External hard drives-What's your choice?

[John (Helldiver) Kennedy]

I'm looking to get an external hard drive for storing my 300+ gigabytes of steam games/mods and I was wondering what would be a good one to get? Forget about costs. I care for quality.
What's the best brand?
Do SDD's benefits improve games or is it mostly limited to files and operating systems?
Are the benefits of SDD worth the the extra $$?
As far as "bad blocks" and corruption go, is it better to have all games on one high-storage drive, or to divide them on two low-storage drives?

[⛧EyMi Mayhem⛧]

I use wd elements and passport, great brand, great drive(s) and the price is a-okay.
But wouldn't use external drives for games/mods.

The ssd will load your game faster, that's all.
Makes sense for games like fallout 4, skyrim or so ad with mods it will take ages on a hdd.

A crucial with 275gb m.2 for example would do the job fine enough.
Or a 500gb ssd if u wanna put all your steam games on the ssd.

[coNNect]

Oprindeligt skrevet af ⛧EyMi Mayhem⛧:

I use wd elements and passport, great brand, great drive(s) and the price is a-okay.
But wouldn't use external drives for games/mods.

The ssd will load your game faster, that's all.
Makes sense for games like fallout 4, skyrim or so ad with mods it will take ages on a hdd.

A crucial with 275gb m.2 for example would do the job fine enough.
Or a 500gb ssd if u wanna put all your steam games on the ssd.

Do ssd help in games like Batman Arkham Knight loading textures faster?

[John (Helldiver) Kennedy]

Oprindeligt skrevet af ⛧EyMi Mayhem⛧:

But wouldn't use external drives for games/mods.

Why is that? Is there a downside I don't know of?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

3.5-inch Performance SATA HDD + External Enclosure (SATA-3 inside + USB 3.x outside)
Best of both worlds, reliable drive choices (like WD Black / Gold), great warranty; unlike pre-packages externals.

I don't even personal really mess around too much with externals for my home/office use; I just hot-plug regular SATA drives; your Desktops and Laptops have the ability to do this.

[⛧EyMi Mayhem⛧]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Dagan the Terrible:

Why is that? Is there a downside I don't know of?

Could cause some problems with mods, at least I know resident evil had problems to load mods from external drives.

I would install games like fallout 4 on a ssd and the rest on a wd black or gold.
Or if you have money, a larger ssd for all games, up to you.

Ext. drives like the wd elements or so, aren't optimal for games anyways (slower)
If you wanna go with external drives ⌄

Oprindeligt skrevet af Bad_Motha:

3.5-inch Performance SATA HDD + External Enclosure (SATA-3 inside + USB 3.x outside)
Best of both worlds, reliable drive choices (like WD Black / Gold), great warranty; unlike pre-packages externals.

[Vince ✟]

The passports work just fine for me so far. There has been discrepancy in quality variation between sizes such as 4tb and 5tb, but overall I have never had an issue with any of them. I keep in mind that they are made for storage, I don't run from them, and I also don't do too much overwriting.

I do wonder about those drives designed for security footage..

[upcoast]

External hdds are generally slower than an internal part.

I would not use an external along with the WD Elements for a game drive, external drives generate heat and they don't cool well leading to a premature hdd death.

If you've got the room in your case get a 4-6TB internal and be done with it.

Ps, 300GB is how you say, LOL.

[xSOSxHawkens]

if you want the best external experiance you do the following...

Good eSATA & USB3.0 enclosure (not one or the other, BOTH) that suppoerts SATA-II or better and has full SATA passthrough on eSATA interface.

Good large SSD on SATA interface.

Motherboard with eSATA port OR buy a cheap SATA-eSATA header that you can put in a spare expansion slot, plug it into your motherboards SATA header, and turn on hot-plugging on your SATA ports via bios.


If you do these things you will have a very fast drive, that when connected to an eSATA cappable device (such as most high end desktops), will operate roughly identically to an internal drive of the same type, as eSATA is basically SATA, complete with AHCI support etc.

