Which HDD and enclosure - 2.5" or 3.5"?

[sorcerer]

Someone has just asked me which external hard drive would I recommend, to which I replied, "None of them". Maybe I'm a bit paranoid but I don't like the sealed units with a proprietary SATA to USB bridge - if that goes faulty you may find your data trapped in there forever.

So my recommendation is to use a standard internal hard drive in an enclosure, but my question to you venerable folks is, would you go for a 2.5" or a 3.5" drive? He wants it mainly for storing his photographs on and I'm thinking a 1TB WD Black but just not sure about current thinking and engineering regarding bigger or smaller being better.

 

[MichaelBits]

You can take the sealed ones apart and pull the hard drive out...

Ask him if size matters... (chuckles to myself).... The physical size of the enclosure.

Otherwise, it doesn't matter really. The enclosures for 2.5 or 3.5 are the same.

I use various enclosures around the shop and re-purpose old HDD with them. Use them with fabs, or as image drives for when I do installs.


Just ensure you get him a drive that has plenty of room for his data, including future expansion.

 

[mraikes]

You can take the sealed ones apart and pull the hard drive out...snipped.....

You can't count on that anymore.

 

[Larry Sabo]

If it's going to be used primarily in a stationary location, I'd go for the 1 TB WD Black in a USB 3.0 enclosure. If it needs to be portable, I'd go with a WD Passport Elements (no encryption on the drive). The portables are more susceptible to physical damage of course, so I'd heartily recommend he back that up to another backup storage on a regular basis. Actually, that applies to all external storage, no matter the format.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

So my recommendation is to use a standard internal hard drive in an enclosure, but my question to you venerable folks is, would you go for a 2.5" or a 3.5" drive? .

2.5"
newer tech, will be around longer
faster than equiv speed 3.5"
less heat, thus can argue last a little longer
less weight of a platter vs 3.5", so will be more tolerant of bumps while spinning.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Also agree with buying an internal 2.5 inch and getting an enclosure. That way you know you can pull the drive. Sometimes the newer external drives have a proprietary board on them. Internal drives are cheap enough, and you can sometimes find the enclosures for just a few bucks online.

 

[sorcerer]

Thanks again guys

 

[Vicenarian]

I've been wondering about that too; lately I've been selling primarily 2.5" drives for backups (whether desktop computers or laptops), because they don't require a separate power adapter, take up less space, and most people don't need more than 1 TB of space anyway for backups.

But, in the past, I recommended 3.5" drives because they were more 'reliable'...not so sure about that idea now. When you think about it this way, the 2.5" drives designed for laptops are made to withstand the shocks/vibrations that laptops go through, whereas a desktop drive isn't (?). But then on the other hand, desktop drives have more tolerance because the parts aren't so compact?

 

[Larry Sabo]

When you think about it this way, the 2.5" drives designed for laptops are made to withstand the shocks/vibrations that laptops go through, whereas a desktop drive isn't (?). But then on the other hand, desktop drives have more tolerance because the parts aren't so compact?

Can you provide a citation for that information? I don't know whether they (laptop drives) are designed to handle more operational shock or not. However, bumps and jars of any drive while its rotating will often kill the drive, so I wouldn't treat them as particularly shock resistant while in use. They have a very high shock tolerance when not rotating, because the heads are parked, usually in a ramp.

When they are in use, the heads float on a cushion of air about 1/1000 the thickness of a human hair, so it doesn't take much of an impact to cause the heads to impact the platter, i.e. a "head crash." The data is unrecoverable if a platter gets scored during a head crash. Newer drives have higher platter densities, so the heads float even closer than they did on the older, smaller drives.

 

[Vicenarian]

Can you provide a citation for that information?

Well, I guess I shouldn't say every laptop drive, but at least the WD Blue/Black drives and some Seagate drives have their own proprietary 'shock resistance' protection tech.

"Robust design and high shock tolerance enable mobility in rugged operating environments." - Seagate Momentus 5400 RPM 2.5"

"WD's ShockGuard™ technology
protects the drive mechanics and
platter surfaces from shocks. WD’s
SecurePark™ parks the recording
heads off the disk surface during
spin up, spin down, and when the
drive is off. This ensures the
recording head never touches the
disk surface resulting in improved
long term reliability due to less head
wear, and improved non-operational
shock tolerance." - WD Scorpio Blue

 

[Cambridge PC Support]

I'd go for a 500Gb to 1TB 3.5"

My way of thinking is - lower data density = more reliable

Whether that's true or not is a different matter

 

[Larry Sabo]

Okay, thanks for that. I'm trying to find the specs on these drives, to see if the shock protection applies to when it's in operation. I suspect not, other than in the case of free-fall.

 

[Vicenarian]

Okay, thanks for that. I'm trying to find the specs on these drives, to see if the shock protection applies to when it's in operation. I suspect not, other than in the case of free-fall.

"WD's ShockGuard protects from shocks, while their StableTrac technology sees to the motor shaft being secured at both ends to reduce the effects of vibration and to stabilize the platters. WD includes dual stage actuators, which are hardware components also used in enterprise-class drives. The actuators improve accuracy over the data tracks. Lastly among the important innovations, WD includes SecurePark which moves the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down, and when the drive is powered off. This helps the WD Blue Slim garner greater reliability."

At least for the Scorpio Blue (slim), but I'm guessing those technologies are present in other WD laptop drives too

Edit: Would be interesting if Luke from RecoveryForce would chime in on whether these features make much of a difference as opposed to desktop drives