Second Internal vs External Hard Drive

<p>I'd like to put all my photos (now on CDs and DVDs) onto a single hard drive for use with Photoshop.<br>

I was looking at external drives, but I have room for another internal drive on my Dell (XP), and Dell sells the same brand and size (Seagate 1TB) at the same price as the external.<br>

What are the advantages and disadvantages of an internal drive besides the lack of portability and off-site storage?</p>

<p>P.S. I should've posted this thread under Storage. Also, I found some helpful information in this thread from March (had it open in another tab before posting, but forgot it when I got sidetracked to another site).<br>

http://www.photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00Sjz5<br>

From what I read there, I'd get more speed from the internal SATA, but shouldn't rely on it for an archival back-up (which I already have on DVD).</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Well an internal should be cheaper than an external drive since your not paying for an enclosure, power supply, interface chips (hard drives are not native usb, so there are some hardware needed). If Dell is charging the same, look elsewhere. I recently purchase a 1TB internal for $109 (not the cheapest available either, just to give you an idea on costs, not sure what dell is charging). An internal drive should be slightly faster because of the lack of the bridge chip, and USB connection.<br>

Disadvantages of an internal drive. It does share the same power supply as your CPU, so if that dies, it risks damaging both drives. If you have a poorly ventilated case, more heat will be created by two drives, which shortens the life of the drive. That being said most external enclosures dont even have fans. </p>

<p>I've been using mulitple internal drives for about 15 years now, coupled with a simple efficient command to mirror selected folders. Keeping on top of maintenance, including opening up the case and blowing out the dust at least yearly, I've had no problems, have files going back to '94 when we got our first pre-Pentium 486 system. Faster, cheaper, more reliable.</p>

<p>Does your PC have an external SATA (eSATA) port?</p>

<p>Internal is usually faster. I would expect internal to be more reliable. Internal is neater - fewer cables, less stuff on your desk. With internal you don't have to worry about tripping over the cable or knocking the drive off the desk. Internal doesn't need an additional plug just for the drive. Internal is quieter.<br /> <br /> <br /> External is usually fast enough and quiet enough. It's portable, which can be a big plus. When not in use, you can store it off site or in a safe. External is more convenient, especially if you're not comfortable opening up the computer case and installing hardware.<br /> <br /> <br /> The typical price for either is around $100-125 right now.<br /> <br /> <br /> Remember that no drive lasts forever. Every hard drive will eventually fail. Keep backups.</p>

<p>Internal drive will work faster with Photoshop. External drive can be turned off when not needed, and usually will be slower, unless it is a SATA connectable.</p>

<p>I use smaller in-computer drives that allows faster virus scans and system backup, while photo/video file back up storage is much larger and is external.</p>

<p>For backup economical solution, get Linksys NAS200 for about US$100 (Network Attached Storage) device and put inside 2 SATA drives of your choice. I placed 2 Seagate Baracuda 1.5 TB drives, at $109 each from Fry's (despite recent national news information that "Seagate Baracuda drives self destroy themself"). This gives me access to files from desktop, laptop, and netbook comuters within home network distance, and also from the Internet anywhere, password protected access. </p>

<p>I also connect additional 2 USB drives 2 TB each to the NAS200 USB built-in ports that makes them networkable, and have access to 4 drives from anywhere. </p>

<p>Occasionally I connect other USB drives directly to the desktop computer for periodic backup.<br>

Seems that I got "paranoic"?, after troubles with DVD media storage for long time backup.</p>

<p>The NAS200 has power switch, so can be turned-off and does an orderly fashion disconnecting all networkable mapped drives. The NAS200 upon power up with the switch restores all network mapped drives connections for computers that are powered up, connected to the network via Ethernet cable or wirelessly. </p>

<p>An internal SATA drive is *much* faster than an external USB or Firewire drive. This may or may not be an issue depending on whether the drive is just going to be a storage drive for archived files or if it will be a drive that you are working off of regularly.</p>

