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USB Drive or an External Hard Drive?

Odysee

Odysee

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 13, 2007
257
100
Manchester, UK
Hey guys - wanting to get some external storage to keep photos/videos and backups of one of my websites.

The obvious benefit being the USB drives are physically smaller, is there any performance, reliability benefits of purchasing a USB drive instead of an external hard drive?
 
USB flash drives can be crazily slow to write to - most don't even advertise a write speed, only a read speed, because writing is woefully slower.

How much space do you want? I guess it can't be much if you're considering a flash drive? Personally I'd get an external SSD. No moving parts and greater reliability than a spinning rust drive, but also not crazily expensive if you just get a SATA 2.5" SSD (compared with e.g. a high performance NVMe M.2).
 
Stephen.R said:
USB flash drives can be crazily slow to write to - most don't even advertise a write speed, only a read speed, because writing is woefully slower.

How much space do you want? I guess it can't be much if you're considering a flash drive? Personally I'd get an external SSD. No moving parts and greater reliability than a spinning rust drive, but also not crazily expensive if you just get a SATA 2.5" SSD (compared with e.g. a high performance NVMe M.2).
Click to expand...

To be honest, I'm only looking for around 100GB, if that!
 
I can see why a flash drive seems temping, given the size you want. I honestly think you'll regret it once you try to use it. The read speed on my Sandisk (https://www.sandisk.com/home/mobile-device-storage/ultra-dual-drive-usb-type-c) is "up to 150MB/sec" but the write speed is only around 45MB/sec. Compare that to a regular 2.5" SATA SSD in a USB case, which gets just below/above 400MB/sec on writes/reads, respectively.

Screen Shot 2019-02-06 at 18.45.32.png
Screen Shot 2019-02-06 at 18.42.52.png
 
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In theory, because a disk drive has moving parts and is mechanical, it will always be less reliable than a solid state device like a USB pen drive. But, all devices have their limits. I'd endorse the recommendation that you use the money you'll 'save' by going with a USB pen drive to back up to two of them - or even three.
 
Get a USB3 SSD drive, say, 240gb in capacity.
They are reasonably priced and it will serve you well.
 
I use a range of USB thumb drives, SSDs, & HDDs. They all have their advantages.

@OP:
If your use is only backup, backups are done only occasionally (monthly, ...), and size needed is 128Gb or less then using USB3.0 thumbdrives (note the plural) is reasonable. Get at least 2 and backup to them alternately. Using backup or syncing software (I frequently use FreeFileSync) to limit the files written to the drive each session, as opposed to copying all files every time, can also mitigate the speed issues as you will only be writing new or changed files each session. If you are doing full backups more frequently (daily, ...) then the thumb drives' speed disadvantage can begin to become an issue.
 
Odysee said:
To be honest, I'm only looking for around 100GB, if that!
Click to expand...
[doublepost=1565033521][/doublepost]Best bet is a SSD like Fishrrman sugests.:)
[doublepost=1565033571][/doublepost]
matreya said:
I wouldn't trust a USB stick drive for longer term storage.

I have one of these, and it's actually cheaper atm than the 250GB model...

Samsung 500GB T5 Portable Solid-State Drive (Blue)
Click to expand...
[doublepost=1565033632][/doublepost]Thats what i have matreya there good.:)
 
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