recommendations for portable external HD/external enclosure

[Marin85]

Since I´m constantly running out of HD space, I´m now looking for some cardinal solution instead of upgrading my laptop HDs. That said, I´m looking for an external SATA (with enclosure) with the following properties:
1. capacity more than 500 GB (otherwise I could get one of those 2.5'' 500 GBs drives that would fit in the ultrabay slot, but I don´t believe that "only" 500 GBs will be enough on a long run for backups, music, my libraries etc.)
2. relatively portable - most eSatas with such capacity are really either too high or too wide or bulky for me to carry them in my hand baggage...
3. USB 2.0 and/or Firewire-400 interface

Thanks in advance for your recommendations

Marin

EDIT: FreeAgent XTtreme looks like it may be a good choice. But I´m not really sure how "portable" it is...

[basketb]

I'm in a similar boat and have come to the conclusion that no matter how big HDs get, it will never be enough after a while and never be really portable (yes, external 2.5" drives are small but they still attach via a (USB) cable to the Thinkpad). For the purpose of backing up data, I think an online data backup solution might be the way to go. Feel free to comment on that idea in this thread.

[Marin85]

Ha, that´s I call a coincidence (I have already commented in the meanwhile before seeing your reply here)

[Marin85]

Update: The FreeAgent XTreme weights "only" 1.39 kg... I guess I´ll have to restrict myself to the 2.5'' external drives, if I want something more portable, which basically limits my search to zero since the max capacity 2.5'' HDs come in is 500 GBs. What is more, most of these 2.5'' are even more expensive than the internal 500 GB HDs (including the upcoming 7200.4) and will perform worse as they use only USB 2.0. So, I guess, having this said and if nobody else comes up with something else I must have overseen, this topic is basically finished. Now looking forward to 7200.4... (or maybe I´ll get one of those 5400rpm WDs, yet there isn´t very big difference in the price here in Germany...)

Marin

[Superego]

I think you're probably stuck for a while until 500GB+ 2.5" drives become available and reasonably priced. I agree with basketb that no matter how big the hard drive, we'll be able to find a way to fill it up. That said here are my two suggestions (I do both of these):

1) Use the ultrabay and 500GB hard drive. It's still the best portable hard drive I've used. I don't know about you but I rarely use my cd drive and would rather have the space.

2) If you can get by with a 500GB external hard drive I would recommend a Western Digital My Passport Studio. It has firewire and usb 2.0, and at 0.18kg it's nice and light. It's marketed toward Mac users so JFS is the default file system, but that's easy enough to reformat.

Good luck!

[Marin85]

The only advantage of a 500GB in the ultrabay would be speed, but I just have that feeling how fast I´m going run out of space on such a drive, and I already have two others that I swap in the ultrabay (not to mention the CD/DVD drive that I occasionally happen to use)... Since I don´t expect to see soon a 1TB 2.5'' HD, I guess I have to stick to some external solution anyway. As of now I see two possibilities:
1. Buying 1.5TB external drive - it´s not really very portable, but if compensates that by large capacity
2. Buying an external enclosure for 3.5'' drives with USB 2.0 interface (or better with Firewire). I expect desktop HDs with even more capacity (than "only" 1.5 TB), so this will give me the possibility to upgrade in future if needed. However, I´m not really sure if all 3.5'' SATA drives in such an external enclosure can be powered on off the USB 2.0 of my ThinkPad

So, any recommendations or advices regarding external enclosures for 3.5'' S-ATA HDs are welcome! (of course, as always, the smaller the enclosure, the better) (I edited the topic name accordingly)

Thanks,

Marin


EDIT: I see, most of those enclosures come with additional power supply.

[Marin85]

I finally set on Western Digital WDE1UBK10000E Elements 1TB It uses USB 2.0 (no Firewire available but it doesn´t really matter to me as I only have Firewire-400 which is actually slower than USB 2.0 and from my experience with external USB 2.0 drives both my 7K200 and 7200.3 get maxed out at it ). Unlike the Freeagent drives with 1+ TB capacity (based on Barracuda) it doesn´t need additional power supply. It weighs about 1.02 kg and has measures 12,47 x 20,38 x 3,61 cm. I´ll report more when it arrives.

Cheers

Marin

[basketb]

The WD certainly looks cool but how do you know that it doesn't need an external power source? The installation guide doesn't show it as being optional. Also, is it a 5400 or 7200 rpm drive (WD's website is suspiciously mum on this point)?