Then when not using eSATA you will have USB 3.0 as a universal fallback that will work on any machine since y2k at either 3.0 speeds or 2.0 speeds on non 3.0 cappable machines. At 3.0 machines it will perform similar to internal, but with allot more overhead than using something like eSATA.


When running eSATA and external drive is basically just an extention to the internal drive system with a long cable, and it will run just as fast.

As a cehaper option a good 7200rpm drive instead of SSD would work fine too.

Here are some examples.

ATM the msot common options for externals are actually these nifty desktop drive holders, and from what I ahve seen of their use in IT they seem in general to be a common place and studry enough item to be used daily by many. Thats not speaking to any one brand though. This one has 47 reveiws and 4/5 stars...

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1DS28Y2007

25 bucks


Next we have the adapter in the event you lack eSATA

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812400005

10 bucks

Now we have storage options, starting with cheapest,

1TB WD Blue, 64MB cache, 7200RPM

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236339

~50 bucks

Seagate Firecudda SSHD 2TB (before anyone says anything, the WD Balck 2TB is 30 bucks more...)

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178996

100 bucks, and a great option as a Boot Drive if you wish to re-use it...

Last and most pricy option, a 1TB WD Blue SSD,

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820250088

230 bucks.



All three options are great, all offer over 1TB of space, and the cheapest option gets you all of the gear for under 100, with internal speeds on an external device, and a nice geek-chic type thing on display on your desk ;)

[HypersleepyNaputunia]

western digital seems good value

[xSOSxHawkens]

If you do plan to have a drive that gets moved around allot you will want to opt for an actual enclosure rather than just a drive holder, the holder will be fine for daily use at home, but you want to have something protecting the drive, especaily a mechanical drive, when on the go.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

eSATA is a dead-end; look to have and use USB 3.0/3.1 as your external plugin.
Those ARE the same or greater speeds as SATA Gen 3

What I've been doing is buying ATX Cases that have the SATA power and data already within the HDD cages; these I plug into my PSU and Motherboard SATA ports already, so its ready for any drive... now when I want to view my 4TB HDD worth of Movies, I slide that tray with drive into the bay, boom theres my data. Just like hot-plugging with USB.

If you have and carry around a Laptop and need large-cap storage; yes an external HDD or SSD that is actually a 2.5-inch drive inside an external enclosure is probably a good route for such users; since they are generally USB self-powered, and very light weight.

However if you are a person "on the go" be-careful with any mechanical HDDs u stick in your bag so to speak. They can easily be damaged by force / drops, etc. And also be-careful how long they are inside your vehicle during high heat or very cold ambient temps within the vehicle for pro-longed periods. If something is cold/hot, make sure it warms-up/cools-down naturally before powering it on, because taking that indoors to a warm setting will cause a strong change in humidity and such.

Need to go through a medal-detector at your work, or transit, school... HDDs and Flash Drives are all fine for this. That data can't be touched/wiped easily when the drive is in a powered-off/lock-arm state. It takes very strong magnetic or static based emissions to negatively affect such drives.

[Astro_80 (WASH YOUR HANDS!)]

WD Elements 1TB External is what I use on a daily basis.

[emoticorpse]

I use Seagate external usb hubs. Cheapest option for me $179 at Microcenter for 8 TB. I only use it as backup. Disconnect and power off until I need to archive to it. I personally stay away from WD now after some of theirs crapped out on me after only short amount of usage and realizing the Seagate being worse meme was just wrong.

[tacoshy]

I would never buy Pre-builds eHDD's. Well I own one but mostly for borrowing it to friends. Always build your own drives with a 3.5" WD Black or Gold and a 3.5" USB 3.0 or USB 3.1 encasing. They are as fast as any internal drive. If you want to go full savage and have the change for it take an USB 3.1 2.5" encasing and put in a SSD. The USB 3.1 (10Gbps)has 40% more bandwidth then SATA III (6Gbps) anyway.