fastest usb 3.0 external hard drive ?

Hi, what's the fastest usb 3.0 external drive right now ? Not looking for ssd .. just need a drive where I can install games on, hoping to run games with usb 3.0 . Would it be fast enough to run without lag ? I would be playing on my macbook retina.. probably at 1900 x 1200 resolution. How is this drive ?

Amazon.com: HGST Touro Mobile Pro 1TB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive, Black (0S03559): Computers & Accessories

 

looking for something for under 80$ preferably. So pretty much whats the fastest usb 3.0 external drive I can find for under 80$ ?

 

Hi,
I have a Samsung 1TB USB 3 and a Toshiba HDTB120EK3CA Basics 2TB USB 3.0. Both hit about 93mb/s on USB 3 and the both work fine on a single USB port.

 

you will sacrifice storage capacity but I use a 128gig solid state drive in a usb3.0 enclosure. I'm notoriously clumsy with my drives and I've destroyed a couple simply from accidentally hiting them or dropping them while the platters/heads were moving about.

Now that I'm using an SSD, that's a thing of the past and I've noticed a much greater increase in transfer speeds. Not to mention it's totally silent.

 

I have a 2TB WD external drive and read/write speed is around 180MB/s

 

That seems out of HDD territory to me, unless it's a raptor in an enclosure, uses RAID 0 maybe or there is some manner of data compression. Not saying its impossible, just saying it find it very surprising.

Back on topic, fastest drive: DIY the fastest HDD you can find in a USB 3.0 enclosure.

 

How does tuoro mobile pro stack up to these external drives ? I thought tuoro pro was fast but these speeds posted seem to be even better ..

 

No, it is impossible. Normally we refer to the sustained transfer rates as the fastest the drive can operate at. But I have a feeling that DjSweetBazz is thinking about the burst transfer rate, or maybe thinking in megabits and not megabytes?

 

With any hard drive in a USB 3.0 enclosure, you will be bottlenecked by the actual mechanical HDD itself. So if you're going with a mechanical HDD in a USB 3.0 enclosure, you're going to be looking at typical HDD speeds without significant loss of speed due to the USB 3.0 interface.

However, as you would expect, you'd get a tremendous speed boost by using a USB 3.0 enclosure with an SSD in it. If you're actually running applications / games off of the USB 3.0 drive, and not just using it for bulk media storage (photos, music, videos, pr0n, etc), then you'd get a much better user experience with a USB 3.0 enclosure w/SSD.

 

While it is true that no HDD in existence can bottleneck a USB3.0 connection, a HDD on USB3.0 still beats a HDD on USB2.0 for large file transfers by a fair margin. The OP should know that there will alsways be some small latency induced by the USB protocol, its just the way it is. I doubt it will be game breaking though.

 

The absolute fastest is any 3.5inch hdd external enclosure plus the Seagate barracuda 3tb (for capacity) or the wd blue (for cost effective) internal drive. If you are looking to run games, sequential read Speed will determine level/game load times and sequential write Speed determines installation times.
Those hdds use the highest platter density of 1tb so they both can sustain about 180mb/s read/write which is pretty much the best you can get from any hdd.
However, this solution is very bulky and immobile as you may require auxiliary power plugs.

 

The absolute fastest has an average read/write of 150MB/s. Most of those drives are in the 120-130MB/s range for average sustained read/write.

 

In the more portable department, it's probably a DIY with the Hitachi 1 TB 7200 RPM drive or a 750 GB Momentus XT 7200 RPM given that the cache would speed some things up a bit.

 

so what are the optimal read speeds to play games from ? I don't care about install times.. I can't afford anything too expensive, was looking for something under 100$.. 80$ ideally.

the touro mobile pro is a 7200 rpm external hard drive..

 

Whatever you want. Whether I am gaming using a 5400rpm laptop drive, or a 7200rpm desktop drive, it only means I need to wait a few more seconds to start the game or load levels.

 

how about when playing multiplayer games, starcract II, LoL, any lag during actual gameplay ?

 

No, the gameplay is determined by the CPU+GPU+RAM of your MacBook, the Storage medium only affects the game loading, level loading and installation times.

I was going to suggest also, if you want some portability, you can get a 2.5inch HDD enclosure and use the new Hitachi 2.5inch 7200rpm 1tb drives that use 500mb platters. These perform at about 120mb/s average which is slower than the 3.5inch setup but you can move this around.

 

Check out the Seagate 1T for $60. Only 5400 drive, but for games, only game loading times affected as others posted. This drive has the removable nose USB3.0 interface that allows you to use as a drive dock with any make sata drive. Not sure with $$D but should work.

Is real world game loading times that noticeable thru usb 3.0 5400 or 7200 rpm drives?

Just reformat for the Mac...