Can Anyone Recommnend An External Drive?
Prince Wao
Posts: 373
What I'm looking for is an external SSD drive in which I can install the DS program and all of my Daz content so that I can work on Daz projects solely on that drive, leaving my PC's drives free for other use. It's taken me 7 years to accumulate 549 GB of of everything Daz, so even 1 TB will do though I'm not opposed to up to 4. I ask as somone told me not to buy a for-backup-only external drive as they may not handle being used as one uses a C Drive; but now having researched a lot of drives some state "backup", others pretty much nothing, while customer reviews also only mention "backup". As a friend just offfered me oodles of advice about backup systems and internal HDDs, which I've no interest in at all, I repeat again I'm looking for an external SSD to use purely for Daz Studio work.
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I bought a WD Black it is apparently a high speed gaming external drive. I don't have much to compare with, but I am happy with this one. It's an 8 Terabyte (7.27) about half full combination of rendering and 3d printing assets.
Just about any external SSD will do. If it is a "backup" drive you may be paying for a software utility you don't need. If you are putting it on a Windows system - check the formatting; I picked up a 4 TB external that was ExFat and not NTFS; it took me a while to figure out why it was so slow. Fixed with a quick reformat and reload.
From the UK.. I have a Seagate and just moved from a 4Terabyte to a 8Terabyte it is plenty big enough for my needs it might be too big to be honest depends what you are storing I guess.
I've been using a SanDisk 2TB Extreme Portable External SSD (SDSSDE60-2T00-G25) for storing my DAZ content for a while and it's worked well for me. (Minor note: I'm on a Mac. While the drive is compatible with both Mac and PC, I can't speak for how it performs on PC. I would expect it to work as well or better, but have no first-hand knowledge of that).
It's currently priced at about $229 on Amazon, 20% off, which Amazon tells me is the 'lowest price for 30 days'. That's bigger than you were looking for, though. The 1TB model is cheaper, at $139.
The other external SSDs that get consistently good reviews are the Samsung T5 and T7 models (WireCutter recommends the T5 as their best pick for a portable SSD). A 1TB T5 will cost about the same as the 1TB Sandisk. The T7 is more expensive, but also much faster.
You probably won't need that extra speed. Realistically, any SSD is probably more than fast enough for loading DAZ content. You could probably also do well with a fast HD -- something like a WD Black, for example. I'm pretty sure that the limiting factor in loading DAZ scenes on my machine is Studio plodding its way through the insane number of morphs I've accumulated, not the speed of the media.
TL;DR: A 1TB Samsung T5 ($139 at Amazon or Newegg) is probably a good choice.
Thanks for all of the replies above. I've now researched a few products including all mentioned above, but I'm a littled freaked out by the lower star reviews on Amazon UK as it appears there's a greater than a 1 in 50 chance of buying something with a fault! Common complaints are loose cables, way slower than advertised speeds, overheating and 1 TB products being 980ish GB and 2 TB not being 2 TB. So regarding products mentioned above are you actually getting the advertised TBs and speeds. TB or not TB that is the question.
Prince Wao, the 'reported" hard drive capacity will always be different than what you see on your own computer. It's a complicated story, but basically means the manufacturer uses a different standard to computer the drive's capacity than the average consumer will do. That's just one of those silly things computer users learn to accept, hopefully.
On Windows a 2 TB drive will show as 1.81 TB; a 4 TB drive will show as 3.63 TB, and a 5 TB drive will show as 4.54 TB; manufacturers use 1 KB = 1,000 Bytes and Windows uses 1 KB = 1,024 Bytes, and that 24 Byte difference really shows up on larger drives.
Thanks! I now know to go for at least 2 TB.
I have a 1TB WD Essentials. Really solid and reliable piece. It's a good choice for backups of important stuff.
Thanks, but I have backup drives, though they don't have the capacity to store Daz. What I'm after is an external SSD in which I can store everything I have in Daz (program, all content, my scenes, subsets and render library) and work on Daz projects in that drive.
