SSD as an external or what?

xarik

xarik

New Member
My good laptop only has one HDD bay and my bad one has two. I was going to put a 60+GB SSD in my bad laptop to give it some oompf but if I were to pick up another SSD would it be even useful for my second laptop as an external one or something like that? I currently have 166GB used on my good laptop and I could probably take out another 15GB but I don't want to buy a 256GB SSD so I don't think I can use one as a main drive, would it be useful as an external through firewire or USB? (new to the SSD world but I've done lots of research on them)
 
voyagerfan99

voyagerfan99

Master of Turning Things Off and Back On Again
Staff member
xarik said:
whats that exactly? isn't that the same as using it as an HD in the bay?
Click to expand...

eSATA is External SATA. You can use it with external hard drives and it gives you speeds similar to SATA so it's quicker to transfer data.
 
S.T.A.R.S.

S.T.A.R.S.

banned
You can use ANY type of storage device as an external device through the USB wether it is a small flash drive,SD card,M2 card,HDD,SSD and so on...
They will all work just fine.

As for the data transfer speed...well...that really depends on the type of your ports on the motherboard.For example...if you use USB 1.1 and connect SSD to that port to transfer data,the speeds are not gonna be great even if you have the best SSD drive since USB 1.1 cannot provide so big data transfer speed.In these kind of cases this is usually the main reason why people use HDD as an external storage device instead of SSD.

But will they BOTH (HDD and SSD) work on ANY USB port (1.0,1.1,2.0,3.0?

Answer: YES (unless if your USB port is bad...in that case everything will work like crap or it won't work at all lol :D)

Same applies for all your SATA ports (if you have any).

Answer: YES

So if super high data transfer speed is SO IMPORTANT TO YOU for an external storage then you should definetely use SSD on a great SATA,eSATA ports.Just be sure to configure SSD correctly (if any configurations are needed of course).

Otherwise a simple HDD on a simple let's say USB port 2.0 will do just great for you.

I for example ALWAYS use HDD for absolutely everything and NEVER EVER use SSD for absolutely nothing...,but that is just because I have my own damn reasons lol :D:D:D








Cheers to...hmm...to who ever is reading this post lol!
 
Okedokey

Okedokey

Well-Known Member
STARS you point is completely redundant as usual.

Hes not asking whether he can but rather if it is a useful exercise.

Now connecting an SSD to a USB interface is a complete and utter waste. You'd be better off selling the SSD and getting a slow large capacity laptop HDD with USB cady for storage.

OR, you can used esata which will give close to optimal speeds.
 
xarik

xarik

New Member
Thanks for the answers :) Everything helps ofc I was looking for a more specific answer (Sorry STARS)...I had an epiphany and didn't realize how stupid I was until now lol...I think I'll just clone the drive as is (I'll still have 19GB of SSD left) and then just format my HDD when I have determined that the SSD is reliable...after such a time I will then use the HDD as a simple file holder...this is basically what everyone else does ;P Except my SSD is in a crappy computer and I guess I'll deal with a momentus XT in my good computer...it boots in 30 seconds or less everytime and the hyperthreading makes load times of massive programs (After effects and such) down to a minimum so idc really...if I get desperate I'll just drop the money for a 120gb ssd and not load as much onto it :p
 
CdnAudiophile

CdnAudiophile

Member
USB 3.0 is 5gb/s a second so if you could find a proper controller you might be able to take advantage of the speed that way.

I personally have a Seagate TB Go Flex adpater and use a 256gb Vertex 4 with it. I get 420mb/s instead of the 300 something this guys getting :
Article

Mine is like this but I connect the drive directly to the Seagate Adaptor:
P1010085crop.jpg



I'll take some pics tomorrow.
 
xarik

xarik

New Member
Well that's shifty looking lol shifty not shitty) I have an enclosure but its probably not Esata =/...where did you get that thing and does that reduce the life of the drive if I want fast transfer rates of larger video files externally between two computers?
 
CdnAudiophile

CdnAudiophile

Member
lol mine looks much better then this. For what it is, it's decently compact in size.

The drive can be a normal sata 2.5" drive. No esata needed. The connection to the computer is ThunderBolt. I use it with my MBPr as a Windows Bootcamp partition when I need to. The life of the drive will be the same as if it was in the computer.

Here is the adapter on Amazon : Thunderbolt Adapter for Backup Plus
 
xarik

xarik

New Member
Jeez...for $114 I can just put the dumb drive inside my spare laptop and call it a day lol...(prob what I'll end up doing)....If I really want faster data transfer from my HDD to an external drive back onto another HDD then I will just have to suck it up...Even with my 2.5 in an external drive it's pretty quick (1.5GB in about 45 seconds)...I suppose an SSD is only really good for what everyone uses it as...a boot and intense program drive
 
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