Portable HDD vs. External HDD what to chose?

[Rashid Alkaabi]

Hello,

I'm currently considering buying an external hard drive for the sake of data storage and time machine use. I'm considering WD Passport Studio http://wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=783 as a Portable Hard drive or My Book Studio http://wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=756 in case I went to select external Hard drives. The Question here, is there any PERFORMANCE difference between external hard drives and portable ones? which is better to get and why?

Thanks in advance,

Rashid

 

[MacDawg]

I don't think there is a performance difference
The 2 links you provided both have FW800 which will give you good speed

I would mention... don't buy direct from WD
You can get much better prices elsewhere, such as Amazon

 

[Badger^2]

theres going to be a performance difference, but you would never know it doing what you are doing.

Honestly, storing data and backups doesnt need anything more than USB 2.

FWIW, the previous WD Passports will NOT BOOT via FW800, I have no idea if this new model will, if thats important to you.

And heres that second drive for $220: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...al_WDBAAJ0020HSL_NESN_2TB_My_Book_Studio.html

That portable drive is brand new, as well as the 640 gig size, no price breaks yet

 

[Rashid Alkaabi]

Thank you guys, and I took with "MacDawg" advice regarding the pricing and I found it way cheaper on amazon, so thank you for that.
I still didn't get a verified answer about whether there's a performance difference between these drives, and that's one of the reasons of delaying my purchase.

Please help!

 

[Badger^2]

I already said there is one. But its slight. Small. Not that big.

The 3.5" 2TB drive is going to be faster.

But if you hooked up both drives side by side and just used them like you would normal day, you would not notice a difference. If you ran a disk testing program, it would show a difference. But you dont run a disk testing program all day.

You store files and run a backup. which USB 2 is fast enough for.

Unless you are working from the external drive, and you are working on some monster size files, you still might not notice a difference.

I have an older 400 gig FW00 WD Passport, with a 5400 RPM drive. I work from it all ding dong day. Works just as fast as the internal drive.

And BH Photo is the same price as amazon, but free shipping.