External HDD

mr.sniper said:
Looking at getting a external hard drive for a laptop and was wondering is it best to get a ac powered one or a usb powered drive? Was thinking that the usb one would chew to much of the laptops battery
Click to expand...

USB - and apparently Fujitsu have the lowest power draw.

Something like this:
http://www.bidorbuy.co.za/item/2301...D_SERIES_HDD_500GB_500G_SATA_5400RPM_8MB.html
or
http://www.nivo.co.za/buy~fujitsu.siemens.500gb.portable.external.hard.drive.cal2500ja.black~p19479

I have a Singaporean Fujitsu Xena 500GB - really good device, works great after >1 year of tough usage.

When comparing external HDDs look at two things:
Make of HDD inside:
Seagate, Samsung, Toshiba, Fujitsu (not Fujitsu-Siemens), WD (Maxtor) and Hitachi.
Case type:
Good ventilation and drop resistance is good. Transcend offers cheap drop tested cases with Seagate drives inside. Iomega cases can be opened up and you can swap the external drive inside, I actually put an Intel X25M into the case recently to clone my 80GB Toshiba onto the SSD - then put the SSD inside the laptop.

From my experience of ext 2.5 inch HDDs:
WD - pretty good, no issues (foreign purchase)
Fujitsu - pretty good, no issues (foreign purchase)
Samsung - pretty good, no issues
Hitachi - pretty good, requires lots of power though (foreign purchase)
Maxtor - pretty good, no issues (foreign purchase)
Seagate - pretty good, no issues
 
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