<p>One issue that may come into play is whether this is your second or third drive. If you are currently only running one hard drive and this will be your second hard drive, then you should plan on using it as your Photoshop scratch disk. Putting the PS scratch disk on a secondary drive (one different than your OS drive that contains the virtual memory paging file) will result in a significant performance boost to Photoshop (esp for large files). If this is your second drive, I would HIGHLY recommend getting an internal SATA drive and setting it as your PS scratch disk.</p>

<p>Thanks, everyone.</p>

<p>To ian, the price is the same for both Seagate 1 TB external and internal - $109 to $119 at Staples, Amazon, and Dell.</p>

<p>To Brad, I'm not sure about the external SATA port, but I know it has Firewire.</p>

<p>Mendel, thanks for the tip on cleaning the case.</p>

<p>Frank, that's a quality set-up for sure, and I'd like to work towards that, but for now I'm just taking one small step.</p>

<p>And Sheldon, I've read of scratch disks for years, and so yeah, I'd like to do that and will read up on it for sure.</p>

<p>So I think I'll go for the internal 'cause I'm going to be doing a lot of moving files about and batch processing, and then later get an external to back that one up.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Ian, you're right - Amazon does have a better price of $97, with free shipping to boot. I'd been comparing only the external Seagate and external Seagate portable.<br>

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001NGOIJO/sr=1-5/qid=1243840730/ref=noref?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1243840730&sr=1-5</p>

 

<p>I have both. The internal drive is the one I store and work images from. The external one holds a backup copy which Lightroom sets up automatically when I import. Otherwise the external drive is disconnected. The internal seems a little faster. </p>

<p>I use the internal drive for my most recent photos, and those I work on. For more long-time storage, as part of the back-ups, I use an external USB WD-drive. My thought is that this drive can be hidden away if I go on a trip, and is not not mounted to ant computer or current if a thunderstorm or electrical failure on the power lines suddenly should emerge. I find the extra time for loading these pictures from the external is not of significant size.</p>

<p>Thanks - I've actually switched my thinking towards a Western Digital 1 TB, due to all the trouble people have had with Seagates (even with the firmware fix) and this nice page at Tom's Hardware:</p>

<p>http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hdd-terabyte-1tb,2077.html</p>

<p>And yeah, having an external drive will be good when I want to unplug it and let it rest, safe from viruses and thunderstorms and the like.</p>

<p>I use a combination. I added a second internal drive (Western Digital) for my photo files, for all the above reasons. I did check with Hewlett-Packard first to make sure that my particular model PC's power supply would handle a second drive without upgrading.</p>

<p>When I'm editing, back up files to a local external hard drive on a daily basis. The software for this is an important factor. ViceVersa Pro allows backing up in a way that only affects those files that have been added, deleted or changed, which significantly reduces the time involved.</p>

<p>Once a week, I back everything up on our Linksys NAS200 storage system which is shared by my wife's computer and a laptop. Speed is an issue here, a maximum of about 5Mb/sec. But, using the same incremental backup routine, it still doesn't take an unreasonable amount of time. The first full backup could take hours, depending on total file size.</p>

<p>When we go on a trip, I remove the local EHD and stash it in a safe place, just in case.</p>

<p>You can also use this kind of routine for backing up your computer system (I use Windows XP ntbackup for that.)</p>

<p>I use a range of caddy mounted HD's with a rack mounted in the tower. As fast as an internal and can be removed for secure storage as needed. Cheap and reliable.<br>

Roger</p>

<p>I would generally go with the external, despite the speed compromises, just because its more portable and allows you to mount to different PCs should the mood move you.</p>

<p>That said, I suggest you consider some sort of NAS setup. NAS = network attached storage. Basically, instead of an external hard drive connected to the PC, you have a box with multiple hard drives connected to the network via the router. This way, not only is the box divorced from any issues with the PC that may arise, but its also accessible to multiple PCs on the network and can be configured as a RAID for data redundancy. NAS boxes range widely in price, but I have a D-Link model which was relatively cheap, almost 2TB of storage inside, and the box also has a print server built in as well. Obviously, it can serve up iTunes and other media to all PCs on the network, so it gives you a lot of flexibility, as well as not needing to have a power-hogging PC on if you want to share files.</p>