No programs run on a hard drive. All applications are loaded into system RAM memory before they run, so there's absolutely no difference between running a program on an internal or external drive.
Many thanks. I asked as I wrote above "... as somone told me not to buy a for-backup-only external drive as they may not handle being used as one uses a C Drive;". Also, I've had a smart TV for a few years which only allows recording of programmes onto an external drive, but I tried 2 and borth failed to record more than a few seconds and then burned out after a few tries. So someone (on Daz) warning not to buy a for-backup-only made sense.
Well, there are self-powered and USB-powered external drives. If the drive doesn't have enough power, then you're going to have problems. Some people might hook up the wrong type of drive and then blame it when it doesn't work. But, I've never heard of a backup only drive before, as it relates to HDD or SSD. Maybe they mean stay away from the USB-powered drives? Those are usually the tiny pocket drives like WD Passport?
Some small drives are described as 'backup drives' when sold. The assumption that the vendors are making is that people will use them for backups, but the drives themselves are perfectly standard. However, there are also some drives sold with a 'one-touch backup' feature. Again, the drive itself is pretty standard -- although some of them have a physical button on the enclosure that you can press to make a backup of your files from your computer's internal drive. But the backup feature is implemented by software (or firmware) on the drive when it ships from the factory, which may take up space on the drive and may even make subtle changes to the way the drive works. In some cases, it might literally turn the drive into a backup-only device: it's not mountable as a normal drive, it can only be used for backup and restore.
I think when people say "don't buy backup drives" they're thinking of these things. The advice is sound. Proprietary software made by hardware manufacturers is pretty much always a nightmare (I once bought a drive that shipped with software using a custom UI that reimplemented all the standard UI components to 'look cool': the scrollbar was on the left side of the window instead of the right. It was also purple. Why? Because they could.) All you need and all you want is a basic commodity drive with the minimum amount of proprietary cruft coming between you and the functions of the drive.
Many drives today ship with at least some manufacturer-provided software on them, and the first thing I typically do is to reformat the drive, blowing it all away.
Removed comment as I can see you have had more helpful replies :) Good Luck with what you buy my friend .
Despite your friends advise remember external drives are speed limited by the interface method. USB 3 being the fastest. If you have a PCI slot consider using it for one of the PCI drives which are in many cases even faster than the internal drive.
A USB 3 drive will perform just fine. If you must get an external drive, you might consider getting an external SSD.
Why not? No moving parts, will handle being jostled around better. Although I prefer internal drives whenever possible.
As for which capacity to buy, here's my advice. Figure out what your needs are. A DAZ content folder might only be 50 GB, or it might need to be 1TB. I recommend buying the largest capacity you can afford.
And finally, there's one other thing you should always do whenever buying a hard drive, internal or external. Re-assess your backup hard drive capacities too, and buy more or bigger hard drives to support your backups.
Always mind your backups or you could be sorry one day!
I think actually the first thing they said was, "What I'm looking for is an external SSD drive".
I was convinced that 1TB would be sufficient because I'd only accumuated about 250GB over fourteen years. Now I've got about 70GB of that 1TB drive left, most thanks to purchases made the past two years. As someone who has more than once said "oh a terabyte will be enough" and regretted it, I will always advocate that when you say "even X will do," you should buy something with a capacity of at least 2X. But like Subtropic Pixel said, you'll need to consider backups, so balance your need for space with what you can afford to buy two of.
Also consider whether you want to have space to store all of your DAZ zips on the drive as well. It's good to have a backup of those, along with older installers of Studio in case you hit a hardware wall like happened for GTX card users and 4.12.
I will add that I've personally had a better time of it buying internal drives and an enclosure (with its own power source, not just USB). That lets me just shelve an old drive if it ever gets full and I want to archive it and start over fresh (good for storing sequential backups), makes it easy to pop the drive out if something goes wrong and I need to determine whether it's the drive or the enclosure that's at fault, etc. If you do go for that option, make sure that you buy a retail drive kit and NOT an OEM (sometimes called a "bare") drive, for warranty purposes.
