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    Question about external harddrives

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by marcklaser, Aug 25, 2008.

  1. marcklaser

    marcklaser Notebook Consultant

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    Is it possible to have my IDE hard drive have an enclosure for it to be external? Also, how would I use it with the eSata port the dv5 has? Is it any different?
     
    marcklaser, Aug 25, 2008
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  2. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    You can put the IDE HDD into an external enclosure. However, I think you will need to use either a USB or Firewire interface. I don't know of an enclosure which connects an IDE HDD to eSATA.

    John
     
    John Ratsey, Aug 25, 2008
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  3. plsdonotbug

    plsdonotbug Guest

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    You need to buy a IDE case, and if you want to use e-sata, which is faster than USB, you need to buy an IDE E-sata enclosure... But if you have a slow hard drive, e-sata is no use. Like say a 2.5" 5400rpm notebook drive is not faster than the e-sata cable. I suggest if you have a slow drive, just buy an ordinary USB IDE enclosure from your computer shop/a online shop.


    @ [John Ratsey]
    There is no IDE e-sata enclosure? I thought there was... But anyways, IDE is quite slow, whats the point of e-sata? Sata + e-sata makes sense...
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 8, 2015
    plsdonotbug, Aug 25, 2008
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  4. marcklaser

    marcklaser Notebook Consultant

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    I fairly new to this. When you say IDE is slow, does that mean a 7200rpm IDE drive is reads/writes slower than a SATA one?

    Anyway, the HD I have is a 7200rpm Seagate one.

    Thanks for the replies by the way.
     
    marcklaser, Aug 25, 2008
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  5. NAS Ghost

    NAS Ghost Notebook Deity

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    No, IDE is the interface it connects to which is whats slow.
     
    NAS Ghost, Aug 25, 2008
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  6. marcklaser

    marcklaser Notebook Consultant

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    I see.
    Do you guys have any suggestions? i.e. Which brand/model to buy?
     
    marcklaser, Aug 25, 2008
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  7. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    There's this enclosure (I've got a couple). It supports both IDE and SATA HDDs but, whereas you can use either USB or eSATA with an STA HDD, it only supports IDE <> USB.

    However, I've now looked a bit harder and found this, which supports both types of disk and both interfaces. "Quad interface" seems to be the magic words.

    But I can't find any enclosure which offers only IDE <> eSATA.

    John

    PS: See this thread for an example of the difference between USB and eSATA performance.
     
    John Ratsey, Aug 25, 2008
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  8. marcklaser

    marcklaser Notebook Consultant

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    Thanks for the links. I'll see what my dad can get for me since he's the one in the US.

    I'm thinking though, would it be better if I just bought an external hard drive rather than a converter? After all, the drive I have is only 80gb, and it is pretty huge as well.

    Are external hard drives any faster? Or just the same?
     
    marcklaser, Aug 25, 2008
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  9. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    Speed depends on (a) the make and model of the HDD and (b) the interface.

    eSATA removes the interface bottleneck and the HDD speed will be the same as if it is inside the computer. If you buy a ready-made external HDD then (i) they tend to charge a price premium for eSATA and (ii) there can be some uncertainty about what HDD is in the enclosure. In the 2.5" size, 320GB 5400rpm doesn't have much of a price premium and will have good performance. If your Seagate 7200 is 80GB then it is relatively old (I deduce it is 7200.1 if it is IDE) and the performance isn't outstanding by current standards. See the charts at Tom's Hardware. It is also quite power-hungry.

    John
     
    John Ratsey, Aug 25, 2008
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  10. marcklaser

    marcklaser Notebook Consultant

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    Yeah, my HD is a few years old already. I think it's a Seagate Barracuda.

    Anyway, I've 15 or so days left to decide upon this so I guess I'll keep reading around and stuff.

    Again, thanks for the information and the links.
     
    marcklaser, Aug 25, 2008
    #10