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    2.5" 1TB Hard Drive

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by hendra, Mar 11, 2010.

  1. hendra

    hendra Notebook Virtuoso

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    Other than Western Digital and Seagate, which company offers internal or external 2.5" 1TB Hard Drive or bigger? I don't like 3.5" drive since they are too bulky and they require an external power supply for external use. Too many cables.

    When can we expect to see the price to drop below 100 dollars?
     
    hendra, Mar 11, 2010
    #1
  2. sgogeta4

    sgogeta4 Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    If you get lucky with a special, I've seen the WD 1TB 2.5" ext. drive to be around $120 or a bit less. <$100 is a pretty big drop and probably won't happen for a couple of months, when a newer and bigger hard drive is released.
     
    sgogeta4, Mar 11, 2010
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  3. Tinderbox (UK)

    Tinderbox (UK) BAKED BEAN KING

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    Is the WD 1TB 2.5" not 12.5mm high as most notebooks will only support a 9.5mm one.

     
    Tinderbox (UK), Mar 11, 2010
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  4. sgogeta4

    sgogeta4 Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    It's an external drive. It cannot be used in any notebook since WD uses some special connector that won't connect to SATA.
     
    sgogeta4, Mar 11, 2010
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  5. 5482741

    5482741 5482741

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    As far as I know, Seagate and Western Digital or the only ones that offer them, in the external form only.

    The Seagate one uses a 15mm drive with a standard SATA connector, and the Western Digital one uses a 12.5mm drive with the soldered-on USB connector.
     
    5482741, Mar 11, 2010
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  6. Krane

    Krane Notebook Prophet

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    Actually there's at least a half dozen companies that offer this HD configuration. Although they're not necessarily any better or cheaper.

    I remember reading a review about external drives of this type and capacity and most of them were pretty close in operation and speed.

    Incidentally, external HDs can also be sub-categorized under portable, which are typically limited to 1TB capacity.
     
    Krane, Mar 11, 2010
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  7. hendra

    hendra Notebook Virtuoso

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    Why is Seagate drive thicker? Does it use four platters instead of three?
     
    hendra, Mar 11, 2010
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  8. 5482741

    5482741 5482741

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    That seems to be the case.
     
    5482741, Mar 11, 2010
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  9. hendra

    hendra Notebook Virtuoso

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    Which means the drive is a bit slower, right? More platters => less capacity density => slower drive.
     
    hendra, Mar 12, 2010
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  10. H.A.L. 9000

    H.A.L. 9000 Occam's Chainsaw

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    That would make sense to me. Because more platters = more physical distance the heads have to move to read/write data = super slow access times. I would probably only use one of these as a storage drive anyway.
     
    H.A.L. 9000, Mar 12, 2010
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  11. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

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    Not really, maybe more power required. There's a head for each platter, so it wouldn't matter access time. If you have one platter = 250GB (125GB each side) x 4 platters, it would just be as snappy as a single 250GB drive, as long as the data being read wasn't scattered throughout all four platters.
     
    HTWingNut, Mar 12, 2010
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  12. hendra

    hendra Notebook Virtuoso

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    You may be right but we are comparing 1TB with 3 vs 4 platters. One with 333GB/platters and the other is 250GB/platters. The one with higher density is slightly faster since the data is more closely packed.
     
    hendra, Mar 12, 2010
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  13. HTWingNut

    HTWingNut Potato

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    Ah yeah, gotcha. You're right. All depends on the spindle speed too. But either way I'm sure as a storage drive it wouldn't matter a whole lot.
     
    HTWingNut, Mar 13, 2010
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  14. Krane

    Krane Notebook Prophet

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    The LaCie d2 quadra was very highly rated external HD. It comes in 1, 1.5, and 2 TB configurations.

    http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-FireWire-External-301442U-Aluminum/dp/B001KFH6K6/ref=dp_cp_ob_e_title_0

    EDIT:

    Okay, I see now. A 2.5" then? In that case, I guess you're looking for a portable HD? This WD should fit the bill, but you'll typically sacrifice speed (5400 vs 7200) and interface (USB 2.0 vs FW800 or eSATA) though there are exception. But you didn't specify if that was important to you.

    http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digit...2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1268690059&sr=1-2
     
    Krane, Mar 15, 2010
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  15. 5482741

    5482741 5482741

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    The WD10TPVT seems to be available now, it's a 12.5mm 1TB drive.

    I have no idea what happened to the WD10TEVT, but I'll probably get a WD10TPVT pretty soon.
     
    5482741, Mar 15, 2010
    #15