Im trying to decide which harddrive to use for backing up my network server.

www.dabs.com

one is a small .2kg 40gb powered off usb2 4200rpm
one is 1.3kg 80GB 7200 rpm with a dedicated power supply and an ethernet connection.

im thinking of going with the small one but i was just wondering if it will have enough speed/power to transfer 15GB worth of data without interuption or should i go for the other one.

also i will be accessing the server from a remote machine, will that be a prob.

My recommendation is to use the bigger one. The higher rpm's will make a big difference, plus you can never have too much space. Having a dedicated power supply can be a pain, but then you don't have to worry about it crapping out at high loads. And they're nearly the same price.

I don't think a remote connection will matter, as long as the server can see it.

Yeah but it will be a b*tch to carry home every day, i dont want to get it unless the other one wont do the job well.

reliability and getting it working is my primary concern though.
I didnt think the faster drive speed would make a difference if your only using USB2.

Is a USB one likely to crap out transferring 15GB of data?


Ps thanks for the help.

A faster drive will improve the seek times; 4200rpm is what notebook drives run at.

You'll be limited on the throughput of USB. As long as everything is rated for USB2.0, then you shouldn't have a problem; if anything is not 2.0 specced, then it will run at 1.0, which is 12Mbps.

If all you're doing is backing up a server, then I don't see anything wrong w/ USB. As long as it's just streaming data, then the overhead should be small. If you want to start using it as a secondary HD (xfer data back and forth), then you may run into problems if it gets bogged down.

If you ever do plan on using it for normal use, having the ethernet conn. would be good. Then you just hook it up to the router/hub and it should appear as a NAD; no configuration necessary. I also noticed that the bigger drive supports data mirroring, making backups even easier.

I would think if you left the power supply at work, the actual drive weight shouldn't be much more than the lighter one. After all, they're both just a HD in a pretty box.