When I purchased my laptop a couple of years ago, I thought a 100 GB
internal drive would be adequate. I do recall that Lenovo was asking quite
a premium as you bumped up the storage. So for my purposes of primarilly
storage images, a portable external drive would make sense.

I am looking for something around 320 GB. As I would like to take it with
me on my travels, I would prefer that it be powered from the USB port. My
Thinkpad also has Firewire. I am quite confused with the brands and their
varying reviews. Simpletech, Maxtor, Seagate, or Western Digital? Speed
isn't so much a concern as reliability. Thanks in advance.

rg

I am leaning toward the Seagate FreeAgent Pro 320GB External Hard Drive but
it seems kind of large. It claims to run Firewire but it doesn't appear to
ship with a cable. How much extra for the cable?

rg

I have two of the Western Digital Passports, a 250GB and a 320GB. USB
powered, which is only a problem for some of the ports on my desktop which
don't put out the required volts, watts or amps. I have to plug them into
the ports which come directly off the motherboard. Drives work fine with the
laptop. Prices have dropped to about $139 for the 320GB, which isn't a bad
deal.

EQR

If you want a USB port power drive it has to be a 2.5" drive. Large
2.5" drives are somewhat pricey although I did get a Seagate 250GB drive
for $79 (after rebate) recently (bare SATA drive, NOT an external drive).

You can get external cases cheap (under $10 for a 2.5" USB powered case,
to about $20-$30 for a 3.5" case that has it's own power supply). A
3.5" drive could be under $50 for 200 to 320GB, up to $200 or so for a
1TB (1,024GB) drive. 3.5" drives with 500GB are in the $100 range. But
any 3.5" drive will require a larger case with it's own power supply.

Brand isn't a big deal, but I would avoid all of the Western Digital
"Green" drives, and "5,400-7,200 RPM" drives like the plague. I don't
know where WD's head is at these days, but I do know that it's not
ANYWHERE that I want to be. Slowing down my system to save the few
watts that a hard drive uses just is not where I am coming from (and I'm
relatively environmentally conscious).


Sharkbait wrote:

A buck or two, on E-Bay.


Sharkbait wrote:

In news:lH4Rj.168$_v1.91@trndny06 "Sharkbait" <sharkbait999@verizon.net>
wrote:

It also doesn't meet your requirement for being powered by your PC's USB
port.

But, I don't think you're going to find any large capacity disk that can
be, although I haven't looked for a while.

If you're so inclined, you can buy empty external cabinets with USB or
firewire interfaces to IDE or SATA drives and then buy the drive of your
choice to go in the box.

You'll likely save some money, and have a wider range of choices for
configuration and size.

--
Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN bert@iphouse.com

Barry Watzman wrote,

Yes, I think an external 2.5" USB powered case is a good recommendation but
now I have two considerations - what case to buy and what drive? I don't
need a 7,200 rpm drive unless there is negliable price difference. Thanks.

rg

Bert Hyman wrote,

You are right. I discovered this after researching further.

I am leaning toward separate enclosure and hard drive. Any recommendations
Bert? Thanks.

rg

Sharkbait wrote:
This is a difficult question to answer. Note that Simpletech uses one
(or more of) Maxtor, Seagate, or Western Digital drives. So, rule that
out of the manufacturer category.

With a larger external drive, I think it is reasonable to have cooling
on the drive case. Maybe this is just ventilation with a case fan, but
the result is the same: prevent the drive from burning itself up from
internally-generated heat.

Also, I fundamentally believe that an external drive needs its own power
supply. I know that the power supply is a nuisance when traveling, but
it is better than having the USB on the notebook burned out. Unless
your notebook has a full size Firewire port (...i.e., does not have the
little iLink port) the firewire port will not supply power at all, so to
use Firewire on the iLink connection the drive *must* have an external
power supply.

Frankly, I don't think there is much difference in any of Maxtor,
Seagate (who ownes Maxtor), or Wester Digital. They all have the same
failure rates.

All in all, I suggest you purchase an external drive with a fan, and an
external power supply. Other than that, you are safe with any vendor.

You will need, when traveling, a transformer or a simple wall plug to
make the drive work. If the drive is rated 220v-110v then you just need
the wall plug adapter. If the drive is rated 110v only, you need a
transformer with the plug adapter. These are commonly available with
adapters and transformers for most EU countries.


Q

Q wrote,

Unfortunately, or fortunately for me, I travel for long periods of time in
Asia. If I can power my external drive from my PC via USB or Firewire, that
is one less cable I need to carry (wish all tech manufacturers would come up
with standard power interface spec). As for the USB burning out on the
laptop, there are now USB converters that you can plug into the wall or the
country adapter and then the wall, eliminating the need for the USB port on
the computer. My Thinkpad, without the X6 base, has 3 USB ports however.

Yes, I now realize that Seagate and Maxtor are the same.

Now days, I try to stay away from transformers. I look for gear that can
run on 110 - 220v and bring along a couple wall adapters (very light). No
problem on my last trip to Asia. Thank you for your informative post.

rg

Which case to buy doesn't matter. The cases are a tin can (lots of
differences in decor, little in actual substance) and a 2 square inch
circuit board with ONE IC on it that is a USB to {either IDE or SATA}
interface. And pretty much everyone uses the same chips, and there
really isn't much difference from one to the other.



