apologies if I have asked this already but I have found the portables are very convenient, I can just plug them in vs swapping out my bigger bare desktop sized drives in an enclosure.
in addtion to the convenice of the smaller size, my desktop space and drawer space is cramped, andthe smaller drives would be alot easier for me to manage.
I have alot of data on various hard drives, and would like quick easy acess to it all.
is there a big difference in reliability between the 2 types?
I am also looking for some reusable labels for my portables for easy id of whats on them, and a good usb hub to work on my classic mac pro mid 2010.
any suggestions welcome thanks
The only differences of any real significance (with regard to mechanical drives) are size and cost (3.5" drives are typically available in larger sizes, and a lower cost per GB than 2.5" drives).
If you haven't already, you might also want to consider using SSDs in external enclosures. They have very low power consumption / can be powered by USB alone, and are not only available in a 2.5" form factor, but also even smaller form factors such as mSATA as well.
SSDs are also more reliable than mechanical drives in terms of both raw endurance, as well as durability (e.g. it's all too easy to damage an external mechanical drive by bumping / dropping the drive while it's active, whereas SSDs have no moving parts, making them more tolerant to abuse).
Additionally, you have the obvious performance benefits of SSDs. An SSD in a SATA III enclosure with UASP support gets 400+ MBps read/write over USB 3.0 / 3.1, whereas a mechanical drive isn't going to provide more than 100 MBps read/write, regardless of interface (as the bottleneck is the drive itself).
While SSDs are still a bit more money than mechanical drives, they are now at a much more competitive / reasonable price point.
Anyway, here are a few examples:
Small mSATA enclosure + Samsung 850 EVO mSATA SSD:
-https://
www.amazon.com/ORICO-Aluminum-Enclosure-ASM1153E-Controller/dp/B01BDKUCH6
-https://
www.amazon.com/Samsung-850-EVO-Internal-MZ-M5E250BW/dp/B00TGIVTP2
You can get that mSATA Samsung 850 EVO in sizes from 120GB to 1TB, and stick it in an enclosure not that much larger than a thumb drive.
Or you can purchase any standard 2.5" SSD, and stick it in enclosures like these:
SATA III -> USB 3.0 (5 Gbps) with UASP
-https://
www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-2-5in-External-SATA-Enclosure/dp/B00E1JAB3M
SATA III -> USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) with UASP
-https://
www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Gbps-Enclosure-SATA-Drives/dp/B00XLB0EOW
One option to protect against power failure is to go with an enterprise SSD like the Samsung SM863 / PM863. These SSDs have tantalum capacitors on them to protect against sudden loss of power (they hold enough charge to wrap up any current operations and power down safely). You can also simply purchase a UPS.
