Portable External Storage

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#1 Post by **Harryc** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 1:13 pm

Well, my old external WD drive finally gave up the ghost and I am looking to replace it. I want a portable drive with a large capacity to tote around with a Thinkpad and to use around the house on various machines as well. I am looking at the Western Digital 'My Passport Elite 320GB' drive or the Maxtor 320GB External USB 2.0 portable. Any thoughts or experiences with these drives? Other recommendations?

Edit: I did a bunch of research on the My Passport Elite 320GB, and it gets great reviews, has a 320GB Scorpio SATA drive inside, and has a 5 year warranty.
http://www.logicbuy.com/searchresults.a ... port+elite

Superego · #2 Post by **Superego** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 11:56 pm

While I don't own the Elite version, I did buy a My Passport Studio 250GB a few weeks ago. About the only difference is that mine a Mac-friendly drive...firewire, HFS Journaled format (which is easily changed), etc. My school had a sale on them so I got one since I wanted a larger capacity drive than my old Seagate drive.

Pros:
- Love the size. MUCH lighter and smaller than my Seagate.
- No annoying lights. My Seagate has a bright blue indicator light that illuminates an entire room at night...very annoying. It does have a capacity gauge, but it's very nondescript.
- Port cover. The gauge doubles as a sliding cover that goes over the port connections. Not a big deal, but I like knowing that crud isn't going to get in there (even if it doesn't introduce a moving part that could potentially break).
- 5 year warranty.

Cons:
- Very short cables. I'm not sure if this different between the studio and the elite/essential versions. It can be annoying if I'm using the drive while, say, sitting on the couch and I have to worry where to put it so that it won't come unplugged.

Other than the cord the drive's great (and the cord isn't too big of a deal). I'd recommend it, though I can't comment on the Maxtor you're interested in.

sarbin · #3 Post by **sarbin** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 12:02 am

Harry,
i've got a wd passport elite 320 and i'm very happy with it.

mgo · #4 Post by **mgo** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 12:17 am

Superego wrote: My Seagate has a bright blue indicator light that illuminates an entire room at night...very annoying..

Yes, I sure agree. What are these people thinking? I put a piece of tape over the overly bright LED and that usually does the job. On a couple, I use a piece of construction paper and scotch tape to dim the light down. Since LEDs do not generate any heat, it's OK to cover them with anything you wish to use.

Almost any brand of external USB drive is going to work well for a long time. I had a couple for around eight years and only retired them because they didn't have enough capacity for my needs anymore.

I've used USB external drives ever since the old USB 1.1 Pokey Drive days.

#5 Post by **Harryc** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 3:59 am

Thanks for the replies. I did end up getting the Passport Elite 320GB on sale at Best Buy. I went there because I had one of those $50 off coupons from their 'Reward Zone' points card deal. Final cost to me was $90. plus tax. My first use of the drive was to upgrade a new WD 250GB PATA drive from an older 40GB 5400rpm drive using Acronis TI 11. It worked very well and was pretty fast. I see what you mean about the short cable. For the infrequent times I will be using the laptop with the external in my lap, I'll live with it too. It seems to run cool and there was no problem powering the drive off of a single USB 2.0 port on an X32.
sarbin, if you use any of the included software I'd be interested in your experiences with it.

hesh.nosaff · #6 Post by **hesh.nosaff** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 5:22 am

I saw that they came out with 500GB drives as well a week or two. Presumably already shipping. Comes in both elite and non-elite forms. Does anyone have experience with this larger drive or know of reviews of this larger drive? It seems amazing to have such a small drive with such a large capacity.

TikaC · #7 Post by **TikaC** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 7:25 pm

I'm getting to the point where I too am looking into a WD external. I don't know if I'll even need 320 GB. I was thinking more like 160GB because all I want it for is to use as a backup data storage where I back up data files (video, audio, graphics, photos, etc. some stuff can get quite big though). Or should I try for a 250GB? I might go for one of those.

I always liked Western Digital. I have two Caviar drives in a tower system (which I'm about to store as I am using my T61 all the time instead). Last month I just upgraded my T61 with a WD Scorpio 250GB drive and love it! Originally I had an 80GB and it was running out of room fast. And the drive started having errors after I used compression to try and save space. I'll never do that again. LOL!

