Good Portable Hard Drive?

ChAIn3D

ChAIn3D

ChAIn3D

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Joined
5 Jun 2005
Posts
121
Hi guys,

I'm looking for another External Hard Drive (Portable 2.5" HD) and I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions. I have a rough idea what I want but not sure what Hard Drive will meet my needs.

The things I'm looking for are; Slim, Light, User Friendly, Transfer files at a fast rate, Reliable & Solid, 250GB or Above and Black. I'm not too keen on having Desktop External HD cos of the power cables required.

A couple of questions; Is there a difference in performance and file transfer rate using other makes and Hard Drives (i.e. Portable 2.5" & Desktop 3.5")? Is the fiel transfer rate faster on the Desktop HD than the Portable HD?

I have read on other posts and forums thats your able to connect your Portable HD on a TV and able to run videos, music and pictures through the TV, is this possible? If so, how? Would you need to install windows on the HD?

That's all... hope someone can help!

Cheers :)
 
I had a Freecom mobile as my first portable drive, but found it better to buy a 2.5" laptop drive and a caddy and make them myself. Sorry for going off on a tangent but as an example, you can even look at something like this or if you want to get a docking station installed in a spare floppy drive bay, then this and buy/install a 2.5" laptop SATA drive of whatever capacity you need and fit it yourself.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with retail portable drives, I guess its a bit like choosing to build a PC rather than buy one ready assembled.
 
WD passport.

File transfer rate is limited more by the USB interface than the type of drive. The theretical max over USB is 60Mbytes/sec, but in real life it only gets about half that.

Firewire shouldl be faster and eSATA is limited by the HD itself.
 
Interesting read - sorry to hijack - I'm looking to get an external hard drive and I have been looking at this one:

Western Digital MyBook Home 500GB USB2.0/eSATA/Firewire External Hard Drive (WDH1CS5000E)

I'm going to be using it to backup my photos (which are mostly on DVDs which eventually scratch and wear out) as well as those huge WoW patches I just had to download.

Is there anything stopping me from going down that route as opposed to a hard drive and caddy? I haven't seen any Caddies capable of Firewire yet on the web site.

Thanks
 
Don't see why not - it shouldnt be any different. I think it just depends on how portable you want it to be. I just prefer to have things USB powered, one less power cable to worry about.
 
icybox 290 here with 160gb 7200rpm 2.5 western digital hd great piece of kit, very solid. i bought caddy too so can just slot into my floppy bay and use the esata-sat connection for better speed.

zia
 
I've been using a 20GB Archos Mini HDD (2.5" portable) for the last 5.5 years. As it's portable it's had its share of knocks and is still going strong.

I recently bought a Lacie portable drive for a friend. I loved the retractable cable and stylish case design.
 
Maxtor 160GB OneTouch IV here - it's actually got a Seagate drive inside (Seagate bought Maxtor incase you didn't know) so it's nice and reliable :)
 
I'm also looking at getting a portable drive and was wondering if I could have some help (Sorry to hijack:))

I was looking at buying this or this to go in this caddy

Would all that be OK? Am I right in thinking that it will only require the one USB cable?

I'm guessing both drives are the same apart from the make (I.E, Speed, noise, heat etc) and that the caddy is an OK one? I seen bledd recommended the 290 over the 266, is there any reason for this?

Cheers in advance and sorry to OP for "borrowing" your thread :D
 
I was looking at retail portables but the icybox 290 suggestion has got my interest, especially with the docking in my empty floppy drive bay.

Am i right in thinking the 290 requires a usb power cable as well as a standard usb cable for data transfer via usb?

I like the idea of choosing my own drive and docking it, but a tidy unit with a fold out usb cable eg a Freecom toughdrive or a LaCie little disk would be ideal when im chucking it in my bag or packet and carting it around all over the palce.

Sigh :( if only i could think of a legitimate reason to have both.
 
bledd. said:
icybox 290 (really really solid) and any sata drive

gives you esata and usb2

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-032-BT

(the whole outer shell is one solid piece of metal)
Click to expand...

Sorry to hijack but is this actually worth it?

I've been considering getting a portable HDD for a while now to store my music/movies on. I have around £60 and want 500/750gb of storage. Is this better than buying something like a Mybook etc?

I'd prefer a 3.5" solution as 2.5" seems to expensive just for space reduction.

I want it to be external to swap it between my laptop and main pc.

cheers for any answers.
 
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I've got a Maxtor 60gb 2.5", a Seagate 40gb 2.5" drive I put into a caddy, also got a 120gb 3.5" drive in an ICYBox.

Not really taken note of the transfer speed as a comparison but I prefer the portable drives as they use up less space and don't require an additional power source.

However, saying that as mentioned above a 3.5" drive is so much cheaper than a 2.5" drive of the same size.
 
Just picked up an Iomega Prestige 250GB Portable HD for £39.97 at the local supermarket it was half price ! :)
Its a 2.5inch drive and in Stainless steel.

Got clubcard points too and every little helps in the old credit crunch times I'm well happy. :rolleyes:

Seams to work fine with my EEE PC using only 1 USB port, Its got one of those stupid splitter cables incase 1 USB cannot provide enough juice for it, my work PC can't !

I'll juse an normal micro USB cable as I've always got one with me.
 
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