External Hard Drives

[BIG49010]

I know all external drives are not the same, and several have talked about a new type that are faster.

I am running a laptop with my database program which gives the Hard Drive a workout, and was wondering if anyone know of an external setup that would run faster then the usual 7500 RPM internal drive.

Thanks

[DJofSD]

I think the new type that runs faster are the one which use USB3.

Finding an external with a rotational speed greater than 7,200 RPM will be a challenge. There are small form factor HDD that spin that fast but finding out the speed of the drives is where it will be a challenge. The manufactorers just don't put that information out there.

You can always go solid state: http://www.harddrivetech.com/best_portable_hard_drive.htm

[headhawg]

You could get a USB 3.0/eSATA SSD drive, but they are not cheap. And your laptop would obviously have to have those ports.

[vegasone]

You can look at external raid setups which would increase access speeds depending on what type of raid was set up. Two drives set up as Raid 0 would give you an increase in speed. Realistically you are better off getting an inexpensive desktop for intensive data testing with some high speed drives. Just need to get one you can add drives to etc.

Solid state drives will also increase your speed and you can replace the one you have internally or in a raid setup on a desktop.

[HUSKER55]

Just a thought, I was reading a magazine the other day about a guy who took an old hard drive and made an external drive.

if you are interested I will try and find the article and post it, if you want it.

I have no idea if that would work for you or not.

[Dave Schwartz]

I recently began an upgrade process on my primary handicapping machine - AMD 3800+, single core, XP. Faithful machine - cost about $550 brand new.

I should mention that one of my goals for 2011-2012 is to become totally portable. That is, everything - including my handicapping - will reside on either a server or external drive. The purpose of this is so that when a machine fails I simply move the data to another machine and am up and running.

To that end, early this year I moved my primary handicapping to an external USB drive. I saw a small slow down but nothing substantial. It was only recently that I realized that the drive was plugged into an "octo hub" USB connection that was only USB 1.1! When I plugged it into the back of the machine instead, my software ran about 3.5 times faster!

Then I added an external eSata port on that machine. Cost: about $50. This accounted for a small increase in speed over USB 2.0, but not nearly as much as I had expected.

Please note that it is the same drive, in the same external enclosure, just plugged into a different port on the same machine. Kind of the ultimate benchmark.

Finally, I decided to try an external eSata SSD drive. Now we are talking!

This sped up some functions tremendously. For example, when I copied the complete set of files from my c-drive to the external using the USB 1.1 connection, it took 43 minutes. That same copy to the USB 2.0 to 16 minutes. To the SSD drive it took just under 5 minutes.

Note that the USB drive I purchased as a trial was the smallest, cheapest one I could find - Kingston 60gb.
http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-SSDNow-Solid-State-SV100S2-64GZ/dp/B004BDORM4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1322949508&sr=8-2

I am pleased and will invest the money in a faster one now that I know this technology is worthwhile.

Such a drive will run quite a bit faster (or so I have been told) internally. Unfortunately, the machine I put it in does not have an eSata port on the motherboard.


One of our users, BillT, posted this in our Skype group:

Computer Speed Update:
A few weeks ago we were discussing speed. I believe I might have been whining about how slow my computer was. My computer is a Dell Studio 17 (1737).

This computer has a spot for a 2nd hard drive. I decided to go with ADATA S511 SATA 6Gb/s SSD 60GB for $114 because it had good reviews for speed.

I put it in and I needed some help setting it up. Well it is fast.

Before: Dyn Pkm 3 factors (one at a time) running the same factors Dave used in one of his Insiders for Pace factors – it would take 5 to 6 minutes.

Now: 16-20 seconds.


Note that BillT's laptop was very slow because it had a 5400 rpm drive.

Hope this helps.

Dave

[BIG49010]

You could get a USB 3.0/eSATA SSD drive, but they are not cheap. And your laptop would obviously have to have those ports.

eSATA SSD drive look like what I need for my application, would a PCI card connection give me the most speed without swapping out the internal hard drive?

[Dave Schwartz]

That is what I did.

Apparently, a motherboard that will support eSata natively would be faster.

Bill's laptop had such a connection.


Dave

[BIG49010]

Thanks everybody I'll report back when I get it hooked up.

[headhawg]

eSATA SSD drive look like what I need for my application, would a PCI card connection give me the most speed without swapping out the internal hard drive?I'm thinking some kind of USB 3 or eSATA Express Card for the laptop. I have no experience with one so I cannot make a recommendation. Perhaps someone else here can.

[Dave Schwartz]

From what I understand, you will lose MUCH the speed gain of the SSD using USB 3. It isn't fast enough - at least that is what I have been told.

[BIG49010]

2 Port SATA 6 Gbps ExpressCard eSATA Controller Card



http://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/HDD-Controllers/SATA-Cards/2-Port-SATA-6-Gbps-ExpressCard-eSATA-Controller-Card~ECESAT32 (http://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/HDD-Controllers/SATA-Cards/2-Port-SATA-6-Gbps-ExpressCard-eSATA-Controller-Card%7EECESAT32)

I just wish I had a clue how much speed this is going to give me?

[DJofSD]

Dave, a little thread creep: look at running Windows Home Server.

To all: eventually the new technology that exists now in the Apple environment will show up for Windows. It's called Thunderbolt and will blow the doors off of what is being used now.

