Fast external hard drives

Are there any options for external hard drives that spin at 10,000 RPM or higher? Ideally it would be 1 TB or higher. Thanks.

 

No, I haven't heard of those beasts - although I did have a few vRaptors in external eSATA enclosures a few years ago (300GB max though...).

Just curious what you need this kind of storage performance for (and 'externally')?

 

Traditionally such fast drives are the Raptor drives or enterprise SAS drives which won't work. Theoretically you could remove the Raptor drive as it is a 2.5" in a 3.5" heatsink, though it is thicker than a standard 2.5" drive. I don't recommend it as they already run hot and are particularly noisy.

Have you considered an external with e-SATA? That will transfer faster than any 2.5" USB external hard drive.

 

The biggest common 10,000RPM HDD is the WD VelociRaptor 600GB, so no you won't find a 1TB or larger.

Are you going to be running stuff off the external drive, or using it for fast mass storage? Running stuff, you'd be better off with an SSD but the costs can go up quite a bit, though seeing your notebook specs you can probably afford it. For fast mass storage you can find a 7200RPM HDD that has the highest platter density. I think that around 600MB is the highest density platters right now. Don't know if they're trickling down to smaller drives, but the 3TB drives use that density so just go with a 3TB 7200RPM drive. Due to the platter density, sequential transfer performance will probably be similar to the VelociRaptor.

Of course you will need to use it on eSATA or USB 3.0, which I'm guessing/hoping your new and high end notebook has. Otherwise, if using USB 2.0 you may as well get a 5400RPM HDD since USB 2.0 will be the performance limiter.

Oh yeah, if possible find an external enclosure that has a fan. Many external drive bays (even aluminum ones) do not have direct contact between the HDD and the external aluminum. They often mount the HDD on a plastic tray which slides into the enclosure.

 

If you can find the proper enclosure:

See:
Three 2.5" SAS Drives: Enterprise Data Giants, Compared : 2.5? Enterprise Hard Drives


However, the 1TB Constellation (Seagate) is not the fastest of these top/current drives.

 

Thanks everyone for the replies. Yes, I was hoping to use it as a fast external drive for backup and storage purposes. Thing is, my current Lacie 1 TB drive (3.5" from 2008) is getting like 20-30 MB/s max transfer speed (USB 2.0 plugged in to my USB 3.0 on laptop). Sadly, my laptop has no eSATA. My friend has a portable 1.5 TB 2.5" drive that transfers at like 90 MB/s consistently (starting at 300 MB/s) with my laptop, so I was hoping for something similar but faster (his is 5400 RPM).

 

Since we are talking about fast external hard drives, I'm just going to post my question here instead of creating a thread:

Does anyone know if there are any 250GB external hard drives that support e-Sata and USB 2.0 as well as being 7200 RPM for under $60 shipped?

Thanks.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Right on the money. You just need to spend $30 on a USB 3.0 case for the drive.