Need A Portable, High Capacity External HDD

Like the title says, I need a portable, high capacity external HDD.

I don't want one that has a form factor of 3.5".
I have one of those at home right now. (A 7200 rpm WD 500 GB HDD). They are too big.

(So, 2.5" or smaller, if there are any that are that small).



I like the WD "passports", 'cause they look nice, but :

1) I am not sure if there are any that come with 7200 rpm and 16 MB cache. (I want something fast! )

2) There are none available with 500 GB storage capacity.

What are my best options when it comes to an ultra-portable, high capacity HDD?

I don't care which brand it is,
and money is not an issue.


Thanks in advance for all your help!

 

Keep in mind that with the portable ones you are basically limited to USB, which keeps the transfer speeds under 25MB/s no matter how much the cache or rotation speed. Firewire might be a bit faster.

The most practical protable HDD's you'll find are 5400rpm ones. 7200rpm portables are harder to come by and use more power with little performance increase over a USB interface.

In my experience, 5400rpm portables are the best ones that can be powered by a single USB port. I've put my laptop hdd (7200rpm) in an enclosure and it needed a second usb port for power. Oh, and a note of caution: if you're using a portable hdd on a mac, you will almost always need two usb ports to power it because of power constraints built into mac USB ports. Just my college experience, though.

So look for something that's 5400rpm's, and focus more on capacity than spindle speed, because the popular USB interface has its limits. If you find a firewire portable HDD, you might be better off.

 

I believe 320GB @7200, and 500GB also coming out. You can always buy an enclosure so you can pick any internal and make it external. What method will you use to connect to this device? I ask because depending on that, it could be the bottleneck meaning you will get no improvement in throughput from @7200 vs @5400. ESATA is the only one that will give you full speed I believe.

 

Thanks for all that great information.

It seems like 5400 rpm with fire-wire is the way to go. However, I am not able to find any 500 GB (or more) capacity ultra-portable HDDs on the market. The maximum I have seen is 320 GB, although I don't consider myself very knowledgable when it comes to HDDs.

Do you know of any 500 GB, 5400 rpm, fire-wire & USB 2.0 enabled ultra-portable HDDs? (Am I asking for too much? )

I could compromise speed for capacity a little bit, because with the rate I am downloading movies, 320 GB just won't cut it

 

I will use a combination of fire-wire and USB 2.0

 

500GB are coming out shortly, and buy an enclosure that supports firewire and USB 2.0 if possible. Look around there are threads that mention release dates.

 

That is simply not true. If you are willing to make your own (very easy to do), I would get a 2.5" 7200 RPM drive (250gb is the highest available right now) or even a 2.5" 320gb 5400 RPM drive, which offers similar performance to a 7200 rpm because of the higher denisty platters, and put it in a Vantec USB/eSATA enclosure. (links provided below).

Basically if you are using a laptop and don't have an eSATA port, you would need to buy an expresscard for around 25 dollars (see link below). With these two, you will basically get equivalent speeds to an internal SATA hard drive.

Here are the links:

HD - WD 320gb 5400 RPM - 139.99

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136197&Tpk=WD+320gb+scorpio

eSATA Enclsoure - Vantec Nexstar III USB/eSATA - 22.99 + s&h

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392009

eSATA expresscard: 39.99 (usually has a 20 dollar rebate, so you may want to wait)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16839200006&Tpk=rosewill+esata+expresscard

 

or even better put to of the WDs in raid 0 using this lol:
http://www.110220volts.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=11140761
i don't think the card in your link supports raid, if it works your looking at 60mb/s + read and write speeds!

 

That's pretty cool, I was talking solely about USB because it's the most popular standard-- but that's a more creative solution.

Not to steal any thunder but doesn't this defeat the purpose of portability?

 

Not to steel anyones thunder! But I already said all that before? Look at what you quoted? It is problematic when someone fails to understand what is said to them? And to the point an already suggested idea appears as a new idea.

 

I have that card as well - haven't tested the RAID capability yet because I need to empty out a couple of drives, but that would be quite sweet. Imagine a 2TB raid (I wish I could afford 2 1TB drives....maybe in a couple of years)

 

Oh dear I am getting a little confused...
I meant that portable RAID seemed a little like an oxymoron to me.

 

You can't get real RAID on external Or for that matter on notebookks! K-T can explain!

 

Real Raid = hardware raid, and as far as I know the only notebooks with hardware raid are the d900t and d900k.
The Via hyperion raid controller is able to get much higher harddrive bandwidth than the intel software raid on the newer d901c.

You can have RAID in an external, but it is expensive, and its pretty much called a NAS drive.

K-TRON

 

Here is a promised ready-made 500GB 2.5" external unit. USB 2.0 or Firewire is OK if you are not trying to shift big amounts at one time. Otherwise, I would be tempted to go the DIY eSATA route (well, I've already done it). One advantage is that you could get 320GB quite cheaply now and then upgrade when the 500GB pricing becomes more reasonable.

John