Seagate or Toshiba

dai_katana

March 22, 2012 7:27:30 AM

I am thinking of getting an external HDD for storage as my laptop cannot store all the games I have. I am going to use the drive not as a backup per se but rather as a regular drive (but I will only connect it to the computer when I am going to be playing the game on it). I found 2 drives that are of affordable price on Amazon:

Toshiba 1 TB USB 3.0 Canvio ($105)
Seagate Expansion 2 TB ($128)

Which one is more reliable (last longer) and appropriate for the type of use I intend for it? Should I skip this endeavor and buy an internal HDD then get an enclosure for it instead?

(PS: I do have a docking station but it is currently occupied with another such HDD and that HDD is always on as all the files on there are constantly read and written to; so if I am going to get another internal HDD I will need an enclosure.)

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dai_katana

March 22, 2012 12:59:49 PM

tomatthe said:

You won't get anything other then people guessing at which of those is more reliable.

That is a bit of a strange setup in trying to run games directly from an external hard drive. I suppose that will work, but the usb connection is much slower then having a drive connected internally, and things may take a really long time to load. If you laptop has usb 3 support I would probably go for a usb 3 drive based on the way you want to use it.

Did you consider getting a larger internal drive for you machine? That would be a good deal more work, but seems like a cleaner way to do this.

Hmm... Well, my machine is a laptop, so placing the HDD internally isn't really an easy option. Had it been a PC, I would have considered it. What about e-sata? I think my laptop has an e-sata port... would that be faster?

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tomatthe

March 22, 2012 5:49:33 PM

e-sata likely would be be faster, but I was more meaning it's an odd setup running games directly from an external drive. I didn't mean adding another drive internally, I meant removing the one you are currently using and replacing it with a larger drive. Running things off the external drive will probably be fine, I just haven't seen others using that setup in general.

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dai_katana

April 10, 2012 7:50:14 AM

tomatthe said:

e-sata likely would be be faster, but I was more meaning it's an odd setup running games directly from an external drive. I didn't mean adding another drive internally, I meant removing the one you are currently using and replacing it with a larger drive. Running things off the external drive will probably be fine, I just haven't seen others using that setup in general.

Indeed. I am also starting to wonder how good these externals (the ones that come as external drives from the manufacturer) are in terms of reliability.