Decent self-powered external hdd's?

PiKe

PiKe

PiKe

Caporegime
Joined
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I saw a western digital passport drive for around £60, are there any cheaper or better ones that don't require external power?
 
If you have a 2.5" drive kicking about then self building with a caddy is the way to go, if you're starting from scratch then the WD Passports are as good a buy as anything.
 
I have a 60Gbyte Passport, it's fine and works very well on anything I've connected it too with it's own short USB cable.

I have a second 2.5" box with a Toshiba laptop drive I installed and that is very choosey. It came with a cable with a Y connection to 2 USB connectors, so it can get some extra power, it seems the 0.5A available from a USB port is not enough for all 2.5" HDD's. Strangely it works fine with a laptop using a single plug, but not well with desk top systems, then it needs two plugs connected.
 
malcolm said:
Strangely it works fine with a laptop using a single plug, but not well with desk top systems, then it needs two plugs connected.
Click to expand...

I just bought a Seagate FreeAgent and am experiencing the same thing. One plug is enough to make it work on my Vaio laptop but it seems to need two ports when on my DS3-based system, and doesn't want to work at all off the front panel ports.
 
I've used the same hard drive in different enclosures and in some it required 2 USB connections to power up but in my latest it just needs one (all on the same computer) so I guess some caddies are more efficient then others.

My latest and greatest caddie is the Ultra USB 2.0 2.5" Hard Drive Enclosure.
 
michaeldt said:
I just bought a Seagate Freeagent Desktop drive and it's knackered after 2 days. So dont get one of those.... :D
Click to expand...

Chances are you got a dodgy drive but it doesn't mean they are all the same. :)

yak.h'cir said:
I've used the same hard drive in different enclosures and in some it required 2 USB connections to power up but in my latest it just needs one (all on the same computer) so I guess some caddies are more efficient then others.

My latest and greatest caddie is the Ultra USB 2.0 2.5" Hard Drive Enclosure.
Click to expand...

It's not so much the caddies but more about the amount of power your USB ports give out.
 
I've got a 120GB WD Passport drive, it's been really good. Not had any problems using it with my laptop, my PC (through front ports), and even on one of the USB ports on the new Apple keyboard.
 
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