My advice, buy a caddy then you can plug any number of drives in it as you require.
You can get them that are suitable for 2.5 and 3.5 drives so you can also use SSDs, which is what I use other than for backups.
I also use drive bays:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com-5-25in-Trayless-Mobile-3-5in/dp/B000KS8S9W/ref=sr_1_11?dchild=1&keywords=drive+bay&qid=1604831216&sr=8-11
https://www.amazon.co.uk/OImaster-Backplane-Function-Hot-swap-Transmission/dp/B074V52L9D/ref=sr_1_14?dchild=1&keywords=drive+bay&qid=1604831216&sr=8-14
Not sure yet if I can reccommend the 2.5 inch SSD bay, as only been using it for a couple of weeks, but the 3.5 inch bay, I've been using similar for many years
Yeah, but then it sounded like some folks were pushing spinning hard drives. So I just kind of reset that. :)
I actually do the same as you. The only "true external" drives I've bought are some 4TB Western Digital 3.5" drives in a nice and sturdy enclosure. Those make for good backup drives because I can toss one into my checked luggage if I'm going somewhere, and then I actually have a backup with me! But I only buy 3.5" spinners now for backups. I'm actually up to 10TB drives, and the 4TB ones only get used for certain backups and can't really hold even one generation of all my active drives (My laptop has 12TB of capacity; all internal!).
3.5" spinners also require that you bring a wall-wart with you, and I hate wall-warts. I will put up with one because I love having one backup with me on a trip, but everything else needs to be a 2.5" SSD for internal or to go into an external caddy.
Said and said again. It's always worth it!
If it's an HDD, do try to avoid the 5400 RPM drives. Their performance sucks out loud. I prefer 7400 RPM drives if I MUST buy an HDD, even for backups.
How do you know if a spinner has a spindle speed of 5400 RPM? The box will not give a spindle speed. The box may also tout the "greenness" of the drive. 7400 RPM drives are always advertised as 7400 RPM, but 5400 always goes unspoken, as if it was a terrible family secret...like, "their kids like green beans!" or something.
I used to get dedicated external drives and then I had one die on me. It was such a pain to deal with that I bought an enclosure the next day. The only two external drives I've bought since then were easily shuckable LaCie drives that were on sale for cheaper than an internal + FireWire enclosure at the time. I've put numerous new drives in them and still use them with my old MacBook Pro because it's either FireWire 800 or USB 2.0 with that one, lol.
I really want to go to all SSDs for internal storage and keep the 3.5" HDDs strictly for backup when I build my new system, if possible. Caddies if I can find a quality new case that has the bays and accomodates them without cutting into space for a long graphics card or causing cooling problems; my current one has three unused 5.25" bays but it's so large that it's impractical. I just wish larger capacity SSDs weren't still so expensive per GB, I can't afford $400-700+ for a single 4TB drive if I condense the parts of my setup where I care that much about stability (the boot drive is obviously discrete). Backups are going to have to remain mechanical due to cost, there's just no way I can avoid that one.
Of course, the idea of condensing my setup scares me since I've compartmentalized things for so long and I hate the idea of having to restore everything because it's on a single drive that goes out.
I've always backed up everything I have in Documents: Daz 3D, but my concern has been not losing my Render Library, Scenes and Subsets.
Cost being an issue I've now bought a 2TB Seagate Barracuda - I ordered it Sunday night from eBay (it was cheaper than Amazon) and it arrived this afternoon, Tuesday! - and it works fine. I'm not going to start installing DS on it until I have some clear free time as I can get very tense trying not tomake errors and I usually find the time it takes is longer than expected.
Have you looked at the SSD drives which boast speeds up to 2000 MB/s ? This is thanks to USB 3.2 Gen 2x2.
The drive speeds seem to drop in half going backwards:
USB 3.1 = 1000 MB/s
USB 3.0 = 500 MB/s
HDD speeds are even worse, like 100 MB/s.
I know it takes like 6-8 hours to backup a 1TB drive using a HDD external drive, which is horrible.