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Sh!t We Like - External Harddrives Pt2
Putting the spare 3.5" SATA hard drive we had laying around, into a nice external enclosure, was easy and economically the right thing to do. In External Harddrives Pt1, we pointed out the importance of looking at the drive's power requirements and comparing that with the enclosure's power supply parameters. One week back in service again, the now nicely enclosed Seagate ST3250823AS SATA drive has been working great so far and is used by Mac OS X Leopard's new integrated backup program a.k.a Time Machine.

I really like the looks of the black Acomdata Samba USB Enclosure but it's kind of big, considering that sits right next to a Mac Mini. Also, the required 12V AC wall-adapter makes this a pretty much stationary device, not suited for moving around a lot.
LaCie 160 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive
LaCie Portable Hard Drive
Instead, a really cool and portable external hard drive is the LaCie 160 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive. The compact (3 x .65 x 5 in / 76 x 17 x 129 mm ) and very lightweight (6.35 oz / 180 g ) device houses a 2.5" 5400 rpm hard drive. This is arguably the best looking external drive but what's even better is that there is also a FireWire 400 (up to 35-40MB/s) version available.
But it is not just the size and weight that makes this the perfectly portable solution, it's how the device gets powered. There is no power supply. The LaCie 160 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive gets powered through the USB or FireWire cable and for computers equipped with a low powered USB or FireWire port, the bundled USB power-sharing cable helps turn the drive on by drawing extra power from a second USB port.
A performance test done by ZDNet Australia shows that for sustained speeds the LaCie blazed over both USB2.0 and other Firewire drives.
Sustained Transfer Rate (MB/s)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
LaCie Mobile Hard Drive 160GB (Firewire)
35.7 
Western Digital Passport 250GB (USB2.0)
30.5 
IoMega Portable Hard Drive 160GB (Firewire)
27.2 
LaCie Mobile Hard Drive 160GB (USB2.0)
25.8 
IoMega Portable Hard Drive 160GB (USB2.0)
25.7 
Seagate FreeAgent Go 160GB (USB2.0)
22.5 



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Published on: Saturday, December 08th, 2007  •  Category: [hardware]
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