Simple for movies,media, etc?

First of all, downloading torrents directly onto the external hard drive would save you a lot of tmie, since downloading it onto the PC and then putting it on the hard drive would be a pointless waste of time. Secondly, buying a USB 3.0 device is a nice investment, since it's supposed to be, like, 3 times faster. However, you will only be able to use that performance if your motherboard supports USB 3.0 speeds. If it does not, you will only be using the 2.0 speeds anyway.

Bottom line, if your motherboard supports USB 3.0, get it. Your patience will thank you.

JellyBOMB

Or you can use a $99 2BAY_NAS, that I used to download BT w/o turn on my PC - Saving power, and your PC/HTPC can access it at the same time.

Of course this is just a basic NAS with iTUNE and BT download built-in

Yes my MOBO is 3.0 capable....so instead of downloading torrents to something like C://MyDocuments....etc I should just download them directly to my external drive correct? How does the 2.0/3.0 connection affect speed? I mean if I just plug my EHD into my PC and download movies wouldnt my PC have an affect on the speed of which a movie is downloaded versus the 2/3.0 USB? when does the 3.0 speed take affect? Thanks

Yes?

it doesn't matter, because your internet connection is not faster than even USB2.
Can you download 4GB in 5minutes? No? then it's not an issue you have to worry about. (if this happened to be yes, then you do have an issue to worry about).


If I were you I'd download to the PC, and then copy it over to the External. This will reduce the "wear" of constant writing to the external slowly over the hours of your downloading. It will also ensure the copy is a contiguous file with no fragmentation.

You may have particular torrenting software that can help do this, if it downloads to a temp directory to assemble the file prior to moving it to the final destination. You could also set up your torrenting software to avoid fragmentation, but the filecopy will take care of that for sure.
Theoretically the external drives is the same, but if you really plan to move that external around, it's subject to more mechanical abuse, so you want to keep it as pristine as possible.


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The second question you had about 2.5 and 3.5 form is actually really important.

2.5 form internally has a laptop harddrive, 3.5form internally has a regular desktop harddrive.

However, they have different purposes.
The 3.5 is meant to be mainly stationary and will be relatively bulky with it's own power cord and usually a fan in the box the size of a paperback book.

While the 2.5 is meant to be on-the-go. It doesn't require extra power cord will be about the size of a large smartphone and could fit in your pocket, or even tape-able to the cover of your laptop.

However with this comes a tradeoff, the 3.5 harddrives should be significantly faster then the 2.5 harddrives and allow for higher capacities-the same differences between laptop and desktop harddrives.

I have downloaded files directly to externals and i have had no problems. However i think getting a 2nd internal hard drive would be the way to go, but that's my preference there. IMO you would have to have a back up of everything you don't want to lose either.