[Marin85]

Thanks for pointing this out for me! Now, when you mention this, I have to say I don´t really know if it comes with (or resp. doesn´t require) an external power source. Actually, I have read and compared the specs of the Seagate and WD on the website of the online shop I have purchased it from and according to this the WD doesn´t come with an external power source of any kind (no such thing is listed there) whereas the Seagate FreeAgent I was looking at does come (or at least it listed to). And hence I assumed this. But this information could be very well incomplete... As for the WD drive, I believe it´s 7200rpm (seen the exact specs somewhere else), which as actually one argument more in favorite for the requirement of an external power source... But even so I don´t think that would be a big problem for me, I find the drive still more or less portable from one workstation place to another

Thanks again

Marin

[davidhbrown]

You are considering buying the drive and enclosure separately, right? I've found this to have several advantages, not the least of which is the ability to choose exactly the drive I want rather than wonder what the vendor was able to get for the least money. Secondarily, the ease with which you can put the drive in the separate enclosure is a big benefit if something should happen to your system... I really like to be able to restore my latest backup to a clean drive and then mount the failed system's disk externally to get any missing files.

When some hardware issues with my T61p's system board's SATA controller corrupted my OS and files, the external enclosure I wound up with, from OKGear (~US$16) comes with eSATA and USB cables plus an extra cable to pull additional power if needed from up to two additional USB ports. However, the drives I've used with it can be powered with just the one USB connection to the T61p (not on an older Dell notebook, though).

I do use external 3.5" drives (I've been happy enough with the Seagete FreeAgent and a couple different WD MyBook flavors) for system backups, including backup of an older Buffalo Terastation (network attached storage) where I keep the rips of our CD collection, photos, installers for various software, and archived work files.

BTW, to the OP, why are you reluctant to upgrade your laptop HD? It does take a while, to be sure... but if you use a program like Ghost or Acronis to do you backups, restoring to a different drive is pretty easy/reliable. If you want to keep the utility partition, just run the system recovery on the new drive first, and then overwrite just the windows partition with your backup. Particularly if you started with a 5400RPM drive, it can be a nice enhancement.

[Marin85]

@davidhbrown: Thanks a lot for your reply! I was thinking the same things about the external enclosure, it most definitely has many advantages, but being not sure what I should be looking for in terms of quality and specs/capabilities I ended buying this external WD elements (I´ll report later more on it). Now, when you mention all again, I´m not sure I made an optimal buying decision, though I have all I need right now

I don´t want to upgrade my laptop with another internal HD, because I already have 3 of them Of course, I could always sell some of them in favor for the bigger one, the only problem is I´m pretty sure "only" 500 GB wouldn´t be enough, hence I was looking for a cardinal solution to my HD space. Certainly, I could have bought two of them, but I don´t see such an expense justified as I can obtain any external HD with the same storage space for less. If there were 1 TB laptop drives available right now, I would have gone for them though.

Cheers,

Marin

[Nameless]

fwiw Another benefit (besides choosing your own HDD) to buying the enclosure separately is that usually the OEM bare drives have better warranties than the HDD's in the retail units. The WD/Maxtor one-touch type drives usually only have a 1-year warranty whereas OEM WD/Seagate/Hitachi bare drives usually have 3-5 year warranties.

[Nameless]

Forgot to mention: I really love Macally enclosures. Solid aluminum, dissipate heat well, and stable interface chips. Most of their products include USB & firewire ports, I use the USB almost exclusively. In short, VERY well built, look good and reasonably priced.

No affiliation, just a satisified customer.

[Marin85]

Hey, Nameless, thanks for the input (btw, nice nickname ). I´ll have a look at Macally. Do you know if they have some model that would also take a ThinkPad CD/DVD drive? (despite buying the WD HD, I´m still interested in external enclosures)

Thanks,

Marin

PS: I guess I´ll have to post my experience with this USB WD drive soon

[Nameless]

Actually yes they do. They have a phc-500b (?) (usb 2.0 only) and a phc-500bc (?) (usb2.0/firewire-400) that accomodate 5.25" devices. This models, I'm told, can also handle a 3.5" hard drive although I don't use mine for that. They have a removable face plate that stays in place if you install a HDD, and comes out if you install an optical drive. I should mention all their enclosures come in silver finish only, which for me, is fine because I'm more concerned about heat dissipation.