# Portable 5400 rpm vs 7200 rpm



## Jack56 (Aug 30, 2015)

Hi all,
I want to buy a portable mobile usb 3.0 drive. Will you really notice the difference in speed when transferring raw files between the 5400rpm and 7200 rpm drives?
Thank you.


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## e17paul (Aug 30, 2015)

USB3 is fast enough that you will see the difference in speed of the drive inside the case. That of course depends on the drive in the computer being equally fast.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Aug 30, 2015)

For a portable drive, ruggedness is the most important consideration, and as rpm's rise, drives are more susceptible to damage from shock.

I bought just a USB 3 housing and use it with SSD's. They are much more rugged and much faster. They do cost more, but the price is no longer sky high.

You can get a portable 500GB Samsung SSD for around $200, and have both speed and rugged construction. ($400 for 1 TB)

http://www.newegg.com/External-SSDs/SubCategory/ID-2022?Tid=11690


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## Valvebounce (Aug 30, 2015)

Hi Mt Spokane. 
Whilst the price for SSD's is no longer sky high, it is anywhere between 7.5X and 4X the price for a basic 1Tb spinny disc, which to me is a rather large premium for the SSD. Of course it then comes down to the risk ratio of loosing both copies of your files and the value you place on said files. Only the op can make that decision, but I feel I can look after tech well enough to minimise the risk to the point that I would go with the saving and spend it whilst on holiday, 300 bucks is a good family excursion! 

Cheers, Graham. 



Mt Spokane Photography said:


> For a portable drive, ruggedness is the most important consideration, and as rpm's rise, drives are more susceptible to damage from shock.
> 
> I bought just a USB 3 housing and use it with SSD's. They are much more rugged and much faster. They do cost more, but the price is no longer sky high.
> 
> ...


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## kaihp (Aug 30, 2015)

While I don't know if the drive is a 5400 or 7200rpm disk, I have good experience with the WDC MyPassport Ultra's that I bought 1-2 years ago. They can sustain 90-100MB/sec when transfering Gigabytes of CR2 files, both to the internal SSD disk and through a bonded 2 x 1Gbps Ethernet line to my NAS.


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## Zv (Aug 30, 2015)

I have a portable USB 3.0 1Tb Transcend HDD which runs at 7200 rpm. It's in a shockproof casing and feels pretty solid. It's been good to me so far. For the the price it has performed the best of any other portable HDD I've had. I had my doubts about Transcend but they seem to be churning out quality stuff these days. 

I also had a WD my essential HDD fail on me so not sure I want to invest in spinning disks anymore. SSD seems the way to go.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Aug 31, 2015)

Valvebounce said:


> Hi Mt Spokane.
> Whilst the price for SSD's is no longer sky high, it is anywhere between 7.5X and 4X the price for a basic 1Tb spinny disc, which to me is a rather large premium for the SSD. Of course it then comes down to the risk ratio of loosing both copies of your files and the value you place on said files. Only the op can make that decision, but I feel I can look after tech well enough to minimise the risk to the point that I would go with the saving and spend it whilst on holiday, 300 bucks is a good family excursion!
> 
> Cheers, Graham.
> ...



That's a choice we each must make. When 1TB SSD's were $1200 and more, it was easy. Now, at $400 and dropping, its not so clear cut. The cheap laptop HDD's they put in the low cost portable drives are amazing, considering the price, but they are still not reliable. It depends on lots of factors, so there is no one solution for everyone.

I've had laptop drives fail with just a tiny jolt, the timing of that jolt was probably just right. I have 8 or 10 SSD's now, in all my computers and laptops with no failures.


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