Fast/high space external HD

[BrioBriss]

I'm looking for a new external hard drive. Would like it to transfer information as fast as possible and have a decent size (2 TB at least). Would like to know what you guys suggest here.

Thanks!

 

[simsaladimbamba]

What connection ports do you have on your Mac?

 

[BrioBriss]

What connection ports do you have on your Mac?

It's mostly for my Mac pro and at school they use PC. So I'd say USB 2.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

It's mostly for my Mac pro and at school they use PC. So I'd say USB 2.

Then any USB 2.0 HDD will be fast, as USB 2.0 limits you to 35 to 40 MB/s read or write speeds, thus even the slowest currently available HDD will work perfectly fine with that.
Even if you get a Firewire 800 HDD (with an USB port too), most HDDs will be fine again, as FW 800 is the limiting factor (65 to 75 MB/s).

 

[BrioBriss]

Then any USB 2.0 HDD will be fast, as USB 2.0 limits you to 35 to 40 MB/s read or write speeds, thus even the slowest currently available HDD will work perfectly fine with that.
Even if you get a Firewire 800 HDD (with an USB port too), most HDDs will be fine again, as FW 800 is the limiting factor (65 to 75 MB/s).

Oh, ok. I'm surprised it's similar for each, since I actually had 3 differents externals HD and the speed was different for each of them. the faster is actually the "FreeAgent" one.

 

[COrocket]

It's mostly for my Mac pro and at school they use PC. So I'd say USB 2.

Check out the Western Digital mybooks. You can find them pretty cheap and the disk speed doesn't matter because you are going to be capped by the USB 2.0 transfer speeds.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Oh, ok. I'm surprised it's similar for each, since I actually had 3 differents externals HD and the speed was different for each of them. the faster is actually the "FreeAgent" one.

Then how did you test the speed of those three HDDs?

For example, copying 15,000 files 1 MB in size each takes much longer than copying one 15 GB file.

 

[BrioBriss]

Check out the Western Digital mybooks. You can find them pretty cheap and the disk speed doesn't matter because you are going to be capped by the USB 2.0 transfer speeds.

Alright, I'll check that, thanks here

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Then how did you test the speed of those three HDDs?

For example, copying 15,000 files 1 MB in size each takes much longer than copying one 15 GB file.

lol to be honest, I didn't "tested" them, but I just realised when I transfered the same file on the same externals HD, the Freeagent one seemed to be faster.