SO YOU WANNA BUY A HARD DRIVE: PART II (Speed)

So you wanna buy a hard drive. If you’ve read my last post, “If You’re Gonna Shake it Back it Up,” you know that I’ve gone through a lot of hard drives. I mean, A LOT. I’ve lost them, dropped them, overheated them, you get the picture. However, because I’ve had to say goodbye to so many hard drives, I’ve also gotten really good at, well, buying external hard drives. And that’s why you’re here. Whether you’re a video game enthusiast, an editor, a photographer, an accountant, or a working mother of 9, somewhere out there is an external hard drive just waiting to back up your life. 

SO YOU WANNA BUY A HARD DRIVE: Part II (SPEED)

Before you even THINK about purchasing a new hard drive, you need to consider SPEED. By “speed” I am of course referring to the rate that your external drive read/writes/transfers data, not the illegal substance. Still, I have heard that the drug “speed” is a great way to be productive for weeks on end— you don’t even have to sleep! I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to the hard drive thing:

In my last post I discussed the difference between Solid State Drives (SSD), and Hard Disk Drives (HDD)— speed and price being the main distinguishing characteristics of the two drives. Solid state drives are exponentially more expensive than hard disk drives because they are capable of transferring files at an extraordinary rate. Before you decide to splurge, however, I must caution you: Your external hard drive is only as fast as the CONNECTOR you utilize when transferring files. Here’s what I mean: Most consumer external HDD drives nowadays come packaged with a USB 3.0 connector cable and/or a Firewire cable. The main reason for this is that most computers either have USB 3.0 capabilities, or a firewire port. If you’re still using USB 2.0 it’s probably a good time to update your computer.  

You can buy the most expensive, speediest, thunderbolt solid state drive on the market, but if your 13 inch macbook that your uncle gave you three years ago doesn’t have a thunderbolt port, that drive isn’t going to move any faster than your $50 USB 2.0 compatible drive will. eSATA, for example,  is one of the most expensive external hard drive interfaces, theoretically capable of (3000Mbps). That’s literally an entire order of magnitude faster than USB 2.0. Still, eSATA doesn’t provide power through the connector cable which means it requires either a USB cable for power, (AKA the data will travel at USB speeds making the fast speeds of eSATA irrelevant), a combined USB/eSATA cable and connecter, or an external AC adapter. Make sense? 

Let me break it down for you. Here are a few of the most common external drive connectors ordered from fastest to slowest:

Thunderbolt: Thunderbolt devices can be daisy-chained together to work with one connector on a laptop or desktop. Also like FireWire, the Thunderbolt interface can be used to boot a Mac (USB boot drives may not work on some Macs). Best of all, the Thunderbolt 2 interface has the fastest theoretical throughput: up to 20GBps. That’s speedy enough to transfer a full-length, high-definition movie in less than 30 seconds! It remains to be seen who adopts Thunderbolt aside from Apple. AMD has announced a competing technology called "Lightning Bolt," but it remains to be seen if much interest here will be in a competing interconnect technology. 

USB 3.0: USB 3.0 is becoming the port of choice because it provides faster transfer speeds than eSATA and USB 2.0 and requires minimal fuss— (almost all desktop and laptop PCs come with USB ports.) 

FIREWIRE: Almost as common as the USB 3.0, Firewire is faster than USB 2.0 and is good for daisy chaining several drives/devices to a single port. The most recent Mac’s don’t come equipped with a firewire port so this can cause potential compatibility problems in the future. Luckily, most consumer external drives come with a USB 3.0, as well as a firewire cable in order to remedy this particular issue. 

 

USB 2.0: USB 2.0 is by far the slowest method of data transferral. No one buys anything new that is only USB 2.0 compatible other than old people and “bargain” hunters. I like to think of a USB 2.0 connector like the Internet Explorer of the connector interface world.

PC Magazine gives some advice about what to do depending your computer’s connector interface compatibility: 

“If you are transferring lots of files over a speedy interface like eSATA (fast),USB 3.0 (faster), or Thunderbolt (fastest), then by all means go for the 7,200rpm (HDD) drive. However, if you're limited to USB 2.0 or FireWire 400/800, then trade speed for capacity and get the largest 5,400rpm (HDD) drive that your budget allows. If all out speed is your goal, multiple drives (7,200rpm, 10,000rpm, or SSD) over Thunderbolt 2 is the fastest (and most costly), with a single SSD connected via Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 as next fastest, and so on.” 

When it comes to convenience, USB, Thunderbolt, and FireWire all provide enough electrical power to run an attached drive, (unlike eSATA), so the only cord you’ll need to carry with you is the appropriate interface cable. This leads us to the topic of next week’s blog: portability and drive security. 

An Aside: Consider Yourself an Editor?

As someone who spends a fair amount of time editing video, I can be more specific about what speeds work best when you’re working with large files. As an amateur editor, you can get away with using a Firewire 400; but that’s the bare minimum you’re going to want to go especially if you don’t want any delays when scrubbing through your timeline. A thunderbolt connector interface, of course, remains the most optimal method of data transfer. I would recommend using a Thunderbolt, USB 3.0, or Firewire 800 connector in conjunction with a 7200 RPM hard disk drive. Next week I’ll be talking more about portability, but as an editor you should look to the future when buying expensive drives. Sure, 1 Tb MyPassport drives might cheap and convenient now, but these drives are meant for storage and often overheat/crash when they’re edited on for extended periods of time. Instead, it’s much more worth your money to buy a hard drive that is built to manage active files (active drives are usually equipped with an internal fan that prevents the drive from burning itself up.) While they may be more expensive up front, active drives are much less likely to crash and delete all of your current projects. 

