Hi Adam:

I stand by what I said. Like any business segment, there are risks involved
by buying at Ebay. However, like any business segment, common sense will
reap rewards and carelessness will not.

Regards.

Here is Brad's original query...

Hi all,

I'm looking at getting an external storage solution and am thinking that the
300GB units I've seen are pretty good value. I've narrowed the choice down
to two, one which has a SATA drive and the other a standard drive.

So the question is, any ideas on whether the SATA version would really
increase performance and so warrant the extra £13 or should I save myself a
few pints and get the bog standard one?

USB External Portable SATA 300GB Hard Drive
http://makeashorterlink.com/?E2F742E9C

USB External Portable 300GB Hard Drive UK
http://makeashorterlink.com/?E30812E9C

My current set-up includes a Windows 98 (USB1) machine and a couple of
Windows XP(USB2) machines. Once the initial file transfers are done I expect
to simply use the files directly from the drive and so on initial web
diggings the speed differences look pretty good -

USB 2.0 at 480 MBits/sec
SATA  at 150 MBits/sec
IDE disks at 30-40 MBits/sec

but are these true?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or other just as long ramblings  :)

Brad

(He rec'd a number of responses having to do with the pitfalls of buying on
EBay)

"ggull" <ggullNOSPAMONI@comcast.net> wrote in message news:%

Brad:
ggull is correct in that if you install a SATA HD (be it a SATA I or the
newer so-called SATA II (more correctly named SATA-IO) drives that a
interface data rate of 3.0 Gb/s in a USB external HD enclosure, you will see
no appreciable performance difference between the PATA and SATA drives.
Simply stated, basic data transfer speed will operate at USB 2.0 speeds.

As inferred by ggull, the advantage - and it's an enormous advantage - of
using a SATA HD as an external storage device is when you can directly
connect the SATA drive's signal (data) cable directly to one of the
computer's internal SATA connectors (or the motherboard's eSATA external
port should the motherboard contain this desirable feature). In that
situation the SATA HD will be operating at speeds far in excess of what one
would experience using the USB interface. And to facilitate this
arrangement, a separate power supply would *not* be needed by the SATA HD
since power could be supplied directly to the drive by the computer's power
supply. We've been using this arrangement on a number of computers with very
happy results. We use SATA-IO drives that simply reside in a removable tray
of a hard drive mobile rack designed for SATA removable drives. (Actually,
you could just as well plop the SATA HD in a cigar box and just run the
signal/power cables to the computer, but you understand for obvious reasons
we're not recommending that approach!). BTW, there's a relatively
inexpensive device (about $10) we're been using that acts as an interface
between the SATA HD and the computer's SATA connector and power supply. It
simply attaches to the backplane of the computer case's I/O area.

But I guess this arrangement would not be practicable in your situation
since I take it one or more of the machines you're working with are not
SATA-equipped and therefore you need the USB interface for
interchangeability considerations. But I thought this background information
might be useful to you for future consideration.

If you do go the USB route, i.e., using a USB external HD enclosure, do
consider a SATA HD (preferably the SATA-IO models with the 3 Gb/s data
interface) for installation in a SATA USBEHD enclosure. At some future time
you may want to use that drive as an internal HD in a SATA machine.
Obviously there's a cost factor to be considered. 300 GB SATA-IO drives are
selling for about $160 here in the States; not too terribly expensive as
compared with similar capacity PATA drives.
Anna

....................................................^........
er, that's    comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage   .... storage with a 'g'
.... if you wanted to look this up.  Or just what Anna says.