to benefit from NCQ as many requests for data from different places are queued up and hopefully wrt the way the data is arranged on the platter, the requests can be queued up and the data retrieved more efficiently.

External drives can be a pain - for example, Windows deciding (for reasons best known to itself) not to run a USB 3.0 device connected to a USB 3.0 port at USB 3.0 seemingly arbitrarily. I've never seen a SATA-connected device's throughput drop from say 6Gbps down to 3 or 1.5. However, my Nexus 5 always says "this device would benefit from being connected to a USB 3.0 port!", even though it is already. I know that the USB 3.0 ports work because I have a USB 3.0 HDD enclosure which I definitely get those sorts of speeds out of.

If we're talking about backup drives, I would go for external. If we're talking about general storage which you always want available, I would go for internal.

eSATA can do NCQ, but I have found eSATA to be more problematic than USB 3.0 (at least on my system).

The portable Seagate Expansion drives can do about 90MB/sec in my experience via USB 3.0. A 3.5" WD Black 1TB connected via SATA 6Gbps on my system hits 172MB/sec at its best. I did have that drive initially connected to USB 3.0 when I first got it, but I didn't benchmark it.