Seagate Backup Plus 4TB vs Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB

[turn_pike]

Just received my Seagate Backup Plus 4TB from Amazon.
Playing around with CrystalDiskMark revealed that the drive -should- be faster than my main drive, a Spinpoint F3 that I bought a couple of years ago.



Right now I'm tempted to make the Seagate my main drive instead.
Are there any problems I should know of before installing Windows 7 on the Seagate ? I dont even know if windows can boot from usb 3.0 device.

If it stays as the main drive, I will remove the Seagate from the external enclosure and put it in the case cos it runs rather hot in the enclosure (50C compared to 42-45C for my drives inside the case, normal for Hawaii temps)

 

[rsutoratosu]

you lose warranty once you take it out, you sure that drive will never crash ? you better off buying an internal drive because drives do fail

 

[turn_pike]

Oh geez, that's pretty harsh.
Thanks for the info. Guess I'll leave it there for now.

 

[dma0991]

The Seagate only performed better as it has a higher areal density. Even with the slight performance advantage, I'd stick with the Samsung F3 as an OS drive simply because you don't need 4TB GPT partition for an OS nor would it make sense to create multiple partitions.

Years of bootloader trial and error tells me that its better to isolate a drive solely for the OS and an additional HDD for data storage. Also, Windows will not boot off a USB 3.0 device so you'll have to rip it out from its enclosure to make it work.

 

[cantholdanymore]

The Seagate only performed better as it has a higher areal density. Even with the slight performance advantage, I'd stick with the Samsung F3 as an OS drive simply because you don't need 4TB GPT partition for an OS nor would it make sense to create multiple partitions.

Years of bootloader trial and error tells me that its better to isolate a drive solely for the OS and an additional HDD for data storage. Also, Windows will not boot off a USB 3.0 device so you'll have to rip it out from its enclosure to make it work.

Windows 7 WIll boot from usb3 port. I've done it from the exact same drive the op has

 

[turn_pike]

How'd you do it ?

From googling around, I found out that Win 7 cant boot from a USB 3 drive (flash or hard) because it doesnt have the drivers built in so you have to make or find a slipstream Win 7 with the drivers in it.

And the clincher is this sentence from Microsoft's GPT FAQ : "Booting (from GPT drives) is only supported for 64-bit editions on UEFI-based systems."
My mobo only has legacy BIOS :-(

 

[cantholdanymore]

How'd you do it ?

From googling around, I found out that Win 7 cant boot from a USB 3 drive (flash or hard) because it doesnt have the drivers built in so you have to make or find a slipstream Win 7 with the drivers in it.

And the clincher is this sentence from Microsoft's GPT FAQ : "Booting (from GPT drives) is only supported for 64-bit editions on UEFI-based systems."
My mobo only has legacy BIOS :-(

too bad, my mobo is uefi and I'm using win7x64

 

[dma0991]

Windows 7 WIll boot from usb3 port. I've done it from the exact same drive the op has

Probably a rare exception that it works. Any devices USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 will not work at POST based on what my motherboard is capable of(UEFI & W7 64 bit). Besides, why would you want to boot off an external HDD? It isn't exactly the most secure thing to install a crucial part of your system. Nudge the HDD and you'll see what I mean. Not to mention that it runs hotter in an airflow constricted enclosure, shortening its lifespan.

 

[tweakboy]

Get a SpinPoint F4 ...... Seagate is not reliable, the drive will die, and I repeat will die very soon.

 

[Mwing]

i bought 2 of these and broke it open and use them as internal, the housing still looks perfect and putting back in is very doable

i did this because internal were priced higher, dunno y

 

[razel]

You can boot and run an OS off a USB drive. Windows just won't let you easily install to a USB drive. Last time I tried this was with Vista. It was an existing install off a laptop computer. I plug that Vista HDD into a USB enclosure and booted into Windows for fun.

For Win7 and Win8, the simpler your HDD setup the easier. With several partitions, the bootloader will often point to a specific partition. How it finds that partition, if it's a physical absolute pointer or a relative one is THE headache.