External HD for Laptop choices, what's best for me?

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Sobek

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I'm getting an Asus G1S-B2 Gaming laptop this weekend. I'm in the USAF and will be using it mainly for TDY's and deployments. I need an external harddrive to use to put my movies and music on and maybe for backup purposes. I'm looking for a capacity of around 200gig but can go higher. Budget is around $200. The G1s-B2 is USB/Firewire/eSATA so any of those are fine for connecting to the laptop. I do not care if it is an external that requires exteral power but no having to do so would be a plus. This leaves eSATA off though.

I have a WD My Book 500GB for my main PC now. I have thought about getting another such as this one.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136081
Should I?

I've also been looking at the WD 200GB Passport. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136139

Any help and advice would be appreciated.

Laptop link for curious: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220256
 
I like the WD Passport I have had for 3 years. One of best things I ever bought PC wise. The 2.5's seem more resilient to jostling around. Plus I can plug it in and use usb power - no need for extra plug and brick. Just before I saw your post I was looking at enclosures for 2,5 drives that also have card readers and battery power. I want to be able to store photos I take on trips without having to carry a lappy. With battery I can take pics right from card or camera. Maybe you would be interested in same functions if your taking pics and not always near outlet or dont want to drain lappy.

http://www.thetechgeek.com/content/product.php?pid=7579&cid=

There are other models as well and that's just an example. Some have encryption as well.
 
I do not care if it is an external that requires exteral power but no having to do so would be a plus.
Click to expand...
Most of the larger 2.5" HDDs are gonna hafta have the "Y" power cable to be useable.

How 'bout something like this enclosure, and this drive? You get a 2 yr. warranty with the drive, and if needed, swap with your origional laptop drive.
 
Old Hippie said:
I thought you wanted a 2.5" drive.
Click to expand...

It doesn't really matter. 2.5" would only really benefit me if I need to access data when I wasn't near a power source such as on a plane or in a car. The G1S-B2 battery life is only about 2 hours even though I ordered an extra battery. I likely wont be using my laptop unless absolutely necessary in that type of situation. I have my PSP for that (gaming and movies). A 2.5" drive is just easier to transport. I'll likely keep the laptop in one place such as my hotel room when on TDY or barracks room when deployed (we do have power and AC, it's the AF after all). I just like to keep my options open which is why I asked for both types of drives.
 
The new WD AAKS drives have a feature called SecurePark so that when they arent being used no contact is being made between the heads and disks - a big cause of disk failure if they get handeled rough. They have a 320GB AAKS version for about ($75 on sale often). The 500GB is around $100. I would put that in an enclosure instead of buying the cheapie drives they are using in links above. I got a Thermaltake enclosure that uses eSATA and USB and also uses SATA drives or PATA. Its realy handy to use for all drives old and new you might have. However I did once drop the enclosure with an non SecurePark PATA drive and it was corrupted ever since.
 
abcdelight said:
The new WD AAKS drives have a feature called SecurePark so that when they arent being used no contact is being made between the heads and disks - a big cause of disk failure if they get handeled rough. They have a 320GB AAKS version for about ($75 on sale often). The 500GB is around $100. I would put that in an enclosure instead of buying the cheapie drives they are using in links above. I got a Thermaltake enclosure that uses eSATA and USB and also uses SATA drives or PATA. Its realy handy to use for all drives old and new you might have. However I did once drop the enclosure with an non SecurePark PATA drive and it was corrupted ever since.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. Got any newegg links for the AAKS drives? I can't find any. I had been thinking about getting this 2.5" enclosure (http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16817392016) back when I was getting the 160GB G1S to swap it into since I would get the 200GB HItachi drive for the laptop.

edit: Nevermind. I searched for Secure Park on newegg and found it.
 
There's 4 of them I know of. The 750GB version also has Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) and is quiet and fast. It was around $200 a couple months ago and now its usually $179 but its 149 now. Its probably overkill for an external but if your going to get a 500 might as well do a 750 for a few more beans imo.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136131

I have this encloure for all drive types:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145026

Not saying it the best of all but its been good by me and not the most expensive.
 
