jlong4

I am looking for a bit of advice...and trust I can get some solid info from the people on this great site!

I am going to be getting an external hard drive for my laptop and am curious on some of the tech specs that are listed on a couple of options. One is the Maxtor 80gb hard drive and the other is the Iomega 80gb hard drive. They both have a 7200 spindle rate but the Maxtor is rated at up to 480 Mbps while the Iomega is rated at 25 MBps...this seems to be a big discrepancy when it comes to data transfer. They both have pretty much the same data seek rate. The Iomega is smaller in size. They both are 2.0/1.1 USB external hard drives.

Any thoughts on either product and also the data transfer rate issue would be welcome.

Thanks!

mpbasher52

definetaly make sure u r using usb 2.0 on your laptop, i find that usb 1.1 is way to slow for an external hard drive, and only acceptable for imput devices like keyboards and mouses...

if you only have 1.1, then i think there are usb 2.0 pcmcia cards, but i am not sure if the pcmcia part slows down usb 2.0's transfer rate

Swanny

I've got a consumer compaq laptop (2133AP I think) with an Adaptec USB2 card and it sucks. Transfer rates vary a lot. Sometimes it works well sometimes it crashes the computer. If you can - try before you buy. It appears compaq went cheap on their PC card chip. While it does _work_ it's performance is below par.

I know the 80gb disc & enclosure is good because on my work Dell it probably outperforms the internal disc.

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jlong4

I would be using it with a Dell Inspiron 8500. I guess what I was wondering is why the wide range between the two in transfer rates...one is up to 480 mbps and the other is up to 25 mbps. Not sure why but also wonder if it really matters in the long run... I would be using it mostly for media stuff, ie...videos, music, games, etc...

3X10^8

The Maxtor is definitely the better drive. Hard drives use electronic and mechanical parts. The difference between USB1.1/2.0 is a bit irrelevant, imo. Build quality of the drive is just as important, if not more so, than simply the the specs differentiating two different drives. There are essentially mechanical latencies which mostly hold back the performance of any disc drive. This can mostly be attributed to the inherent inertia of any mechanical component. It starts from the spindle and the platter to the read/write heads to the actuator.

Added in Edit:
This may help explain the dispcrepancy between two drives that may look the same spec-wise.

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grentz

you may want to consider a firewire drive with a firewire pc card if you dont have firewire on your laptop

Synth

I got myself an X-drive casing for my external drive. It also has a battery and slots for CF, SD and memory stick. Great for photographers who want to copy photos off their cards.

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Coffee Fiend

I have the Maxtor One Touch 160 GB. It has firewire and USB 2.0. It is an awsome drive but the software that came with it is the worst software I have ever seen. I downloaded Smartbackup for free though and it is great.