Small Portable External Hard Drives

R

Render

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 22, 2005
Messages
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I will be headed to college this fall and at the same time my family is moving to Minneapolis. Virginia Tech requires an >=160 GB external Hard Drive. I will need to take this drive on airplanes since we are moving from Northern Virginia and thus I believe that I should get a small portable external hard drive. I have a few questions:

1. Would it be necessary to get a small portable drive? Or should I look at a Western Digital MyBook or a Seagate FreeAgent?
2. If I were to get a portable drive I was looking at the Western Digital 160GB passport drive, or the Seagate FreeAgent GO 160GB. Are these quality drives?
3. Which company makes more reliable drives? Which company has more reliable support?

Also if you have experience with any of the above 4 drives I would like to know if you have had a good or bad experience and what the pros and cons are.

Thanks,
Render
 
Laptop drive + Kingwin KF-25

FTW :cool:

you can find them both at newegg of course...
 
I agree, get a laptop drive and an external enclosure that can be bus powered. Nothing like carrying around all kinds of BS power adapters and bricks for an external drive.
 
I use the WD Passport daily, it's very small and looks great too.
Works like a champ, worth every penny.
 
gigabyte1024 said:
I use the WD Passport daily, it's very small and looks great too.
Works like a champ, worth every penny.
Click to expand...

The only thing that worries me is the number of reviews I have read where the drive has failed, which was why I may get the seagate freeagent go dirve (and because it has a 5 year warranty).

About the buy the laptop drive and external enclosure I will look into that but was planning on buying a drive that was usb powered and put together ahead of time.
 
I suggest you check to make sure if the freeagent go also has seagates 5 year warranty. I know for desktop hard drives in the 3.5" form factor sold in enclosures, they only had 1 year warranty.
 
I have had the 80gb Passport drive and love it. I saw some reviews for the 120gb at the Egg that made it seem there was a problem with the wire but I don't know what that might mean. The small laptop drives with USB are nice compared to the 3.5 with the extra plug and all the space they take up. I have a decent Thermaltake 3.5 enclosure with eSATA and all that but it sits in a drawer unused generally.
 
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