Advantages and Disadvantages of Portable External Hard Drive

[Sicadastra]

Hello everyone,

I am currently looking for a quality portable external hard drive to go with my Thinkpad. It will mainly be used for storing my school files, music and videos. Some have already suggested Western Digital and Philips. Others gave me suggestion to choose between the portable one and that which has external power support.

So I would like to have some comments and suggestions on what brand of external HD you prefer and the pros and cons with them.

Comments would be highly appreciated. Thank you.

I'm a bit pants at searching through the forum so if there's a post similar to this, kindly point me there. Thanks.

[aysiu]

I've had very good experiences with Lacie drives.

[earthpigg]

i like the little WD "passport". had it for a few years, traveled with it frequently, still works fine.

[pwnst*r]

i like the little WD "passport". had it for a few years, traveled with it frequently, still works fine.

another vote for the passport. i have a 500GB that i scored for <$75 US and it's been great.

[blueshiftoverwatch]

Is it true the unless you use some sort of file verification took (like Kdiff, Meld, or Rsync) that the odds of data being corrupted while in the process of transferring is much higher using a USB external drive than just connecting a standard SATA external drive?

If yes, would using a SATA cable to transfer data to an external drive lessen the chances of data corruption?

[Marvin666]

I recommend maxtor. I've never had any trouble from them.
The one I got had a 12v wall wart, but I just powered it from a battery pack for mobile usage.

[Gizenshya]

I've had great experiences with WD, and also Maxtor. I have had horrible experience with Seagate hardware and their tech support. IMO, they both suck, but to each his own.

A question: Are you talking about 2.5" (laptop hard drives) or 3.5" (standard desktop) hard drives? The cost for the larger 3.5" drives is much lower per GB, but they are larger (of course) and ALL require an external power source (they need a wall plug/power brick). Most 2.5" external drives get enough power from the USB slots, and do not need the cumbersome power bricks. And you can usually carry them around in a shirt pocket.

3.5" drives typically last longer and are more reliable. Though, I have 2.5" external drives that I've used for years. Still, I wouldn't use them as a sole backup copy of anything important... not that you should ever have just one copy of anything important ;)

I prefer to get mine seperate. My favorite hard drive brand is Western Digital, and my favorite enclosure manufacturer is RoseWill. So I usually go grab the WD hard drive I want, and a nice RoseWill case that goes with it. IMO, the hard drive is much more important than the enclosure, so I'd choose based on the hard drive, if you want a hdd/enclosure package. I've heard many good things about Lacie and WD external drives. Gov agencies buy tons of both for small-scale use, and they all love them.

[LinuxFanBoi]

I would avoid the Seagate Free Agent, Comes bloated with unnecessary utilities, and requires two USB sockets, USB cord is very short as well. Price per MB is higher than most. A bit on the slow side as well.

[pwnst*r]

I would avoid the Seagate Free Agent, Comes bloated with unnecessary utilities, and requires two USB sockets, USB cord is very short as well. Price per MB is higher than most. A bit on the slow side as well.

i second this. i have a freeagent that consisently spins when not in use. i don't trust it so it sits empty.

[Regenweald]

I've gotten some good reviews for Fantom drives I've purchased for friends. Can get 1TB sub $100 at tigerdirect.com or newegg.com Good speeds, run cool, sturdy aluminum casing.
Also, plug and play in Linux and Windows, no extra bloatware, pre-formatted.

[jbrown96]

I've had very good experiences with Lacie drives.

I've had a Lacie for three years, and it works very well. I highly recommend them. My parents needed an external, so I recommended an identical one that crashed after a year. There's not really a conclusion to be taken from that.

Hard drives are very hit or miss. There is a problem with reliability statistics in general. Reliability tests are a Poisson process like radiation. There is an expected average rate of an event occurring (in this case a hard drive failing), but you can never be sure when a specific one will fail: it could last one minute or ten thousand years. You are going to buy one hard drive, so the average failure rate doesn't mean anything; just the when yours is going to fail.

I was having a discussion with one of my friends about automaker reliability. Honda and Toyota are always at the top. He made the point (which I eventually found convincing) that those reliability tests only partially measure the quality of the car. Another big factor is who buys them. People who tend to buy those cars also seem to take very good care of them. Is Honda's reliability rating a reflection on them or the car? It's definitely both, but it's important to realize who is buying a product.

It's all about how you treat your equipment. I don't leave my Lacie hard drive on all the time, and Windows isn't constantly scanning (i.e. spinning up) the disk. My parents left theirs turned on all the time, and it was indexing pictures a lot of the time.

If you plan on moving your drive around a lot, then its a really good idea to get a "rugged" version. Lacie used to make a model that was really portable and had an orange rubber piece all the way around it. Something like that would go a long ways towards prolonging its life.

Connections also might matter. When I use my external, I'm usually copying tens of GBs. It has USB, firewire 400, and 800 ports on it. I don't have any 800 ports on my laptop, but firwire 400 gives me about a 10-15% boost for large writes. This is important in the way that I use it, but probably not for many others. Just something to consider.

[Gizenshya]

^^^ well, none of that matters, since the data needed to work out th epoisson distribution is either secret or unknown. They feed numbers, but everyone knows those are only for product positioning. Plus, most will have a very low number of trials anyway. With the low number of trials and little knowns, there isn't a conclusion to be made (well, not a valid one, anyway). You mentioned this last part, but then hinted that there may be a conclusion, and that conclusion is that it isn't worth paying attention to reliability ratings. (At least, I got that jist.) Yes, getting a bad drive might just be life sucking, and not imply much in the way of quality-- but I still hold that quality should be taken into consideration.

What I'm trying to say is yeah, you might end up as one of the terribly unlucky, but it is no better to count on being unlucky than it is to assume a cause-effect relationship for a rare event.

[HappinessNow]

I would avoid the Seagate Free Agent, Comes bloated with unnecessary utilities, and requires two USB sockets, USB cord is very short as well. Price per MB is higher than most. A bit on the slow side as well.


i second this. i have a freeagent that consisently spins when not in use. i don't trust it so it sits empty.
hmmm...I just bought 2 one TB seagate free agents, I don't use the software that came with it, simply use them for Photo storage only.

my Seagate Free Agent only requires 1 USB Socket, USB cord is longer then most and the price I paid was cheaper then any other 1 TB external hard drive I priced out there. Simply skip the installed software and utilize the storage. My Seagate does not spin when not in use, simply because I don't leave it plugged in.

WD I would advise staying away from, I have a friend that is a photographer that lost years of photos on his Western Digital.

I have a Toshiba that has been reliable for years.