[SgtSama]

I purchased a 1TB, 5400rpm, 2.5" drive not too long ago. My plan was to replace the drive in my laptop with it, but the more I thought about it, I decided that since it's a gaming laptop, I'd prefer to keep the 7200rpm drive in it for my games. That led me to decide to just purchase an enclosure for the drive and use it as an external SATA drive that I could simply carry with it (due to 2.5" enclosures being so much smaller than the 1TB external I already have).

I purchased an enclosure, and although it was a 2.5" enclosure, my drive was just barely too big for it (probably having more platters than the enclosure was meant for? Not sure). But this leads me to a point where all of my options are open to me again.

One question I have is; What is the average read/write speed of an eSATA 5400rpm drive? Would it be much slower than my 7200 when it comes to playing games? If the only thing that this effects are load times between missions/levels, I wouldn't mind that so much. But if it drastically effects my actual gameplay, then obviously I wouldn't be installing it internally.

Question two is; If I do use this as an external, I would have to return the enclosure I purchased, and wait for another one to ship out, and hope that it actually fits this time. So, is there some SAFE, and easy way to create a simple enclosure for your drive? Obviously I wouldn't be carrying it around this way due to it not being quite as secure (possibly).

Above all else, you're the geekstogo, so if there are other options here I would greatly appreciate hearing them! I'd love to put this to the best use that I can for obvious reasons

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I purchased an enclosure, and although it was a 2.5" enclosure, my drive was just barely too big for it (probably having more platters than the enclosure was meant for? Not sure). But this leads me to a point where all of my options are open to me again.

Unfortunately, and I appreciate it is a very easy mistake to make you failed to be told or you failed to notice that WD have made these drives 12.5mm

Storage capacity for 2.5-inch form factor drives has arrived at a realm once thought to be impossible – up to 1 TB for mobile storage.TPVT models are 12.5 mm high and may not be compatible with all notebook systems. Consult system specifications for maximum allowable drive height before attempting to install.
and they are not compatible with all enclosures.

Re 5400 or 7200
Almost all games use the hard drive a little durring gameplay. I can name many off the top of my head. Sim City 4, SW:KotOR, WC3 (sometimes), the list goes on. Mainly the larger and more computer intensive games would moslty benefit from a faster hard drive.

Also, have you ever been playing a game and had to minimize to do something? If there is an intensive game running, most of the RAM is full, so when you minimize, Windows has to copy a good portion of your game files to the Swap portion of the hard drive to clear space in the RAM for temporary Windows working.

While hard drive speed will not effect frame rates, it will effect game loading time, level loading time, loading stuff in the game, etc. It all depends on what the game needs, how it's programmed, and how the user is using it. For games, a better graphics card will help more than a faster hard drive, but in many cases, a slow hard drive can slow down gamming, whether it effects frame rates or not.

For all the info you need see this
http://www.wdc.com/e...2579-001043.pdf

Edited by Macboatmaster, 08 March 2011 - 12:04 PM.

[Macboatmaster]

I purchased an enclosure, and although it was a 2.5" enclosure, my drive was just barely too big for it (probably having more platters than the enclosure was meant for? Not sure). But this leads me to a point where all of my options are open to me again.

Unfortunately, and I appreciate it is a very easy mistake to make you failed to be told or you failed to notice that WD have made these drives 12.5mm

Storage capacity for 2.5-inch form factor drives has arrived at a realm once thought to be impossible – up to 1 TB for mobile storage.TPVT models are 12.5 mm high and may not be compatible with all notebook systems. Consult system specifications for maximum allowable drive height before attempting to install.
and they are not compatible with all enclosures.

Re 5400 or 7200
Almost all games use the hard drive a little durring gameplay. I can name many off the top of my head. Sim City 4, SW:KotOR, WC3 (sometimes), the list goes on. Mainly the larger and more computer intensive games would moslty benefit from a faster hard drive.

Also, have you ever been playing a game and had to minimize to do something? If there is an intensive game running, most of the RAM is full, so when you minimize, Windows has to copy a good portion of your game files to the Swap portion of the hard drive to clear space in the RAM for temporary Windows working.

While hard drive speed will not effect frame rates, it will effect game loading time, level loading time, loading stuff in the game, etc. It all depends on what the game needs, how it's programmed, and how the user is using it. For games, a better graphics card will help more than a faster hard drive, but in many cases, a slow hard drive can slow down gamming, whether it effects frame rates or not.

For all the info you need see this
http://www.wdc.com/e...2579-001043.pdf

Edited by Macboatmaster, 08 March 2011 - 12:04 PM.

[SgtSama]

Thank you. Yes, I had realized shortly after this problem that drives had been growing in size ever so slightly, and obviously a couple of millimeters can easily effect. But you learn something new everyday right?

Also, thanks for the information regarding system performance with slower drives. I hadn't considered the fact that the RAM would have to copy more over to the swap portion.

At the moment the only game I really play is StarCraft II online, which I believe would be fine with the slower drive (other than the time it takes to load maps), but I do alt+tab out of it quite often (I have it in fullscreen-windowed mode for that very reason), so your information has pretty much ruled out my idea of installing it anyway. Especially if it wouldn't fit in the first place (haven't checked since I found this out, but I digress). It looks like I'll be either purchasing another enclosure, and doing a bit more research on it as well. I wish there were an easier way to create your own safe, sturdy enclosure, but it seems I'd be better off just purchasing another. Thanks again!


Edit~I may require some assistance finding an enclosure to fit it, seeing as the only ones I can find don't specify if they're compatible with 12.5mm drives.

Edited by SgtSama, 08 March 2011 - 12:30 PM.

[Macboatmaster]

Just google it, the screen will fill with answers.

"Enclosure for 2.5 x 12.5mm drive

http://www.dabs.com/...depth-5GYT.html

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16817364026

Edited by Macboatmaster, 08 March 2011 - 12:47 PM.