Torrenting through External HDD

[Eternith]

I've just bought a 1TB Western Digital Elements External USB2.0 HDD because my 180GB internal HD was running out of space. I torrent files often which is why I needed the extra storage. I had initially planned on downloading directly towards the external and continuing to seed from there.

After looking around, I heard people say that torrenting files directly to an External HD through USB is bad for the drive and could cause problems later on. Is there truth in this? How about seeding back from the drive?

If torrenting towards my internal first then moving the completed download to my external will increase my drive's overall lifespan, then I guess it's worth the extra hassle. Although this means I won't be able to seed as much back since my upload is drastically lower then my download speed.

[riley]

i can't say i've heard that being said and i can't imagine how there would be any truth to it. presumably the theory is that because pieces come down in effectively random order torrenting requires a lot of head movements that "wear out" the drive. but even if that is true, whether you wear out your internal drive or your external drive seems a moot point to me. if anything, better to wear out the drive that doesn't have your operating system on it. and think about it, your computer will never wear out if you simply avoid ever turning it on. but that wouldn't be much fun now would it.

[Eternith]

Hmm, your right, thanks for the input.

[riley]

my pleasure, i'll count on you for a reference when i apply for a job on mythbusters

[pmhtsos]

Well actually i think I'll disagree, my advice is in most cases the internal drive should do the job.Why:

a)Internal drives are designed to last longer,believe it or not an internal drive it gonna last much more than an external drive after everyday use.External HDs have even become increasingly unreliable the past years...

b)External drives are more expensive so even if they lasted the same as internal ones (which they don't) it's much better if the cheap drive breaks and not the expensive one.

c)"if anything, better to wear out the drive that doesn't have your operating system on it"
Also disagree with that.When did the operating system became more important than your files?.Windows is completely replaceable are your files replaceable?I 100% prefer to lose windows from losing 5 years of quality movies and music carefully organized...

d)Usb is a crappy connection to have always running...The good thing about Usb is that it works straight away,the(main) bad thing is it requires lots of resources so it will be constantly taking up memory and even more Cpu which will overall make your system slower.Usb is not a good connection for a Hd you wanna use all the time.Sata is and most internal drives nowadays use sata.

e)Well e) is some stuff that don't deserve their own paragraph:
i)Lot's of shit can happen to an external Hd just because it's external,dust,fluid spilling,nearby magnets(!),someone on the house doesn't see it and kicks it like a football,it falls from the desk and lots more...
ii)External Hd overheat,that reduces their stability and their speed which btw:
iii)Is a LOT slower than an e-sata internal drive.
iv)I'll think of something to add up here in the future
AND FINALLY:

f)F stands for me (hope I'm not breaking any forum rules)FUCKING hating cables,usb can't provide enough power for an hd to run properly so you need an external source of power that's 2 more cables (including the usb one) and the hard drive that take up space and are always in my way.

Btw:I'm not sure everything I'm saying is 100% true,if someone thinks I'm wrong somewhere please feel free to correct me.Also note eventually no hard drive is really reliable and will fail at some point,so backup is necessary until HDs find the technology to call themselves truly reliable,in your case i think your data will be more safe in an external drive that just holds stuff instead of working all the time...

Hope i helped.

[riley]

hi pm, good post, but i disagree that we disagree i agree with you that internal drives are better, for everything not just torrenting, but that wasn't the question. he asked if torrenting would damage an external drive, and you haven't said anything about that

[pmhtsos]

Originally Posted by riley

hi pm, good post, but i disagree that we disagree i agree with you that internal drives are better, for everything not just torrenting, but that wasn't the question. he asked if torrenting would damage an external drive, and you haven't said anything about that

Actually i have,you probably got lost in my text wall but i'm impressed you read that nevertheless.I said/implied that using the drive reduces dramatically it's life span,modern external drives aren't meant to be "used" they are just meant to store things in them and leave them alone to live their lives...On the contrary internal drives are more "resistant" when it comes to usage...

P.S.Also i'd like to add here after some research and some of my already acquired limited knowledge that torrenting in particulal is way more stressful to a hard drive than normal tasks.

[riley]

ok, you win, we do disagree where do you get "modern external drives aren't meant to be "used" they are just meant to store things in them" from? there isn't actually any such thing as an external drive. they're all the same inside, just mounted in different enclosures.

[pmhtsos]

That's actually an interesting point cause hardware-wise yeah it's the same thing how can one be less reliable?Well some say it's the usb connection,some say it's more vibration of external drives,some say it's external drives most of the times not having a fan,some say it's the limited write cache,some say(i definitely agree with that one it's the human factor aka breaking,droping,bumping,moving around,disconnecting while the disk is working that reduces the lifespan (or ends it in an one time trick:-)...Some even say that companies intentionally make external drives less reliable cause they are easier to replace all you have to do is go to the local tech shop and buy one=more profit for them.I don't know which of these factors is true for sure and to what extent it affects the hd's reliability but after asking many people and reading loads of forums on external hard drives since i recently had to buy one i faced an army of people cursing their external hard drives for failing after 3 years average usage.Interestingly enough i noticed this patent in 10000 cases:
The same drive that got 1* from the user whose drive failed in 1 year also got 5 * from the guy that has this driving sitting in his basement for 10 years,but look at that,today he plugged it in and all his data was there...
Also:

he asked if torrenting would damage an external drive, and you haven't said anything about that

But here's what was really going on in Eternith's mind:

I have 1 internal drive and one external one which one should i use for torrenting?

That's what i thought was more essential and that's what i focused on,even if I'm completely of in this post and external drives are just as reliable as internal ones,internal drives are still the best for terrenting (Seek my Wallpost) and i hope we agree on that which is basically the essence.

[riley]

ok, so (i think) we agree that torrenting doesn't damage drives, but that internal drives are preferable to externals because they're faster and they live longer.

as for eternith, he hasn't been here since he left his post last year

[pmhtsos]

Definitely could live with that friend.

p.s.Last year is closer than it sounds...