EggXpert

Hi,

I'm an Adobe Creative professional and I've been saving all my projects and assets on an external Seagate Go Flex drive using a eSata / USB 3 connection to my laptop. Now that I'm going to be using a desktop instead, I'm wondering what would be fastest? To get an internal HDD that is SATA 6Gb/s ....OR.... use my external drive with an eSata connection.... OR... use my external drive with a USB 3.0 connection?

I'm looking foremost for speed, performance and reliability.

However, I do like the idea of saving projects and assets on an external drive since I will occasionally need to work off the laptop (ie. when travelling) so by simply plugging that same drive to my desktop sounds like the best solution...only perhaps not the fastest?

 Any advice? 

eSATA for external, SATA if it doesn't matter.  There's not going to be an insane amount of difference between the 3 for your workload since it's nearly all linear access.  External use is pretty rough on 3.5" drives though.  Ever notice how the longest anyone will warranty one of those things is 3 years?  There's a reason for that.

The fastest internal 7200 RPM drives ATM are the HGST 7K3000 series.

If I connect my GoFlex drive using the eSATA adapter (to an Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe), what is the transfer rate?  Is it 3Gb/s or 6Gb/s?  I know the mobo supports SATA III (6 Gb/s) but I dont know how that relates to the external drive? WHat limits the external drive speed - the mobo's ability to do SATA 2 vs SATA 3, or is it the drive itself?

 Sorry...lots of questions...just trying to better understand so that I can make an informed decision about buying lets say a Black Caviar to work from or just use this one. Understanding speeds and connections will help me out...

Cheers 

If you use USB 3.0, it doesn't matter what hard drive you use for a file transfer, it'll be slower than any modern hard drive can write.  The interface is going to bottleneck the speed.

eSATA is better.  With eSATA, the transder speed be limited by the speed at which the hard drive can write. --> better setup

The fastest hard drives are those with 1TB/ platter design.  Like the HGS 7K1000.D 1TB, Seagate Barracuda 1TB  / 3TB etc.

Neither is fast enough still to saturate the SATA II (3Gb/s) bandwidth, so, SATA II / SATA III does not matter. SATA II / III is the pipeline width through which data is transfmiteted.  You just need enough not to bottleneck the capability of your hard drive. 

orlando1974:

If I connect my GoFlex drive using the eSATA adapter (to an Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe), what is the transfer rate?  Is it 3Gb/s or 6Gb/s?  I know the mobo supports SATA III (6 Gb/s) but I dont know how that relates to the external drive? WHat limits the external drive speed - the mobo's ability to do SATA 2 vs SATA 3, or is it the drive itself?

It will be transfered at the rate that the hard drive inside the GoFlex enclosure can write.  If the read speed of the drive form which you transfer files is slower than the write speed of the hard drive in the GoFlex, then the file source hard drive, from which you transfer files, is going to determine the transfer rate.

products:

Neither is fast enough still to saturate the SATA II (3Gb/s) bandwidth, so, SATA II / SATA III does not matter. SATA II / III is the pipeline width through which data is transfmiteted.  You just need enough not to bottleneck the capability of your hard drive. 

 

So if I have an SSD and a mechanical hard drive, plug the SSD into SATA III... as for the mechanical drive, are you saying it wont make a difference whether it is connected to SATA II or SATA III?  In which case, I'm left to assume that SATA III is only used for SSDs and nothing else?

orlando1974:

So if I have an SSD and a mechanical hard drive, plug the SSD into SATA III... as for the mechanical drive, are you saying it wont make a difference whether it is connected to SATA II or SATA III?  In which case, I'm left to assume that SATA III is only used for SSDs and nothing else?

SSDs and port multipliers.

The fastest mechanical hard drives can manage about 170MB/s actual throughput, and SATA 2 tops out at about 280MB/s.