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Multiple Ports on an External Hard Drive

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bienboy2710

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 10, 2008
6
0
New York City
yea just wondering if they make external hard drives with ports that allow you to connect in more than one spot. It's hard to explain.

Say there is an external hard drive with 2 usb ports on the hard drive. could you connect two of the usb ports to your computer to make it work faster? or would read/write speed not be fast enough that it would matter

if you do know any please post
 
No. Not that I know of. You're better off with either Firewire 800, or eSATA connection for example. You could daisy chain drives together with Firewire though.
 
Unfortunately there's nothing like that exactly. To increase data transfer speeds, you'll need a drive that uses a fast type of connection. For example, FireWire 800 is very good choice, but not everyone has a FireWire 800 port on their computer.

The other way to make it transfer data faster is to get a drive with a higher RPM (revolutions per minute) -- the higher the number, the faster the drive spins. However, these drives usually have less space on them.

Most FireWire externals have two FireWire ports on them because it can be daisy chained. Plug the drive into the computer, and plug your digital camcorder, for example, into the drive. It makes it so you don't lose the only FireWire port on your computer. Note that USB does not work this way.

Hope that helps.
 
bienboy2710 said:
yea just wondering if they make external hard drives with ports that allow you to connect in more than one spot. It's hard to explain.

Say there is an external hard drive with 2 usb ports on the hard drive. could you connect two of the usb ports to your computer to make it work faster? or would read/write speed not be fast enough that it would matter

if you do know any please post
Click to expand...

Keep in mind that the hard drive inside the enclosure is still limited in access time and sustained throughput. So even if it were possible, the speed wouldn't increase because the hard drive inside is still sending data slower that FW400/USB2.0 on a consistent basis.
 
Actual bandwidth available of different ports. (Not theoretical maximum speed that are unobtainable, but actual performance).
SATA > Firewire 800 > Firewire 400 > USB 2.0

Include drives.
SATA > 10k drive> Firewire 800 > Most SATA and IDE 3.5" drive > Firewire 400 > USB 2.0

You can put a 10k drive into a usb enclosure. You can also burn your money. Same result.

USB cannot power anything larger than 2.5" (and sometimes it needs 2 ports to power a USB drive). Firewire has enough juice to power multiple drives with 1 port (for example LaCie Little Big Disk).
 
Consultant said:
Actual bandwidth available of different ports. (Not theoretical maximum speed that are unobtainable, but actual performance).
SATA > Firewire 800 > Firewire 400 > USB 2.0

Include drives.
SATA > 10k drive> Firewire 800 > Most SATA and IDE 3.5" drive > Firewire 400 > USB 2.0

You can put a 10k drive into a usb enclosure. You can also burn your money. Same result.

USB cannot power anything larger than 2.5" (and sometimes it needs 2 ports to power a USB drive). Firewire has enough juice to power multiple drives with 1 port (for example LaCie Little Big Disk).
Click to expand...

how do i know if i have a firewire 800 port?
 
Read your computer spes,

or go to Apple menu,
About this Mac
More info
Firewire

If you have Firewire 800, it would say Up to 800 Mb/sec
 
If you have a regular Macbook, you do not have a FW800 port, only a FW400 port. This port is still pretty damn fast, imho. I just wish the AEBS had a FW400 port instead of a USB2 port. I wonder if WiFi is just so slow that a FW400 port would just not make a difference when streaming from a HD connected to the AE.
 
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