Fastest external drives on the market? [closed]

Question

What are the fastest external drives on the market today that you recommend and is an eSata interface important or will USB 2.0 cut it?

Answer 1

To quote from Wikipedia:

Some single disks can transfer almost 120 MB/s during real use, more than twice the maximum transfer rate of USB 2.0 or FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394a) and well in excess of the maximum transfer rate of FireWire 800, though the S3200 FireWire 1394b spec reaches ~400 MB/s (3.2Gbit/s). Finally, some low-level drive features, such as S.M.A.R.T., may not be available through USB or FireWire bridging. eSATA does not suffer from these issues.

That said, it is possible that newer specs will make other things faster than eSata. (Isn't USB 3 supposed to be 4.8Gbit/sec)? So for now, if speed is your primary concern, I'd go with an eSata interface.

Answer 2

@Blade: Aren't fast drives critical to be a productive programmer?

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/11/01/tip-trick-hard-drive-speed-and-visual-studio-performance.aspx

http://beta.stackoverflow.com/questions/19019/ideal-computer-for-software-development

Answer 3

I believe that the best option is to get a good eSATA enclosure and put some 10k or 15k rpm drive in it.

Answer 4

If you want the fastest drives available I'd go SAS myself. I like the HP P800 PCI-e adapter tied to the HP MSA 50 or 70 disk enclosures. You can then fill them with their 2.5 SFF 146GB 15krpm disks in a RAID 10 array. We use lots of these and they are seriously quick in both sequential and random tasks.

Answer 5

Esata interface with a modern performance SSD drive would be the quickest setup you could buy.

You would be limited on space, but that would depend on if your needs are more performance or space.