Battle of the Portable External Hard Drives

In My Humble Opinion
1

So. After much consideration, I’ve decided on two portable external HD’s:

Lacie 120 GB 5400 RPM Rugged All-Terrain USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

vs

Seagate 120 GB 5400 RPM FreeAgent Go USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

I am going to be using it along with my Dell laptop. Mostly I want to store:

[ul]
[li]Work files[/li][li]Home office files[/li][li]MP3’s of my CD collection[/li][li]Digital family photo album[/li][/ul]

Both of the aforementioned devices are on the same price range, so price is not an issue.

So. Which one is better in your opinion?

2

Aw…nuts… :smack: …wrong forum. Can mods move it to IMHO section?

3

Well, it should really only take one of us.

4

I can’t tell what your price range is… so what about these 7200 rpm USB2.0 drives?

5

I really don’t want to pay more than $100-$120.

BTW…those are good prices!

6

The descriptions you provided of the two 5400 RPM drives make them sound extremely similar. One thing is whether you’ll want or need any of the proprietary software that comes with either of those drives. I don’t use any of that stuff, and in fact just purchased external hard drive enclosures in which I installed the hard drives I swapped out of my computers.

7

Yeah, if they’re external, why the heck would you get a 5400 rpm drive? One option is just to buy a standard IDE/SATA internal drive, and an enclosure for $20-40.

I really can’t comment on Lacie, but Seagate is one of the biggest HD manufacturers. They usually make pretty good drives, and have a good warranty system, something like 5 years to return a drive for replacement.

8

You are saying this cuz is too slow or too fast for what is needed?

I really don’t want to go the route of buying just the HD and the enclosure cuz I am not too hip with working one out. Guess too lazy to make my own external HD. :smiley:

9

I’m guessing what he was getting at was: A 5400 RPM drive is pretty slow, they’re usually used in Laptops because of the cost savings in making small drives slower. If you’re using an external, and don’t mind it being a little larger, you can probably get a 7200 RPM for the same price.

Now my take on it: don’t worry about it. The USB2/FireWire link will be the weak spot, so the speed of the drive is almost irrelevant, and a 5400 will save you money and likely be more compact (the 5400 external will probably use a laptop drive instead of a standard one, and therefore be smaller).

10

Ah! Got it. So. I am guessing at this point going with the Seagate would be fine?

11

Yes. Seagate, LaCie, Maxstor, Western Digital, Sony, and IBM are all pretty standard manufacturers for this stuff. Hard drives are commodities these days; you might get a bad drive, but overall the state of the industry is pretty good, and there aren’t really manufacturers you need to watch out for any more.

12

Seagate and Maxtor are the same company now - though the difference in drives is more than just branding. IBM drives are now Hitachi’s I don’t think Sony makes drives (but Samsung is a big drive manufacturer - hell, Samsung makes everything).

13

OK…another “?”

Can you make a WD 250 GB 7200 RPM USB 2.0 External Hard Drive - My Book Essential Edition portable? I don’t want to lug it around and then not find a power source for it. Therefore, could I use an USB source for power for the aforementioned HD?

14

I believe that if you purchase an external hard drive that has a 2.5 inch drive, it can be powered via the USB port, but external hard drives that have larger 3.5 inch drives cannot be. Note that the 2.5 inch drives are more expensive per gigabyte. I believe that the drive you mentioned is a 3.5 inch drive, so it would need the AC adapter.