USB 2.0 or 3.0?

[chazus]

So, we've gotten to the point were both my and my girlfriend's 2TB drives are full, and we've been wanting to have a 'centralized' media drive. I was planning on getting a 3TB drive and put both our media on it (It will fit, because about 30% of our stuff is duplicates), which would leave us both with our personal 2TB drives.

Right now there's a sale on 3TB USB2.0 WD drives for about $105 after tax. I also saw a 4TB USB3.0 for about $200. It seems a clear cut choice for $200, I could get two 3TB drives.

My question is, is USB3.0 needed at all? It will just be acting as a media drive for the computers and XBox360. Yeah, it would speed up the one-time transfer of all our stuff, but other than that, I feel the USB3.0 isn't necessary. Even though the difference between then two is like tenfold >.< Thoughts on this?

[Onomatopoeia]

Would say 3.0 is more useful for thumbdrives. And does xbox even support 3.0?

[Skelly]

So with USB 2.0 you're going to get a max transfer rate of about 35MB/s. From my understanding, the HDDs that OEMs put in externals are about as cheap as they can make them as there is no discernible difference to the end consumer aside from capacity, so you're probably going to have top transfer rates slower than a WD green drive, which tops out at 100MB/s give or take depending on model.

So you're definitely not going to saturate USB 3.0 with an external drive, but might see a 2-3x improvement in transfer speed. Is it worth the premium? Not for me anyway.

Not to mention the 360 won't get any benefit from USB 3.0.

[chazus]

Mind you, the drive would either be at the XBox, or at my computer. That said, to watch movies from either it isn't directly plugged into, we only have 100mbit ethernet right now, which is slower than USB anyway, so... I guess USB3.0 is pretty useless, since even the USB2.0 is capped heavily

[Sweetleader]

I have two USB 3.0 externals. A 500GB portable and a 3TB backup. I can promise you that USB 3.0 is much much faster than 2.0 on both these drives.

However, I would agree it's not "needed" as usually it's just one big upload of data then you are just streaming off it.

[skatblast]

I think you should just build a cheap computer for 400ish dollars and throw harddrives into it, just leave it on all the time. That way when you need more storage all you have to do is plug in another hard drive quick

[chazus]

I have two USB 3.0 externals. A 500GB portable and a 3TB backup. I can promise you that USB 3.0 is much much faster than 2.0 on both these drives.

I know that USB3.0 is faster, but we've already determined that... it actually won't be faster. It will transfer no faster than my current drives.

After some research, it looks like USB3 is only about 3x faster than USB2. That's a lot less than I expected, so even if I could benefit from the faster speed... It wouldnt be that noticable.

[llDemonll]

read speeds will be fine from either, it's the write speeds that you would notice the biggest difference. just stick with 2.0 for now

[Berserker Cronus]

USB 2.0 will be fine, even if you were streaming BD ISOs from the drive, so for media you shouldn't have any trouble. Of course, if you're both streaming multiple 1080p videos at once you may run into some issues.

[Will]

Just use eSATA. Most of the USB 2.0 drives also support eSATA and if your motherboard doesn't have an eSATA jack, you can get a PCI bracket for less than $5.

If you've run out of SATA ports, then you've got a problem with that option, though.

In some cases it may be cheaper to buy an enclosure (I've got a fanless and screwless IcyBox and it's great) and an HDD to go into the enclosure, than it is to buy a full-fledged external HDD.

OK so eSATA won't work with your games console. But for that you can just use USB 2.0. As the others are saying get a USB 2.0 drive and as most of them have eSATA anyway you can use that functionality at a later date should you require the faster thresholds, such as moving a huge music library around (my eSATA Western Digital, it transfers at a steady 100 MB/s on eSATA mode, but bear in mind it isn't a one of the fastest speed HDD, it's reliable though)

[n0cturnal]

I know that USB3.0 is faster, but we've already determined that... it actually won't be faster. It will transfer no faster than my current drives.

After some research, it looks like USB3 is only about 3x faster than USB2. That's a lot less than I expected, so even if I could benefit from the faster speed... It wouldnt be that noticable.

USB 3.0 is technically 10x faster (5Gbit vs 480Mbit) but the harddrives can't utilize all that speed. If it is going to be used as network storage that 100Mbit network of your will severely limit it anyway.