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Hello everyone!

I'm about to buy an external HDD and am confused between the two brands:

(i) WD Passport Essential 2TB (with 1 year warranty)
OR
(ii) Seagate 2TB Expansion HDD 3.5 (with 3 years limited warranty)

I didn't find any satisfactory reviews for the two products, so if you guys can help me compare the two models and suggest me which one should I buy? That will help me a lot!

Note: Warranty specified is that one that my local store offers. Also the price of both the models is exactly the same.

Thanks!

The Passport uses a 2½" notebook hard-drive.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

The Passport uses a 2½" notebook hard-drive.

Is it a good thing or a bad thing and how does it compare with the Seagate one? Please explain.

It's smaller, requires less power (USB 3 cable only - no power brick), more resistant to shock, and probably lower-performing than an equivalent 3½" desktop drive.

At Newegg, the WD drive is about twice as expensive as the Seagate.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

It's smaller, requires less power (USB 3 cable only - no power brick), more resistant to shock, and probably lower-performing than an equivalent 3½" desktop drive.

I read somewhere that the WD uses a 5400 RPM drive, whereas the Seagate uses a 7200 RPM drive. Is it true? Also, when you said that the WD is "lower-performing" than an equivalent 3.5 inch drive (that the Seagate one is), did you compare the RPMs?

For those two models, what it would come down to for me is warranty versus not needing a separate power cable. I'd probably opt for the WD.

Zaeem wrote:

JustAnEngineer wrote:

It's smaller, requires less power (USB 3 cable only - no power brick), more resistant to shock, and probably lower-performing than an equivalent 3½" desktop drive.

I read somewhere that the WD uses a 5400 RPM drive, whereas the Seagate uses a 7200 RPM drive. Is it true? Also, when you said that the WD is "lower-performing" than an equivalent 3.5 inch drive (that the Seagate one is), did you compare the RPMs?

Nearly all external drives are low-rpm models in the 5x00rpm range unless they specifically say otherwise. This is for heat/power reasons, and also because externals are typically used for simple data storage and don't need to be high performance.

A "desktop external" uses a standard 3.5" desktop drive and requires a power adapter. They can be found in any capacity, including models with dual-drives.

A "portable external" uses a 2.5" laptop drive and can be powered by USB, without need for a power adapter. Being USB powered makes them much more flexible in usage, but the 2.5" form factor limits capacity (generally 2TB at the moment).

Concluding from all of the helpful opinions / comparisons you guys posted, I'll be going for the WD model. Thanking you all!

One last question:
If I install a game or an application, say Battlefield or MATLAB, on the external HDD (running in USB 3.0 mode), will I notice any significant performance hit when playing a game / application?

Maybe just a little while playing the game, probably a slight ammount while loading. One thing to worry about is the drive letter. If you unplug the drive and plug a thumb drive in and then replug the HDD in it may have a different drive letter.

Personally, I'd go for the no-power-cable option. Warrenties are nice, but it won't save data. It will be noticably slower than the larger 3.5" drive, though. Again, once the game/application in memory it shouldn't be much of an issue, if any.

Losergamer04 wrote:

It will be noticably slower than the larger 3.5" drive, though. Again, once the game/application in memory it shouldn't be much of an issue, if any.

Maybe slightly slower, but I wouldn't expect a meaningful difference between the two. I say that based on no testing whatsoever

Zaeem wrote:

One last question:
If I install a game or an application, say Battlefield or MATLAB, on the external HDD (running in USB 3.0 mode), will I notice any significant performance hit when playing a game / application?

Installing to an external is not ideal (see the drive letter issues Losergamer mentioned, among other things). That said, games are not badly affected by drive speed. The only difference you should notice is in load times.

You will get better performance out of connecting to a USB3 port versus a USB2 port. It's not night and day, but probably noticeable. The drive will max out the available bandwidth of a USB2 connection; USB3 gives it a whole lot more bandwidth, but then you quickly run into the wall on how well the drive can perform. I did some fairly unscientific testing on this a year or so ago.

As far as the drive letter issue goes, what I've been able to do is assign a letter near the end of the alphabet, and it'll normally stick with it. The trouble usually starts if you give it the next available letter - if it happens to get disconnected, then another device might try to take that letter (since it's the next one available). If you assign it Z, then Z should always be available for it, and Windows is usually pretty good at giving a given device the same letter when it's reattached.

USB2 vs USB3 is a BIG difference in your use case. I caution you use the drive as an "external internal" as you plan now though it's doable. I strongly suggest you do not use the dive in the manner you wish if you will be connecting to USB2. The throughput is much slower and CPU is heavily tasked durring transfers with USB2. You will not only notice a performance hit but will be unsatisfied with the solution.

I have used the Z drive idea and it has worked when I script things. Good suggestion.

Thanks to all for the awesome and helpful replies, once again!