[Dave Schwartz]

DJ,

Actually, my goal is to move everything to a central site - eventually a "virtual machine" which is housed online. That is probably several years away as we await improvements in that technology.

Meanwhile, the next best thing is to be portable from one machine to another. For example, last Tuesday I had a guy come over to work on the ceiling fan in my office. I had to tear the office apart (i.e. break down part of my desk.)

Instead of missing 2 hours of work, I simply went upstairs to the studio and worked from there.

Theoretically, I could work from a hotel room in Miami, if it was on the web.

BTW, I have ALL the MS server products. I get them by virtue of my annual Microsoft subscription, which gives me 10 copies of all the individual programs (Win7, Office, etc.) and one copy of all the servers.


Regards,
Dave Schwartz

[DJofSD]

Dave, what specifically is not there yet? I support as a small part of my day job Windows 2003 servers which are running in a VM environment. I believe they're running on an HP server.

[Canarsie]

http://www.cdrlabs.com/Reviews/plextor-px-256m2p-256gb-solid-state-drive.html

[headhawg]

2 Port SATA 6 Gbps ExpressCard eSATA Controller Card

http://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/HDD-Controllers/SATA-Cards/2-Port-SATA-6-Gbps-ExpressCard-eSATA-Controller-Card~ECESAT32 (http://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/HDD-Controllers/SATA-Cards/2-Port-SATA-6-Gbps-ExpressCard-eSATA-Controller-Card%7EECESAT32)

I just wish I had a clue how much speed this is going to give me?You'll be faster that's for sure, especially if you use that card in a RAID 0 configuration. However, you are not going to get instantaneous results from a database if that's what you're looking for. Speed depends a lot on the database design, what kind of queries you are running, how the db tables are indexed, its size, etc.

[headhawg]

From what I understand, you will lose MUCH the speed gain of the SSD using USB 3. It isn't fast enough - at least that is what I have been told.Yes, true, as USB has some conversion going on which creates more overhead so it is way less likely to approach the max transfer rate in the real world.

[pondman]

Dave, what specifically is not there yet? I support as a small part of my day job Windows 2003 servers which are running in a VM environment. I believe they're running on an HP server.

The cloud can be expensive. In real life I'm a Quickbooks pro point of sale advisor. The technology is there. But you've got to have a strong need for the cloud, beyond it being cool, to make it cost effective.

[BIG49010]

Cloned my existing hard disk, then installed a SSD drive OCZ 120 GB Sata II drive my old Dell Dual Core machine. I gained maybe 20% speed on my old dos programs, but Windows 7 and Excel smoke with it. It will keep me happy for a week or two.

[Capper Al]

DJ,

Actually, my goal is to move everything to a central site - eventually a "virtual machine" which is housed online. That is probably several years away as we await improvements in that technology.

Meanwhile, the next best thing is to be portable from one machine to another. For example, last Tuesday I had a guy come over to work on the ceiling fan in my office. I had to tear the office apart (i.e. break down part of my desk.)

Instead of missing 2 hours of work, I simply went upstairs to the studio and worked from there.

Theoretically, I could work from a hotel room in Miami, if it was on the web.

BTW, I have ALL the MS server products. I get them by virtue of my annual Microsoft subscription, which gives me 10 copies of all the individual programs (Win7, Office, etc.) and one copy of all the servers.


Regards,
Dave Schwartz

Dave,

If you show up at Arlington this summer, like you said you were for the PA meet, I hope you'll be portable by then. I back up my stuff on Google documents for now, flash drives, and an external drive. Overkill? Probably. My Gateway laptop is showing signs of old age.

BTW, I have enjoyed this thread. There's too much technology updates to keep up with, and this discussion helps.

Ciao

[GameTheory]

There are two issues here to what Dave is talking about:

Virtualization -- i.e. having a "machine" that you can move to other hardware at will.

Remote access -- Being able to use your main machine from another machine anywhere you happen to be with internet access (e.g. laptop in Miami accessing your machine at home).

You don't need a virtual machine to "remote access", and this technology has been around for a long time now.

Virtualization is also now pretty mature, so nothing holding you back here either. Anything running in a VM (virtual machine) will be slower than running on real hardware, but if the host machine supports virtualization the slow-down isn't too much (so you need a modern multi-core processor that supports virtualization, which is basically everything in the stores now). There is no good reason to put this virtual machine on a third-party hosted server rather than your own machine at home acting as server -- the resources you need would cost $200-$300 a month to rent, but to just buy the server would be $1000 or less (maybe more with big SSD drives). Virtual machines know nothing of the actual hardware the host is running -- it runs on "virtual" hardware. And since it only exists as software and data, you can just copy the whole machine and move it to another host any time you want -- even transfer it online. Of course it is gigabytes of data we are talking about so you don't want to go moving it around every day, but it is easy enough, you can keep backups off-site, etc. For these moves to be totally seamless, the host hardware needs to have similar capabilities -- for instance, if you set-up a VM using a 64-bit operating system on a 64-bit host, you probably don't want to move it to a 32-bit host (any may not be able to).

I've been running HSH myself on a virtual machine that is hosted on a headless box (machine with no monitor attached that I only access remotely) for years now. Nothing to it.