On Thu, Jan 02 2014, Helmut Jarausch wrote: > On 01/01/2014 11:07:22 PM, gottl...@nyu.edu wrote: >> My home desktop has had a seagate external 750GB drive ST3750640cbrk >> for >> a number of years and the disk is starting to fail. The system gets >> only modest usage. It is powered on about 1/2 the time and the disk >> often goes significant periods without activity so it spins down. >> >> I was considering what seagate calls an "expansion hard drive". They >> are USB 3, but I will be using only USB 2. > > If you have a free expansion slot I'd install a (very cheap) USB 3 > adapter. > There is a tremendous difference in speed compared to USB 2. > > Data transfer to my (quite recent) external USB 3 drives is about 130 > MB/s > (measured by iotop) which is faster than for my built in SATA 3 drives. > > Helmut
Thanks for the advice (and numbers). I do have a slot and may follow your suggestion. My only reluctance is that the disk gets such light usage that I don't notice its slowdown compared to my internal faster disk. So I have pause if opening the case is justified. But again, thanks for your helpful msg. allan