If You're Gonna Shake it, Back it Up.

Prologue

Once upon a time, there lived a rather lazy, rather forgetful young woman who loved buying hard drives—Or at least, that’s what seemed to be the case*. This woman, I’ll refer to her as “Airin,” didn’t actually love buying hard drives. She just never backed up her work, and she always paid for it.

*If she used a case for her hard drives she wouldn’t have had to buy so many new ones

Before heading off to her first year at Ithaca College, Airin’s dad gifted the naive girl 2 new 1TB MyPassport hard drives. He gifted her also with some words of advice: 

“I gave you two of these for a reason Airin. One is for your everyday use, and the other is for backing up everything you put on that hard drive. Technology is unpredictable, and you don’t want to lose anything important if your main drives crashes.” 

Airin nodded absently. She didn’t actually hear a word he said because she was busy coming up with names for her hard drives. 

             This is Joey.                                                                                            This is James. 

Joey

James

They’re both dead now.

Damien

Joey died 7 months after he was named. Erin lost every project she had shot/made that year because she never backed Joey up. Not even once. Her father, feeling generous,  got her another hard drive for her next birthday— this time a 2TB drive. 

He scolded her for not backing up her work and she nodded in agreement. Actually, she wasn’t listening again. She was trying to decide whether to name the new drive Joshua, or Jasmine. 

She named it Damien instead. 

Five months later, Airin lost all of her projects from that Summer and the Fall semester when she lost the hard drive. She didn’t back Damien up. This time, she learned from her mistake.

“I’m going to back up my hard drive everyday until the die I die!” Airin vowed. 

For Christmas that year, her father got her, YET ANOTHER 1 TB hard drive. It looked just like James, and she named it “King George III.”

King George III

She began using King George. She didn’t back up King George. Not yet. She fully planned on backing up King George. The time never seemed quite right. Why, OH WHY had she not learned yet? She'd back it up tomorrow. Yes, that's right. TOMORROW she'll back King George up. Tomorrow...  

Four months of tomorrows passed. During finals week, King George died. Right on cue. Airin lost all of her work from that semester before the semester came to a close. A wise Mexican professor did all he could to help— but alas, the hard drive was dead. All of the projects she was working on were gone. With 5 days left before her projects were due, she had to start over. 

Airin did all she could. Here’s the animation she ended up turning in:

Now, for the big reveal. This story, my friends, is not the strange fiction tale I made it out to be. No, the truth is, I am Airin, and I have a bad history with hard drives. 

So what was it that caused so many of my hard drives to crash? What types of hard drives work best for storage? Best for editing? Least Expensive? Most Portable? Best for dropping down the stairs? 

My name is Erin, and I have the answers.

So You Wanna Buy a Hard Drive: Part I

Owning an external hard drive or two isn’t just a “media person” thing anymore. Everyone uses a computer nowadays for work, gaming, correspondence, or porn. (Sometimes all of these things). Investing in an external hard drive is like buying insurance for all of the content on your computer’s drive. 

This post is already pretty lengthy, so this week I'm just going to touch upon the most basic distinguishing factors of external hard drives. Next time I'll go into further detail about connector speeds, hard drive security, portability, size, and which hard drive is right for you specifically. Don't believe me?  Just you wait. Until then, the basics.

Sure you can buy a new computer if the internal disk crashes; but you can’t buy back all those naked photos of your ex girlfriend that you hid in the folder labeled: “Emails to Granny.” 

“Leaving your content on your computer without backing it up is a no-no for several important reasons. For one thing, it slows down your computer. And for another -- and this is crucial -- you run the risk of losing everything in the event of a hard-drive crash.” - Lisa Johnston ’s post on About.com http://www.about.com/ “Before You Buy an External Hard Drive”  http://peripherals.about.com/od/removablestorage/bb/BYBExternalHardDrive.htm

In short, until the Cloud gets faster at downloading our files, owning an external hard drive is your best bet for insuring your important content; whatever that may be.

Now that you’re set on buying an external drive, you need to decide what type of drive will work best for your needs and budget. There are two main categories of external drives— Solid State Drives (SSD), and Hard Disk Drives (HDD). 

If you own an external hard drive, chances are it’s a hard disk drive (HDD). HDD drives made up of platters (silverish circular discs) that store information on them. In order to read from or write to an HDD, an arm inside the drive has to move back and forth and make contact with different parts of the spinning disc. Because they have these moving parts, HDDs are more prone to break and slower when compared to SSD counterparts.

Solid State Drives lack the moving platters and have the capability to be extremely fast as well as safer than HDD drives. So why don't we all just use SSD drives you ask? 

Well, let me put it like this-- according to an article written by Joel Santo Domingo in PC Mag http://www.pcmag.com/ “How to Buy an External Harddrive,” as of February 2014 a simple 500GB USB 3.0 (spinning) hard drive (HDD) goes for about $80, while a 256GB USB 3.0 SSD goes for about $400. 

Yikes.   

  

For most people, it's probably best to invest in a HDD and just try not to mistake it with your favorite maraca. 

AGAIN, DO NOT SHAKE YOUR HDD EXTERNAL DRIVE LIKE A MARACA.  

(especially don't do this whilst you are transferring files and/or editing). 

If you have problem distinguishing your maracas from your hard drives, look for a drive that boasts “ruggedness” (reinforced exterior). LaCie, for example, sells one of the cheapest, most rugged external hard drives on the market today. Regardless, even the LaCie drive can't be jostled too much while it's transferring files.

If you don't love the orange, you can also buy accessory cases for most brands of drives. Please look out for my next posts going into further detail about drives.

For now, I leave you with this thought: If you're gonna shake it,  back it up.