Which should I get ide or sata enclosure?

[toru310]

Hi, I'll be buying a hard drive plus an enclosure, the problem is that they have no ide hard drive in stock so I was thinking of buying a sata instead but the enclosure for a sata hard drive is two times more expensive than the ide enclosure so what should I do? Should I wait for the ide hard drive or get a sata plus sata enclosure instead?


The ide and sata harddrives (seagate) here have the same price...

Also I'm planning of moving huge files to my enclosure any tips? Worse case scenario is a black out...

[Claies]

SATA, no question. IDE is considered antiquated by now.

The question is why would you want to do that anyway? External hard drives might actually be cheaper if you look out for sales. If you ran out of space in your desktop for hard drives, swiping the smallest one out would usually suffice.

[grey_moon]

I second Claies' suggestion, since most mobo's and barebones boxes are all going to support SATA now, so might as well future proof your purchases as much as possible. Thinking of a scenario where u might decided to swap the disk into your PC if you want to upgrade the size of your external storage.

Moving files? Don't! Copy, compare file properties or directories, if super important files get a sync program to do a integrity check and delete the originals then you are happy.

[bayoab]

If you already have any devices which can handle SATA, then get that. (The price difference should only be a few dollars (~$5), not double.) If you don't have anything else that can support a SATA drive, then get IDE. There is no point of having a single SATA drive if something were to go wrong and IDE is not going away any time soon.

[toru310]

Moving files? Don't! Copy, compare file properties or directories, if super important files get a sync program to do a integrity check and delete the originals then you are happy

So my files can get harmed in the moving process?

I'm not actually moving all my files only episodes of animes thats huge...

[grey_moon]

Originally Posted by Migufuchi Fusutsu

So my files can get harmed in the moving process?

I'm not actually moving all my files only episodes of animes thats huge...

Hmm I guess this is under hedging your bets. For example if your machine crashes half way during a move. What file was half moved? At least with copying you can over write the destination and be sure.

[jpwong]

SATA will transfer faster, that's basically all you'd be looking at if you were to never use the drive for anything other than an external. You could max the 480Mbps bus speed with a SATA drive, though if you only plan on using it for strait up storage, either's fine if you don't care how long it will take to transfer files.

[toru310]

Originally Posted by grey_moon

Hmm I guess this is under hedging your bets. For example if your machine crashes half way during a move. What file was half moved? At least with copying you can over write the destination and be sure.

Ah so thats what you meant...I get it now.

SATA will transfer faster, that's basically all you'd be looking at if you were to never use the drive for anything other than an external. You could max the 480Mbps bus speed with a SATA drive, though if you only plan on using it for strait up storage, either's fine if you don't care how long it will take to transfer files.

Yeah I also read a review about sata drives and they do transfer much faster than ide drives....


Also one more thing since I will be transferring all my anime to a external drive the storage drive in my desktop will be fragmented should I defragment it or not???

[kucigaromeo]

SATA enclosure twice the price I assume it has eSATA connection. I can assure it worth the price if you want more speed. With USB the transfer is 60 MB/s max (but usually stuck on 20-30 MB/s), but with eSATA you can get 80 MB/s, or about as fast as the internal HDD.

If you're not using FAT32 and all you transfered is anime (large files), you don't have to worry about fragmentation.

[jpwong]

Basically yeah, the SATA drive will transfer faster than the PATA drive will. If you have to use USB2.0 connection, you will be much slower than if you could use eSATA, but still substancially faster than the PATA version.

I guess the other thing to consider is what are you using right now? If the hard disks you're transfering off of are all EIDE PATA disks, then even if you have a SATA drive, your top speed is going to be dictated by how fast your computer can read the data off your hard drives.

Honestly, if you just plan on using this as a giant anime storage device, either one is fine, I have a bunch of USB2.0 external drives that all have PATA disks in them and I can watch stuff off them perfectly fine. They may not transfer as fast as if I had gotten SATA versions, but I can always do other things while the files copy onto or off the disks.

If you're on an older system that doesn't have SATA drives inside, it won't make a big difference whichever one you get, you might choose to get the SATA one for future use when you will undoubtedly get a new computer, but that's up to you.

[toru310]

I think I will get the sata now thanks to your opinions.

Also are there tips in preserving your external harddrives(like what not to do)??? cause I seen some fail.....


Edit: What? I don't have to defrag it even if I moved huge amount of files?(episodes if anime) why is that???

[grey_moon]

Originally Posted by Migufuchi Fusutsu

I think I will get the sata now thanks to your opinions.

Also are there tips in preserving your external harddrives(like what not to do)??? cause I seen some fail.....


Edit: What? I don't have to defrag it even if I moved huge amount of files?(episodes if anime) why is that???

