Thinkpads Forum

My wife decided to let go of the old Dell that I gave her, and has agreed to buy a new T61 (I am tempted to give her my T60 and keep the T61 for myself ). But she also wants a portable hdd, so she can back up her stuff and take the little drive to work when necessary.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a portable drive, somewhere between 60 and 120 GB (that's all she needs). Thanks.

Hey rmendoza,
For just a simple external HD setup I would recommend the Apricorn EZ Upgrade Univeral SATA. On their site it's at http://apricorn.com/product_detail.php?type=reg&id=1075

You can order through PC Connection or others. The advantage to this unit is that's it's small and lightweight. You provide the drive although they sell units with a drive. Also, since it's an SATA interface if you needed to later take the drive out and use it in your T60 it would work. They have PATA units as well.

For 3.5 inch SATA drives these days I'm recommending the IcyDock external case. You can get it off Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/MB559US-1S-Extern ... 498&sr=8-1
It has USB 2.0 connectivity but also eSATA.

If you couple the IcyDock with a eSATA card like this one http://www.pcconnection.com/ProductDetail?Sku=6290272
you'll have a fast backup and 2nd HD setup.

good luck,
DenTP4rm

Unless she really needs to transport multiple GB, you should consider either online storage or a USB flash disk. Both are for all practical purposes immune against being dropped...

rmendoza wrote:My wife decided to let go of the old Dell that I gave her, and has agreed to buy a new T61 (I am tempted to give her my T60 and keep the T61 for myself ). But she also wants a portable hdd, so she can back up her stuff and take the little drive to work when necessary.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a portable drive, somewhere between 60 and 120 GB (that's all she needs). Thanks.

If she doesn't need to worry about a secure backup, why not get a low priced USB drive from Newegg or somebody and use Vista's RoboCopy for the backups. It's very fast and versatile and can even be set up to automatically monitor changes and do the backups unattended. It comes on Vista (if that is what you are using as an OS) and is reasonably easy to set up.

I'm surprised that more magazine writers have not written about RoboCopy, but then it occurred to me that RoboCopy competes with commercial backup software, and gee, why annoy a sponsor, eh?

How about this one? WD Passport Portable (Black) 80 GB USB 2.0. I don't have any experience with it, but I saw it lately and it has a nice design. It is very portable and doesn't require an external power adapter (USB powered).

KRASH wrote:How about this one? WD Passport Portable (Black) 80 GB USB 2.0. I don't have any experience with it, but I saw it lately and it has a nice design. It is very portable and doesn't require an external power adapter (USB powered).

I have the 160GB version of this. It works just as advertised. Never had any problems, and it looks very nice next to a TP.

I'm going to chime in for a flash drive as well.

If you go for a full-out 3.5" portable HD, keep in mind that it's actually not that portable. You'll have to lug around a separate power brick as well which quickly grows tiresome. If you're going to just leave it at home and using it for backup storage, it works great, but if she'll be lugging it to work and back I would really recommend a different solution.

If you go for a 2.5" portable HD, you won't need the separate power brick, horray!, but the price/storage ratio is much worse than for 3.5" drives. If she needs >4GB or so of space, this is the route I'd take though.


But for most people, even 1GB should be enough to hold work documents. You can get 4GB flash drives now for 30 bucks or so, and 8GB flash drives will likely soon follow in price. It's a lot more portable than even a 2.5" HD enclosure and a lot more drop-shock-bump resistant as well.

rmendoza wrote:Does anyone have a recommendation for a portable drive, somewhere between 60 and 120 GB (that's all she needs). Thanks.

Since the OP specified between 60-120 GB size range I figured either the 2.5 or 3.5 size would be more appropriate than flash devices. The 2.5 Apricorn housing does run off USB power which would avoid the need of a power brick. Even if needed the Apricorn power supply doesn't even qualify as a "brick", it's more like a pebble.
DenTP4rm

You might want to consider this as well...

ThinkPad Serial ATA Hard Drive Bay Adapter

KRASH wrote:How about this one? WD Passport Portable (Black) 80 GB USB 2.0. I don't have any experience with it, but I saw it lately and it has a nice design. It is very portable and doesn't require an external power adapter (USB powered).

I have the 250gb version of this. I love this external HD. I even picked up a WD hard carry case for it for $10 on ebay, but if you get it in Costco it comes included from what I heard....