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External Hard Drive - Speedy?
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Junior Member
Join Date: Jul 2006
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I have an external USB 2.0 7,200 RPM Hard drive connected to my MBP... I'm wondering what the speed is relative to that of my internal 5,400 RPM hard drive? Will it be faster, or will the USB 2.0 connection slow it down?
Would it degrade or improve performance if I put a swap file on it, for instance?
It seems speedy to me in doing mundane tasks such as copying files, watching videos, etc. but I'm hesitant to put a swap file on it or try to get a different OS, say Linux, booting up from it, or even putting my Parallels drive image on it.
Thanks!
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Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Feb 2006
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This might help. Overall, no, use the external drive for inactive projects or files you need on occasion or applications you use infrequently. The USB 2.0 interface has a max theoretical speed of 60Mb/Sec - any modern HD interface does better than that.
As far as using it for Linux or other OS'es, it might work, but may be more trouble than it's worth and again, not optimal for speed.
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Junior Member
Join Date: Dec 2006
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well if u could get ur external hdd to work whenver u wanted it to and not have any mounting problems..... that would be great
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Houston, TX
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The average 7200RPM external can do about 60MBps with ~4ms latency. USB2 is going to reduce the bandwidth to ~30MBps.
Depending on the size of your internal, it can probably push 20-30MBps, but with higher latency (~9ms) due to the lower spindle speed.
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Junior Member
Join Date: Jul 2006
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Okay, that's what I thought but I figured I'd check... thanks!
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Dec 2006
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A quick thought.
I have an external WD HDD - 8mb Cache - Firewire 400 and USB 2.0
I thought that i would be getting pretty good speeds with normal backup, but with super duper it is horrible. any thoughts?
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Memphis, Tn. USA
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Originally Posted by solofx7
A quick thought.
I have an external WD HDD - 8mb Cache - Firewire 400 and USB 2.0
I thought that i would be getting pretty good speeds with normal backup, but with super duper it is horrible. any thoughts?
Superduper and Carbon Cloner are very slow because the additional processing of info.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Dec 2006
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that is what they told me also...
it is roughly 1mb per second at best.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Memphis, Tn. USA
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Originally Posted by solofx7
that is what they told me also...
it is roughly 1mb per second at best.
That's why I clone to an external firewire a bootable copy once a month and back up users folder separately weekly and doccuments folder daily. 3 are safer than 1!
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Dec 2006
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i have the space to do that and i am doing something similar, but it is brutally slow.
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Senior User
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Chicago, Earth
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Never had a USB 2.0 External drive, but this link will show you an XBench report testing the internal drive on my C2D MBC (160GB 5,400rpm) vs my 1 year old external FW800 160GB 7,200 drive. The external drive is ATA not SATA, but it's still a wee bit faster.
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MBP - 2.33GHz C2D, 3GB RAM, 256MB VRAM, 160GB HD
PB - 1.5GHz G4, 2GB RAM, 128MB VRAM, 80GB HD
PM - Dual 1GHzG4, 1.5GB RAM, NVidia GForce 3, 2x 80 GB HD
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: Utah, USA
Status:
Offline
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Originally Posted by kylemacr
I have an external USB 2.0 7,200 RPM Hard drive connected to my MBP... I'm wondering what the speed is relative to that of my internal 5,400 RPM hard drive? Will it be faster, or will the USB 2.0 connection slow it down?
Would it degrade or improve performance if I put a swap file on it, for instance?
It seems speedy to me in doing mundane tasks such as copying files, watching videos, etc. but I'm hesitant to put a swap file on it or try to get a different OS, say Linux, booting up from it, or even putting my Parallels drive image on it.
Thanks!
What case did you buy and where did you buy it? Thanks.
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MacBookPro 1.83GHz - 1.5 GB RAM - OS 10.4.6
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