What 2.5" portable USB drives do you guys use?

[Marcos]

I'm looking for one around 120Gb and i know Freecom are good but they have that aluminium case that i find a bit too....mettalic! My friend has a WD one and its got a very sleek gloss plastic case:



Just wondering what others would recommend and whether there have been reliability issues with WD?

[Marcos]

Got a bit of a battering on ebuyer reviews:

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...ing=&offset=20

Shame cause its easily the sleekest portable drive, still looking for alternatives

[chrestomanci]

I use a Thecus YES nano enclosure (Also available in white and red). The big advantages are that it can act as USB host and pull files from other USB devices you connect to it. I have used it as a backup device from my digital camera when I have been on holiday. If you use it in that mode It is a bit less sleek than the picture suggests, as you need to take it's case with a USB cable and a battery pack to power it with. Also it is just an enclosure so you will need to find a suitable hard drive and fit it.

[Marcos]

hey thats pretty cool, if the USB host thing works like it should that sounds like a bargain

[blowtorch]

I got a super cheapo caddie that was recommended in PC pro a while back and fitted an old laptop HD into it. It's noisey and not very fast due to the age of the HD in it, but reliable enough.

[Funkstar]

i have a YesNANO, not really used the host support as my Archos AV500 does the same thing. In XP for some reason the YesNANO needs to be 'safely removed' twice before it is safe to remove, always fails the first time.

Got another couple of ceap ones that work fine.

[chrestomanci]

hey that's pretty cool, if the USB host thing works like it should that sounds like a bargain

There is a switch on the side with three positions: Off, normal & host mode. You turn it on in host mode, then connect at USB cable between it and something that can act as a USB storage device such as most digital cameras, a card reader, flash music player etc. You then press a button and the HD enclosure creates a new directory on the hard drive, and coppies everything on the attached device into that directory. When the HD activity light goes out you just disconnect everything and turn it off.

When I was using it on holiday, I backed up 2 digital SLR cameras every day for three weeks. A lot of the photos got coppied several times because I did not change the memory cards in the cameras every day, but it was not a problem because I had a 60Gb drive in the enclosure. (and did not put cards bigger than 1Gb in the cameras). It took a couple of minutes per camera, though the limiting factor was definitely the camera and memory card speed, not the enclosure.

The set of 4 AA batteries in the battery pack lasted the whole holiday, though I was using expensive long life lithum ones.

[Marcos]

There is a switch on the side with three positions: Off, normal & host mode. You turn it on in host mode, then connect at USB cable between it and something that can act as a USB storage device such as most digital cameras, a card reader, flash music player etc. You then press a button and the HD enclosure creates a new directory on the hard drive, and coppies everything on the attached device into that directory. When the HD activity light goes out you just disconnect everything and turn it off.

When I was using it on holiday, I backed up 2 digital SLR cameras every day for three weeks. A lot of the photos got coppied several times because I did not change the memory cards in the cameras every day, but it was not a problem because I had a 60Gb drive in the enclosure. (and did not put cards bigger than 1Gb in the cameras). It took a couple of minutes per camera, though the limiting factor was definitely the camera and memory card speed, not the enclosure.

The set of 4 AA batteries in the battery pack lasted the whole holiday, though I was using expensive long life lithum ones.

Awesome, i'm glad this solution has popped up. My DSLR's card always fills up and i dont like taking my laptop on short breaks. also means i can get a nice samsung drive to go in it.

But i'm planning on using this drive quite a lot as desktop external, as in, it'll have all my music on it and i'll plug it in and play itunes for a lot of the time. Is it a good enclosure for heat etc?

[Mithrandir]

I bought a 40gb Seagate along with separate caddy.

[Koolpc]

I made my own with a Laptop Hard Drive and a 2.5 Caddy. Superb!

[chrestomanci]

But i'm planning on using this drive quite a lot as desktop external, as in, it'll have all my music on it and i'll plug it in and play itunes for a lot of the time. Is it a good enclosure for heat etc?

I have never noticed it get particularly warm. The enclosure is made of painted metal, and in any case laptop hard drives draw much less power than desktop drives, so produce correspondingly less heat.

The main downside is that it runs on AA batteries, which allways have to be topped up. You can't power it from the PC alone. I just use a couple of sets of nicads and a charger, but it would be a problem if you planned to have it permanently connected to your PC, rather than just connecting it now and then when you wanted to copy files.

[Marcos]

oh, are you sure it doesnt run off even powered usb ports?

all other 2.5" external drives i've used have ran from a single usb port on my laptop no problems