External Drive Questions

[SteveTam93]

Hello,

 

I just had a few questions regarding external drives.  I was looking up portable hard drives and came across portable SSD's, which I never even knew a portable version existed.  I definitely notice a difference between the two when both drives are hooked inside the pc, what about them externally?

 

1. Are there any considerable differences between a portable SSD vs. portable HDD?  The only thing I can really think of is the performance at which the contents within the drives load.  Other than that, they both only store data.  Please correct me if I am wrong.

2. Is the price difference justifiable between the two? (storage capacity to price per dollar)

 

Thank you!

[minibois]

1. Well yeah, of course speeds at which you can export/import data is a lot faster, especially with tons of small files, but you can also install programs onto an external drive (something I did a ton in school to just have programs handy, instead of having to download them all the time), which of course will be a lot faster on an SSD.

2. Hard to say, I explicitly mentioned how lots of small files could be a exported a ton faster with external SSD's, but when zipped: external HDD's are not slow. It will also depend on if you have an SSD in the system you're using the external drive on. If not: not worth it.

But furthermore, the smaller physical size and no moving parts inside could be a nice bonus with an external SSD.

[kb5zue]

A portable SSD is nothing more than an oversized flashdrive. 

[k-lub]

You do not have to baby SSD's as much as HDD's if you are moving around a lot.

[WereCatf]

6 minutes ago, kb5zue said:

A portable SSD is nothing more than an oversized flashdrive. 

That's bullshite. Flash-sticks generally have <20MB/s write-speeds and read-speeds of <80MB/s, but an SSD over USB3.0 can reach hundreds of megabytes per second, both for reads and writes. Latency is also lower on SSDs than flash-sticks. USB3.0 tops out at a theoretic 5Gbps-speed, which is lower than SATA3 of 6Gbps, but it's still plenty fast.

[BWLServers]

Portable SSD's are faster, smaller, and much less prone to damage from physical trauma.

The cost is justified if you work environment is relatively hostile and requires much faster speeds.

So likely not.

[ProjectBox153]

17 minutes ago, kb5zue said:

A portable SSD is nothing more than an oversized flashdrive. 

No, they're not. The portable solid state drives I've seen are just SATA SSDs with a custom SATA to USB 3 interface. You could break them open and get a SATA drive out if you wanted to. Generally portable SSDs are much more robust to physical shock than a mechanical drive would be. Just don't get the SanDisk Extreme 5xx series. I have seen multiple instances of their USB connectors coming off. 

[kb5zue]

5 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

That's bullshite. Flash-sticks generally have <20MB/s write-speeds and read-speeds of <80MB/s, but an SSD over USB3.0 can reach hundreds of megabytes per second, both for reads and writes. Latency is also lower on SSDs than flash-sticks. USB3.0 tops out at a theoretic 5Gbps-speed, which is lower than SATA3 of 6Gbps, but it's still plenty fast.

Obviously you have me confused with someone else.  If you read my original post, I said that a portable SSD is nothing more than an oversized flashdrive and I still stand by that statement.  I never said anything about speed, I never said anything about contents, never said anything about capacity, etc.  Obviously you have never disassembled a flashdrive nor have you ever disassembled an SSD.  If or when you do, you will notice the basic contents of both devices are the same.  They usually contain a controller and/or a few IC's.  The larger the drive, the more IC's but the idea is the same.  Flashdrives DO NOT contain any moving parts and neither does an SSD.  Take one each, one flashdrive and one SSD, open them up and take them apart then compare the parts and you will see the basic idea is the same in both of them.

 

[WereCatf]

3 minutes ago, BWLServers said:

So likely not.

It kind of depends on whether one has an excess SSD as a leftover from upgrading their rig, too; I have a 32GB mSATA and 64GB SATA SSD as a leftover, and it cost me a couple of bucks to buy USB3.0-enclosures for them on eBay and they serve very nicely as speedy portable drives now. If one has a game with a lot of mods/addons and they like to play that game a lot, it's handy to just chuck the game on an external SSD and swap it between the laptop and desktop, thereby always carrying all the mods and settings along, so that again may affect whether it's worth it or not.

[ProjectBox153]

1 minute ago, kb5zue said:

Obviously you have me confused with someone else.  If you read my original post, I said that a portable SSD is nothing more than an oversized flashdrive and I still stand by that statement.  I never said anything about speed, I never said anything about contents, never said anything about capacity, etc.  Obviously you have never disassembled a flashdrive nor have you ever disassembled an SSD.  If or when you do, you will notice the basic contents of both devices are the same.  They usually contain a controller and/or a few IC's.  The larger the drive, the more IC's but the idea is the same.  Flashdrives DO NOT contain any moving parts and neither does an SSD.  Take one each, one flashdrive and one SSD, open them up and take them apart then compare the parts and you will see the basic idea is the same in both of them.

