p.1 #1 · BUS Powered vs AC powered external drives
Hey all! With Black Friday upon us I’m looking to update my external hard drives. As someone who only uses a laptop, a portable bus powered drive is certainly appealing, but I’m curious/wary of performance/reliability compared to an AC powered, non “mobile drive”.
I know I need a cloud option too, just like to have a standard drive or two as well. Any thoughts or insight is much appreciated!
p.1 #3 · BUS Powered vs AC powered external drives
EB-1 wrote:
The 2TB Samsung T5 is a nice mini external SSD that fits in the pocket and performs quite well.
EBH
Thanks! Those t5 are so nice but are a little out of my price range for the size I am going to need. To your point, I’ve heard nothing but amazing things about them, though!
p.1 #4 · BUS Powered vs AC powered external drives
Bus powered SSDs work fine.
But if you really need external storage and your situation is such that AC power is a viable and available consideration, then don't go with an SSD at all, but go with the economical high capacity of a hard disk drive.
(The following presumes you know you don't want a NAS, but something that just directly hot swaps via USB.)
In either case, but especially with a hard disk drive, I have found that an enclosure that has some intelligence is better than a dumb enclosure. By an intelligent enclosure, I mean one that can monitor the status of the computer it's attached to and automatically (and safely) power the drives up and down with the computer.
I have found the dumb enclosures unreliable in powering the drives back up when I turn the computer on (or reconnect it), and also short-lived. They tend to just suddenly die all together.
I've had good luck operationally with MediaSonic enclosures. They come in both RAID 1 and JBOD varieties. They are inexpensive, but I don't recommend them because the cooling fans are extremely loud (they sound like someone gargling gravel) and the indicator LEDs are extremely bright. I've got mine in a closet adjacent to the computer to shut out the noise and light.
But there are other brands out there with similar capabilities and hopefully quieter fans.