<p>Just a thought.</p>

<p>Is 'both' a good answer?</p>

<p>Internal disks are faster, cheaper, usually run cooler (and thus may last longer) and are less likely to be knocked about (unless you're in the habit of kicking your computer). They are also easy to install yourself and its fairly easy to set up 2 or more into a RAID array offering some redundancy.</p>

<p>External drives also (generally) run hotter (and thus may fail where the same drive might live forever inside a computer tower), the housings are often of sketchy design and/or have poor QC and are transportable but are thus exposed to the opportunity of knocks, drops and drips (if you plan to cart around files often using your external drive i'd install an internal and have them mirrored). Also some drives are always left 'on' which may further shorten its life.</p>

<p>External drives could, in theory, be as fast as if they had been mounted internally if the housing and connection type are up to snuff. As some have commented they find external drives to be 'fast' enough, for edditing and such, which this may very well be true in certain situations. However if you're copying 10 gigs of files from CF cards via a USB card reader and copying them to a USB hard drive and browsing/edditing photos on that same hard drive and perhaps you've stored music/videos on that same hard drive and are listening to music or watching video on your second monitor..... well that's a lot of traffic through the USB channels, and it ain't bottomless and depending on your computer architecture it could less than stellar.</p>

<p>Depending on what your back up needs are and since hard drive are so cheap my suggestions would be as follows:</p>

<p>Option 1: install 2 identical internal drives and set up a mirrored RAID array</p>

<p>Option 2: install 1 internal drive burn optical disks as archival backups</p>

<p>Option 3: install 1 internal drive and 1 external drive, use a program to sync the files between them and use one or the other as your backup (depending on if you want to use the external drive as a transportable drive)</p>

<p>Option 4: install 1 internal drive and be done with it. but can you imagine loosing 500 gigs of data and having basicaly no way to recover it?</p>

 

<p>I'm afraid that my experience is the opposite of what some have said. I've had a lot of problems with dual internal drives. Because they are in the same case, on the same motherboard, any internal issues such as overheating and power spikes may damage both drives. Hard drives generate a lot of heat and my experience is that many PCs are inadequately cooled. Even if they are well designed, internal fans may clog, or break, frying the PC. Unfortunately many PCs are built to a price and spec. and not to a quality, and since adding extra cooling increases the cost, many have trouble with dual drives.My Fujitsu Siemens was a POS. It fried 3 hard disks, and damaged various subsystems on the motherboard before I realised the cause was inadequate cooling.<br>

One solution is to use one fast internal SATA HD, and dual backup to external USB connected drives. The fact that they are external means that they are protected from issues with the PC (apart from malicious viruses, lightning strikes etc.). I suggest dual backup as when the internal drive crashes - I have hard 4+ drives crash - you don't want to rely on only one backup. I keep two external backup drives turned off, and only power them up when saving copies of critical data. I suppose I should keep them unplugged, but I have a surge protector.<br>

Even if you do use main and backup drives mounted internally, I recommend a second backup on an external drive, even if you only update it weekly, to reduce potential losses.<br>

As others have said, you really want to have files that you edit with Photoshop on the main internal SATA disk.<br>

Les's eSATA suggestion sounds good assuming it gives the full SATA speed (I'm wasn't aware of that technology).</p>

<p>"How fast are the NAS drives, are they even as fast as USB2 or firewire?"</p>

<p>Depends on how much you want to spend for the NAS system. The NAS200 by Linksys that Frank and I mentioned is dirt cheap (around $150US) but the downside is a very slow data transfer rate - about eight times slower than USB2. I've seen other NAS systems advertised for a few thousand dollars which are probably much faster.</p>

<p>I haven't benchmarked my NAS, but its fast enough throughput to watch DVD files as well as work with large photos. Part of it may be because both the router and NAS box are gigabit ethernet rated, although its difficult to see how much impact that has. That said, given the cost, its been a pretty effective solution.</p>