There's no doubt in my mind, that the best 3.5" USB external enclosure that includes eSATA, is the Antec MX-1. I have seen it for $40.00 and free shipping at it's best.
For 2.5" enclosures, there's no active cooling (that I've seen), but I would base my recommendations on the chipset interface. Here's the latest chipset reviews.
If you're wanting this storage to be dependable, I would buy the best that I could afford. I see soo many penny-pinchers wondering why or how their 21 cents per GB storage unit could "give up the ghost, or "how can I save this data"....unbeliveable.
Go forth, and spend your money wisely.
 
I just thought that I would let everyone know that I went with the 250GB WD Passport. I baught it at Circuit City though just in case it was a dud since it would be easier to return. It was only a few dollars more there than at newegg. I also wanted it tonight so that I could start copying files to it before my laptop arrives this weekend. I reformated it to NTFS and have been writing files to it for about 3 hours straight now. It's stayed slightly warm and worked great so far.

I also picked up this 3.5 eSata/USB external enclosure. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817145167
I have 2 80GB SATA drives my stepfather gave me that he didn't need. I'm going to reformat them and use them for backups using this.

Thanks for all the suggestions everybody.
 
maybe some of you guys could help me out.

I ripped a few movies in a SATA drive that I haven't used since last year.
So I ripped the movies into the SATA HD via SATA connection.
But when I installed the SATA to my Antec MX-100 USB enclosure, as an external HD, the PC recognizes it as a USB Mass storage...but does not show in My Computer as a drive.
Which means I cannot access my movies from this external HD.

Am I missing a step here?

Thanks in advance
 
the PC recognizes it as a USB Mass storage...but does not show in My Computer as a drive.
Click to expand...

Well, it is USB mass storage if it's hooked up via USB. Why can't ya just explore the drive, and pick and play your movies....just like any other drive? They're all mass storage devices.

What am I missing here?
 
Old Hippie said:
Well, it is USB mass storage if it's hooked up via USB. Why can't ya just explore the drive, and pick and play your movies....just like any other drive? They're all mass storage devices.

What am I missing here?
Click to expand...
yknow how you insert a USB flash drive and it shows as a storage drive with HD drive letter assigned to it when you open My Computer....this one doesn't. It does show up in the Device manager along with the USB connections.

Hope that helps.
 
yknow how you insert a USB flash drive and it shows as a storage drive with HD drive letter assigned to it when you open My Computer....this one doesn't.
Click to expand...
Maybe, for some unknown reason, your machine is not assigning it a drive letter.
Then why don't we try this?
How bout' going to "Start - Control Panel - Performance and Maintenance - Administrative Tools - Computer Management- Disc Management " -...

Hopefully, your drive will be represented there. Then, right Click on your USB drive. If it lets you assign a drive letter, go ahead. Maybe that's all it wants.

Good Lluck!
 
I went to Disk Management and the disk is read as:
"Dynamic" and "Foreign"....my option is to "Convert to Basic Disk", which will reformat my drive and lose data...:(
 
"Dynamic" and "Foreign"....my option is to "Convert to Basic Disk", which will reformat my drive and lose data...
Click to expand...
That's probably not the best option if you wanna keep your data. Why dontcha try this?
 
just great, I'm stuck at work for 16hrs with my WinXPHome Laptop with my USB external SATA HD that was formatted on my WinXPPRO.:(...i guess it has to wait till I get home...might as well try though.

thanks
 
I'm stuck at work for 16hrs
Click to expand...
Well, let's just be thankful you have a job. I'm sure you're "Bittin' at the bit" to get at these movies, but let's put things in perspective.....You have a job. Am I sounding like your Dad? I am 55. :)

Now that we're down to the bottom of the problem ( convert XP Pro Foreign disc to XP Basic disc....I think), you outta be able to research the problem yourself. Google is definately your friend.

Good Luck!
 
The safest solution would be, get your movies off the external, reformat the external to a basic NTFS file system, copy movies back to external.................
And don't format to dynamic ever again. With 1TB drives avaliable, I can't imagine the need for dynamic drives.
 
will do...Dad...:D
at least I got Bourne Ultimatum+Matrix Trilogy DVDs in bag...that should keep me occuppied for next few hours:D

So regular NTFS...CHECK!

The dynamic is the problem then? Note to self: No more dynamic HD...would have helped if I read that website before
 
I converted to Basic and problems are gone! And yes I copied my files first.
Thanks everyone for the help and the knowledge
 
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