external hard Drives

[billybobbbuddy]

I was checking out some hard drives and noticed that some were powered by a power cord and some were powered by a USB cord. Which in the opinion of our fine viewers, do you folks think is better? Thanks.

 

[Anon_F]

My Western Digital External Drive is connected up via the USB, but also has an external power supply.
The more smaller drives like 2.5" ae normally powered via the USB lead only.
It does depend on what you want to use it for.

 

[muckshifter]

Power should come from a wall socket, not the PC.

 

[Abarbarian]

Power should come from a wall socket, not the PC.

Why so ? Oh mighty guru of the techy stuff .

 

[BigJay]

Why so ? Oh mighty guru of the techy stuff .

I would guess that it would be better not to bother the pc's power supply, with an external device, when it can be powered from elsewhere.

 

[muckshifter]

Why so ? Oh mighty guru of the techy stuff .

Standard USB power output is .5A, this is drawn off the MB ... this can be flaky at the best of times, especially where laptops are concerned.

Lets just say ... if I have a choice, I would get a wall socket powered device over any USB only powered device.

Systems with integrated video, sound and/or communications can cause a whole host of "problems" not to mention non-Intel chipsets. Oh, and God help you if you use VIA USB controllers.

Until the "new" USB stds come into effect, I'll stick with outside power.

http://akiba.ascii24.com/akiba/news/2006/06/01/662588-000.html

 

[TriplexDread]

To complicate things some older PSU's have a 240 passthrough on back


Sorry had to get that in lol

 

[Abarbarian]

Thanks for the clarification folks .

 

[billybobbbuddy]

Thanks for the info. folks, it was very helpful. Also, I noticed that some threads automatically come with a description of their PC, how do you do that?

 

[TriplexDread]

To the left of your screen under 'User Menu' you have whats called a 'User Control Panel'

In that section you look for 'Edit Signature'

You can do pretty much anything you need to in there

Nothing Explicit though be warned