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kylemacr · Dec 10, 2006, 01:42 AM

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!

dimmer · Dec 10, 2006, 02:15 AM

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.

Black_Rain · Dec 10, 2006, 11:23 AM

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

mduell · Dec 10, 2006, 12:36 PM

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.

kylemacr · Dec 10, 2006, 07:13 PM

Okay, that's what I thought but I figured I'd check... thanks!

solofx7 · Dec 11, 2006, 09:36 AM

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?

romeosc · Dec 11, 2006, 09:54 AM

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.

solofx7 · Dec 11, 2006, 10:30 AM

that is what they told me also...
it is roughly 1mb per second at best.

romeosc · Dec 11, 2006, 12:47 PM

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!

solofx7 · Dec 11, 2006, 01:19 PM

i have the space to do that and i am doing something similar, but it is brutally slow.

wingdo · Dec 11, 2006, 06:18 PM

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.

skyman · Dec 16, 2006, 03:04 PM

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.