Still wrong. If flash drives were just smaller SSDs, then why don't we have a few that are larger/thicker than others? And they don't use the SATA standard that I've seen in portable SSDs. 

[kb5zue]

The term "SSD" means "Solid State Device", hence no moving parts.  I removed the SSD from a trashed laptop, got a case for it with USB3.0 adapter cable and now it is an 80GB USB3.0 flashdrive.

 

[kb5zue]

1 minute ago, Jamiec1130 said:

Still wrong. If flash drives were just smaller SSDs, then why don't we have a few that are larger/thicker than others? And they don't use the SATA standard that I've seen in portable SSDs. 

The physical size of a flash drive is not determined by how large the capacity of the drive is.  The "physical" size of the drive is determined by the physical size of the chips contained within the drive.  They are two completely different things.  Sort of like a shoe box.  If I have a shoe box big enough to hold a single pair of size 15 shoes, then I can only put in one pair of size 15 shoes.  BUT, if I take that same shoe box and instead of putting inside the 15 shoes, I instead put in size 2 toddler shoes, then I will be able to put in at least a half dozen pairs of those size 2 toddler shoes.

 

Either way, the box remained the same size.  It just depends on what you put inside that box.  So basically an SSD is nothing more than an oversized flash drive.

 

The physical dimensions of a flash drive, is determined by the physical size of the chips contained within the drive.  Yes, it is possible to take two identical flash drives and connect them in a Raid setup.  It isn't advised but it can still be done.  When you do that, you have not changed the physical dimensions of the drives.  That remained the same, but essentially you have changed the over all capacity of the drives.  That was done by setting them up in Raid.

 

Lets say I have a 100GB external SSD.  What is the difference between a 100GB external SSD and 5 each - 20GB flashdrives?  The total capacity (100GB) of the two setups is the same.  The exception is the first one is just one drive of 100GB, but the second one is five drives of 20.  So, is there really a difference?  Not necessarily other than physical dimensions.  The 100GB drive is a half inch thick, three and a half inches wide and 4 inches tall whereas the five individual flash drives are one half inch thick, one inch wide and three inches tall.

 

The only difference between the two is the package that each device is contained in.

 

Before condemning me and telling me how stupid I am because I don't know the difference between a flash drive and an external SSD, do us both a favor and read this post again, slowly.

 

[kb5zue]

4 minutes ago, kb5zue said:

The physical size of a flash drive is not determined by how large the capacity of the drive is.  The "physical" size of the drive is determined by the physical size of the chips contained within the drive.  They are two completely different things.  Sort of like a shoe box.  If I have a shoe box big enough to hold a single pair of size 15 shoes, then I can only put in one pair of size 15 shoes.  BUT, if I take that same shoe box and instead of putting inside the 15 shoes, I instead put in size 2 toddler shoes, then I will be able to put in at least a half dozen pairs of those size 2 toddler shoes.

 

Either way, the box remained the same size.  It just depends on what you put inside that box.  So basically an SSD is nothing more than an oversized flash drive.

 

The physical dimensions of a flash drive, is determined by the physical size of the chips contained within the drive.  Yes, it is possible to take two identical flash drives and connect them in a Raid setup.  It isn't advised but it can still be done.  When you do that, you have not changed the physical dimensions of the drives.  That remained the same, but essentially you have changed the over all capacity of the drives.  That was done by setting them up in Raid.

 

Lets say I have a 100GB external SSD.  What is the difference between a 100GB external SSD and 5 each - 20GB flashdrives?  The total capacity (100GB) of the two setups is the same.  The exception is the first one is just one drive of 100GB, but the second one is five drives of 20.  So, is there really a difference?  Not necessarily other than physical dimensions.  The 100GB drive is a half inch thick, three and a half inches wide and 4 inches tall whereas the five individual flash drives are one half inch thick, one inch wide and three inches tall.

 

The only difference between the two is the package that each device is contained in.

 

Before condemning me and telling me how stupid I am because I don't know the difference between a flash drive and an external SSD, do us both a favor and read this post again, slowly.

 

Here's another good example.  I have a few old notebook ram sticks laying around, they are SODIMM's at 1GB each for a total of 4GB.  I also have 2 sticks of DDR3 at 2GB each for a total of 4GB.

 

The physical packages that each of these things are contained in (ram sticks) are completely different.  The first are SODIMMS and the second is DDR3.  But the total of each is 4GB.  So, even though they are different, they are both the same, right?

[BWLServers]

OK, this is ridiculous. An SSD is not a USB flash drive, is not DDRX, is not a hard drive. They're all different. Arguing over the differences between a USB drive and an SSD (speed, ease of use, connection standard, fragility, usability, warranty, lifespan, etc) is pointless. They aren't the same.