External Hard Drive for X40

[somemale]

Hi guys, great forum, will definitely be here a lot!

As my first post, I have a question I hope you guys can help me with.

I need to format and re-install everything on my X40 - I find it running really slow, and not as great as it used to be.

So naturally I am looking at External Hard Drives to back up my data. I am strongly considering the Seagate Freeagent Go hard drive, but according to this post

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... hard+drive

you need 2 USB ports to power this thing. The problem is that I only have 1 free usb port at the momment, as I am using the other for a wireless mouse (my trackpoint does not function at all).

I have the USB/POWER USB cable from my CDRW/DVD drive, will that work with the hard drive?

Or can anyone give me any options as to what external hard drives, definitely only need 1 USB port to function? Or any other alternatives?

Sorry for the long post, thakns for reading!

[pxa270]

I'm using this drive with a single cable on my X40. Inside is a Toshiba MK1637GSX. Although it can draw up to 4.7W on spin-up and 2.7W during seeks (higher than the USB garanteed 2.5W), I haven't had any problems with insufficient power on the X40 yet.

If the USB cable you're referring plugs into the small port underneath the regular USB port on the left side of the X40, it won't work with hard disks, as the voltages are different.

[somemale]

just an update,

I ended up getting the Seagate Freeagent Go 120GB, and it works great with just one usb cable plugged in!