Keep them out of sunlight, keep them cool (so not next to the heater), shocks are a no no. Disconnect them safely using the OS before the power button. Basically follow all the wotnottodo stuff in the manual

[toru310]

Originally Posted by grey_moon

Keep them out of sunlight, keep them cool (so not next to the heater), shocks are a no no. Disconnect them safely using the OS before the power button. Basically follow all the wotnottodo stuff in the manual

Thanks alot......

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by Migufuchi Fusutsu

I don't have to defrag it even if I moved huge amount of files?(episodes if anime) why is that???

Because the drive is empty when you begin. Copying all the files to an empty drive will create a nice, neat arrangement with little to no fragmentation.

Fragmention occurs when a program has to write to a file that already exists, but there's no space for the additional material in the same physical location on the disk. So the new material has to be written in a separate area then chained together logically with the original file.

I don't use Windows, but I believe fragmentation really isn't that important with NTFS, the filesystem used by all modern Windows systems. Fragmentation was a natural consequence of the way MS-DOS wrote files to the disk, but my understanding is that it's less of a problem for NTFS.

Also the only effect of fragmentation is to slow down file transfers since the heads on the drive have to seek data from a wider number of physical locations. It really has nothing to do with the integrity of your data.

[toru310]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Because the drive is empty when you begin. Copying all the files to an empty drive will create a nice, neat arrangement with little to no fragmentation.

Fragmention occurs when a program has to write to a file that already exists, but there's no space for the additional material in the same physical location on the disk. So the new material has to be written in a separate area then chained together logically with the original file.

I don't use Windows, but I believe fragmentation really isn't that important with NTFS, the filesystem used by all modern Windows systems. Fragmentation was a natural consequence of the way MS-DOS wrote files to the disk, but my understanding is that it's less of a problem for NTFS.

Also the only effect of fragmentation is to slow down file transfers since the heads on the drive have to seek data from a wider number of physical locations. It really has nothing to do with the integrity of your data.

I'm sorry I think I elaborated my question wrong, what I was trying to say is what will happen to my old storage drive since I moved some huge files(anime)??? will it be fragmented? (example: huge files from d: (storage) moved to e: (external harddrive) I think It'll make a big gap due to that move of files..

[jpwong]

Honestly it depends. It might not be required. Ussually it's not a problem if you're moving them off a storage drive because it would have been fragmented very little in the first place.

If you're using XP, just use the little check drive feature in the defragmenter to see how fragmented the drive is.

[toru310]

Originally Posted by jpwong

Honestly it depends. It might not be required. Ussually it's not a problem if you're moving them off a storage drive because it would have been fragmented very little in the first place.

If you're using XP, just use the little check drive feature in the defragmenter to see how fragmented the drive is.

I see....it won't corrupt my files right? I did defragment my os drive but I haven't tried it in my storage drive....it scares me....

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by jpwong

Basically yeah, the SATA drive will transfer faster than the PATA drive will. If you have to use USB2.0 connection, you will be much slower than if you could use eSATA, but still substancially faster than the PATA version.

Is this true, and if it is, what's the reason for this? I just can't believe that USB 2.0 is a faster interface that a PATA drive.

I mean, ATA100 is 100 MB/s, isn't it? USB 2.0 is 480 mbps, or roughly 60 MB/s. Further, as was pointed out, USB 2.0 suffers from protocol overhead, so it's more likely to sustain between 30-40 MB/s. Either way, a PATA drive is being limited by USB. A SATA drive can transfer much faster than a PATA drive, but only when you're comparing both types of drives as they are connected on the cables that define them. Unless there's a factor I'm unaware of, a SATA drive on USB 2.0 and a PATA drive on USB 2.0 shouldn't make a difference - you're going to get USB 2.0 speeds either way. Seek and access times will be influenced by the RPM and individual characteristics of the drive itself (how many platters, perpendicular, etc.).

If we jump up to using a Firewire 800 enclosure, maybe we can start to say a SATA drive might be better, but even then it doesn't seem very likely...

[jpwong]

Well, I don't know, but the computer guys at work have told me that a PATA drive will not max the USB transfer speeds because the disks aren't fast enough. But I'm looking at wiki, and seems like they're wrong.

Though you may still consider getting the SATA one (assuming it has the dual USB/eSATA slots) in case you eventually plan on getting a computer with an eSATA plug. Personally I'd go with whatever's cheapest since you're just using it for external storage, but that's just my personal opinion.

[toru310]

A little off topic, how about sata Dvd writers will it have the same speed as the sata hard drive??

Also a question about light scribe...I know it can make a label for a cd but how is that? do i need to change the ink or something?