I am planning to buy a new External Drive. At the moment, I have a WD My Passport Ultra which has a pinhole light on its connecting side; do other brands also have a light on them? I am looking at the Toshiba Canvio specifically.
I know the question is a little trivial, but I'd just like to know.
Check out the manufacturers website (sorry, don't have my Toshy ones with me at the moment). I've got a range of external HDD, some have a light, some don't. Those with, different brands have lights in different locations (top vs front).
Beware the giant blue flashers - some have the blue LED so bright I couldn't leave it running at night, the flickering from the next room is too distracting. Bit of black electrical tape solved that ...
I've stopped buying portable HDDs in favour of "make-my-own" external drive - buying the drive separately (mostly SSD/m.2 cards) and external enclosures separately.
Ah, well, yes, that could be an issue. Me ... a fool and his money etc etc.
Because they're simply external storage (with a backup elsewhere anyway), they're not top of the range SSD. However, I "self-justify" the additional cost with the trade-off in speed difference.
The other issue (and was a determining factor) was being able to use them with smart TV and an OTG adapter to my Samsung tablet and mobile (cell) phone. unlike HDDs which require power and data through the USB, I can use the SSD with downloaded videos on these devices.
(By way of side explanation, so-called "high speed" internet - for streaming - can be a bit flaky in Australia (that other forum in tenforums.com about showing off your internet speed makes me cringe with jealousy!). Isolated locations can make it nigh-on impossible to stream any sort of entertainment. Hence, a store of movies and TV programs on an SSD comes in handy).
I think the Sabrent brand of enclosure has been well spoken of here. I think I saw them at Amazon.
Hi there
some of them which can hold more than 1 HDD are brilliant - especially if you have 2 or more external HDD's so you can "aggregate" the HDD's into JBOD (just a bunch of disks) or enable RAID via either hardware dipswitch settings or software.
USB3 throughput is usually excellent as well.
SSD.M2 type cards -- no idea but possibly some sort of adapter for these to USB3 might be OK .
"Bog standard" SSD's - no problem - these can fit into the 3.5 inch enclosures via 2.5 inch -> 3.5 SSD adapter.
For Bonkersly fast SSD speeds use RAID 0 on these !!!! -- but be careful though - if you lose any part of the array then you lose all your data so if using RAID 0 then always have appropriate backup. I've used RAID 0 on a load of standard HDD's for ages -- I've 2 NAS servers running 24/7 and haven't had any HDD faults for as far back as I can remeber -- doesn't mean to say I won't get any so always have backup --it makes sense also even if you don't use RAID 0.
Cheers
jimbo
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