<p>With respect to case cooling, I agree - a lot of cases are undercooled. I built my PC, so that has been less of a problem. However, even with that level of control, I think the other problem is that the internals of the PC get absolutely choked with dust, which impedes cooling dramatically and can create serious temperature problems. Unless you're already in the habit of opening your case up and vacuuming out dust, you should start now. It is not a pleasant task.</p>

<p>George, I was basing my 8 to 1 speed ratio on the graph my ViceVersa software runs during backup. The respective graphs show a max speed to 40-50 Mb/s for a USB2 EHD and 5Mb/s for the NAS200. I understand (but haven't verified) that the speed problem stems from the processing hardware in the NAS200. Also, it makes a considerable difference how the the NAS200 is configured for backup. The fastest transfer rate seems to be when both drives are configured as independent, non-journaled drives. The slowest (around 3Mb/s) occurs with a RAID 1 configuration. I know for a fact that speed is one of the most common gripes seen on the Linksys website. But, being retired, I have lots of time to sit and watch the numbers flash by, so speed is not a major issue for me.</p>

<p>Let, I'd say you're right about the NAS200 haveing little value as a primary or even secondary drive - backup only.</p>

<p>About vacuuming the inside of a PC: Hewlett Packard strongly recommends against using a vacuum cleaner inside the cabinet as it may cause damage to the mother board or power supply. Of course, I learned this from the HP website only <em>after </em>my wife's PC suffered a death by vacuum. (She calls it murder. I'm claiming accidental death.)</p>

<p>Both here. I have Lightroom and NikonTransfer set to import on the primary physical drive and backup simultaneously on the second (internal) phyiscal drive. Every week I back up to an external drive. </p>

<p>I dunno - i used a vacuum attachment to clean the obvious dust, especially that on the fan blades and blades of the cooler/dispersion unit. I generally stay away from the board as that's not where the active cooling is taking place.</p>

<p>I've never used the Linksys unit. I have a D-Link unit which has worked fairly well and apparently is hackable, or so I'm told. I'm able to use it as a primary storage unit for streaming media and photos, so I'm fairly pleased with it. I don't currently have it configured as a RAID array, so I can't speak to how that might affect throughput. As I said, with Gigabit Ethernet, it seems to work fairly well, and is easy to configure.</p>

<p>Good call on the WD Caviar Black drives. I use Western Digital Caviar Black drives (150GB Velociraptor plus 2x640GB in a RAID 0 plus a 1TB) for internal drives and they have done really well for me. For your application the internal drive is definitely the way to go, especially for PS scratch. I can't stress enough how important it is to have a Photoshop scratch disk on a drive with fast data throughput - an external USB or Firewire drive is a bad idea when it comes to PS scratch.</p>

<p>The reason that the PS scratch disk is so important is this... when you are working on larger files the RAM gets used up to full capacity. So, PS then needs to start using the hard drive (which is MUCH, MUCH slower than RAM) to serve as additional RAM - this is called the scratch disk. At the same time, your operating system is also running out of RAM and it starts to use what's called the virtual memory paging file as additional RAM (exact same principal, hard drive space serving as RAM). The problem arises when both the OS and PS want to use the one single hard drive at the same time (since there's not enough RAM to go around). There's only one set of read/write heads on the drive, so it has to go back and forth between the OS paging file and the CS scratch disk - resulting in dramatically slowed performance. When you can have two hard drives, one for the OS paging file and one for the CS scratch disk performance can improve dramatically (while PS is actually using the scratch disk).</p>

<p>One tip - when you get your internal drive make sure to set aside the FIRST partition as a section dedicated to the scratch disk, 15-30GB should do fine. The first partition resides on the outside edge of the drive where the speed is the fastest, plus having a dedicated partition avoids issues with the scratch disk becoming fragmented as the drive fills up. You can then take the remaining space on the drive and make another larger partition for storage or general use.</p>