Good to see some comments on the WD externals. The Passport drives discussed in this thread are exactly what I'm looking into.

joester · #8 Post by **joester** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 8:07 pm

I can remember the disappointment I felt when I filled the 4K memory on my first TRS80... ahhhh those were the days....

I have both a 160GB and 250GB external, and several USB externals as well.

Best method of backing up HDD's I've found.

Joe

TikaC · #9 Post by **TikaC** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 8:38 pm

4K TRS80? My parents had a 16K Cassette based TRS-80 Model III which I learned to program on.

Yeah, brings back memories! (no pun intended.

)

sarbin · #10 Post by **sarbin** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 10:31 pm

Harryc wrote:sarbin, if you use any of the included software I'd be interested in your experiences with it.

i haven't, yet. seems like other priorities get in the way.

TikaC · #11 Post by **TikaC** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:16 pm

I just got my Western Digital My Passport Essential 160MB USB hard drive and I LOVE it!

Plenty of room!

Harryc asked about the included software. I'll tell you I really found it not very useful for my purposes. Western Digital user's guide also state that it is not backup software. It's only syncronization software. You can syncronize (and thus encrypt the syncronized files) from Windows Mail, Outlook, IE, Firefox, or any files/folders you choose. The caveat is that if you add new files or folders, it will not add them! You have to go through the setup to add them. They also say that not to wipe the originals off your hard drive or you can't get them off the USB drive as they are to be "syncronized" or something.

The sync software is provided by dMailer and is free for unlimited use ONLY if you run it from the USB hard drive. It will result in a 30-day trial if you run it from your own hard drive. This is some "lite" version apparently. There's an ad (you can opt out of further showings of) to buy the pro or full version.

So, I put a directory on the drive and I copy files to that directory that I want to back up. Then, during the day I keep track of files I've worked on manually in a note to myself so at the end of the day I back up those files. I'm going to try and make a perl script (I've installed ActiveState Perl 5 on my system as I use it for stuff) to back stuff up from my list. But eventually I'll want to make a C# program that looks in folders I choose for new files since last backup and back those up when I want (not automatic, but just when I initiate it). One way or another, one will have to find a suitable backup program.

Don't use Windows Backup! This is because the USB hard drive is formatted FAT32 and not NTFS and thus cannot allow a single file bigger than 4GB. Windows Backup backs up your data to a single file larger than 4GB, apparently. There is no utility on the drive to reformat to NTFS. Though in the user manual (you'll get a chance to copy the software to your hard drive once you've started the USB drive the first time and went through setup/install - DO THIS just in case) - which is found on your hard drive or on the drive itself, it says that you can download a utility from Western Digital to reformat your hard drive. They do give a link.

The drive is quiet, and faster than I'd have expected from a USB device. Sure a lot faster than burning CD-ROMs! I highly recommend it as a companion to a notebook system. And also the purchase of (or writing of) good backup software that does NOT make a backup in one large chunk like Windows backup does).

Hope this helped some folks with some of the questions.

#12 Post by **Harryc** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:43 pm

TikaC, thanks for the write up on the backup apps. I continue to be amazed by the Passport Elite 320GB. I'd recommend it to anyone with a laptop.

Temetka · #13 Post by **Temetka** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 7:23 pm

TikaC,

To reformat the drive to NTFS:

1. Plug it in
2. Right click on 'My Computer'
3. Select Manage
4. In the window select 'Disk Management'
5. Locate your drive in the list
6. Right click and remove the partition
7. Right click and create a new NTFS partition
8. Format
9. Enjoy

These steps may void warranty, so I'd double check on that first.

There is no utility included, because it's not required. Windows has all the tools built in to format and create partitions in FAT16/32 and NTFS.

#14 Post by **carbon_unit** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 7:43 pm

A nice backup utility is Syncback from 2BrightSparks. They have a pay version (good on 5 comps) and a free version with less features.
It works well. I have it running on a few servers doing daily, weekly and monthly copies of Acronis backups.

TikaC · #15 Post by **TikaC** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:15 pm

Temetka - Thank you for the instructions. I've saved them and I think since everything is backed up and running good right now, I won't need to reformat it at the moment, but I'll have the info in case I do. Who knows, I might not need to reformat it during the warranty period. I am not sure but I think using their reformat utility from their site doesn't void the warranty.

carbon_unit - Thank you for the links. I'll look into those.

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