Sharkbait wrote:

sharkbait999@verizon.net (Sharkbait) wrote in
news:8o8Rj.770$lc6.408@trnddc04:

Sorry, nothing current.

I've built a few; two little ones for my laptops and one big one for
an external backup for my "real" PC, but that was a long time ago.

I just go to my supplier of choice, NewEgg, and browse 'til I find
something that strikes my fancy :-)

--
Bert Hyman | St. Paul, MN | bert@iphouse.com

"Sharkbait" <sharkbait999@verizon.net> writes:

Firewire is faster and has lower CPU overhead than USB2, but you'll probably only find it on
larger cases that take 3.5 inch drives and require external power supplies. That will be
the lowest cost and highest performance choice.

If you want something powered by the USB port, it will have to be a 2.5 inch drive. They
are small and light and cute, but slower and more expensive per byte.

Dave

Dave Martindale wrote,

I agree Dave. I am trying to stay away from carrying extra cables and power
adapters, so the USB, 2.5 inch drive would probably work for me in the 250
GB - 320 GB range. The Seagate 250GB FreeAgent Go looked pretty good but I
notice it requires two USB cables, which is not clear on the company
website. I guess one for data and one for power.

rg

"Sharkbait" <sharkbait999@verizon.net> writes:

Two cables, or one cable with two USB "A" plugs to obtain enough power
for the drive?

I have several 2.5 inch drives in external cases, and all theoretically
use more than 0.5 A under some conditions. I've had some experience
with them now, and I *do* have a double-plug cable that came with one of
the drives, but I've found that I don't need it most of the time. In
particular:

1. The motherboard USB ports (Asus P5K MB) provide sufficient current
from a single port for all of my drives, provided the cable is up to
snuff (see below).

2. The USB ports on my Gateway laptop also provide sufficient current
from one port to power the drive.

3. Several different external USB2 hubs, with their own 5 V power supply
wall warts, do *not* provide enough current from one port - they will
shut the port down.

As for cables, you need a cable that does not produce much voltage drop.
The short (6 inch) cable that came with the WD Passport drive is fine,
but that means putting the drive 6 inches from the port - OK for laptop,
not for desktop. I also have a ~6 foot long USB cable where the
pair of wires that carry power are 20 AWG (signal pair is 28 AWG) which
also works fine. But many cheap USB cables use 26 or 28 AWG for both
power and data, and those do *not* work - too much voltage drop.

In summary: if you use the motherboard USB ports (not a hub), and have a
suitably heavy cable, you may find that you don't need the double-plug
cable.

Dave

Dave Martindale wrote,

On their website, it appears the unit has one mini-USB slot on the drive
case, which makes me believe that what you describe above is the case. On
another forum, a person commented that it was a good drive but he didn't
realize, nor did Seagate make it apparent, that he needed two USB ports on
his computer.

This is all interesting information. Thanks for the detailed explanation.
I am going to research what the power output of my USB ports are on my
Thinkpad.

rg

Also, currently I have a small 60 GB Simpletech drive that's a great little
storage unit. It only requires one USB port from my laptop but no Y cable.
Not so sure how great their larger units are though.

rg


"Dave Martindale" <davem@cs.ubc.ca> wrote in message
news:fv6atl$pel$1@swain.cs.ubc.ca...

On Apr 29, 7:45*am, "Sharkbait" <sharkbait...@verizon.net> wrote:
Power output of all USB ports are same. All USB ports default to
0.1 amps. If the device needs more power, then the USB port can
provide up to 0.5 amps. If the device draws more power, then USB port
detects too much current and shuts down.

Disk drives are operating near that maximum power consumption - 2.5
watts. Typically, disk drives need all that 2.5 watts. What happens
when one USB port power monitor circuit trips out at only 0.47 amps?
IOW variations both in each disk drive and in each USB port can cause
some drives to fail in some ports and work properly in others.

Dave has also properly noted a problem with cables. USB cable can
be any length as long as it provides the proper signals at its far
end. USB says nothing about maximum cable length; simply leaves it up
to cable manufacturers to say their cable meets those USB signal
requirements.

Many cable manufacturers are not so reputable. USB standard says
power wires can be anywhere from 28 to 20 AWG. Longer 24 AWG wire may
not be sufficient for your unique drive. As Dave demonstrated, you
must read its spec numbers because some drives in combination with
some USB ports may be too close to the edge - sometimes fail.

In
news:48566aa1-edfb-4105-a22d-8b90cd8e7fea@d45g2000hsc.googlegroups.com,
w_tom typed on Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:25:35 -0700 (PDT):
Isn't it so that some non-standard designs allows for more than 500ma?
For example, on a 4 USB port unit, some will allow up to 2 amps on one
port. But usually no more than 2 amps total on all ports in this case.

I don't know about power, but for the signal I have heard of the maximum
cable length. Something like 24 to 50 feet sounds right from what I
recall. Although for high bandwidth devices like USB 1.1 webcams and
such, 12 foot cables can be too long. And I seriously doubt if high
bandwidth devices like USB 2.0 hard drives can work well in the 24 to 50
feet range either.

--
Bill

Thanks all for the USB port education. So I guess it would be true to say
that USB connected devices with some external power source will be generally
more reliable than a device that takes its power from just USB from the
computer?


rg