Smallest External Hard Drive Without Sacrificing Storage...

[cosam]

QUOTE

The will probably power up but the page says that the drive needs to have it's drivers which it does not have, these are found in the windows or MAC OS so i'm not sure if it will work.
These devices have not been tested with our drives.

Obviously I understand what he's saying, but what do you guys make of it?

Looks like the standard answer you get back when something doesn't explicitly support Linux. Drivers aren't an issue as they're in the kernel already. The only real question is how much power the drive needs, and how much the Pandora will supply. If you can get a figure out of them, we'd have something to work with. I've read somewhere it was between 600 and 1000 mA, but it'd be nice to have an "official" answer.

 

[crimsonnight]

QUOTE

The will probably power up but the page says that the drive needs to have it's drivers which it does not have, these are found in the windows or MAC OS so i'm not sure if it will work.
These devices have not been tested with our drives.

Obviously I understand what he's saying, but what do you guys make of it?

Looks like the standard answer you get back when something doesn't explicitly support Linux. Drivers aren't an issue as they're in the kernel already. The only real question is how much power the drive needs, and how much the Pandora will supply. If you can get a figure out of them, we'd have something to work with. I've read somewhere it was between 600 and 1000 mA, but it'd be nice to have an "official" answer.


sure thing, i'll reply to him with that exact question ^^

 

[undefined]

QUOTE

It's not a question of battery capacity, but of the USB port. All available information suggests the port will not provide more than 500mA, and a lot of drives seem to need more than that.



Based on the above...if my 1.8 ZIF drive label says 500mA in theory it should function and be within the power scope?

 

[Svartalf]

Obviously I understand what he's saying, but what do you guys make of it?

Heh... Standard response these days from a hardware vendor that doesn't put Tux on the box. It's a WD passport, right? Unless they've broke something in the recent models that makes them not properly USB 2.0. Storage spec compliant drives, they should work about as well as my 120 I bought a while back for my laptop.

Having said this, has anyone done the math on what the watt-hours that the HD consumes will do to the Pandora's runtime? I suspect not.

At full operation, the Passport will consume roughly 3 watts of power. Idle, it'll burn something like 1.2 or so watts (round it up for argument's sake to 1.5 for this discussion...).

At 3 watts of use, you will see a total runtime of a fully charged Pandora weighing in at about 2.7 hours, max. At 1.5 watts of use, you will, at best, see 3.8 hours.

Way shy of the stated 6+ hours, which IS for real, by the by. The battery they're using has roughly 13.5 watt-hours of capacity. The Pandora uses while at the stock mode, with everything powered, about 2 watts. Each thing you tack ON to the Pandora had better be self powered or you will lose one of the bigger selling points.

Based on the above...if my 1.8 ZIF drive label says 500mA in theory it should function and be within the power scope?

Yeah, it should work "okay", but at 500mA, you're talking about 3-ish watts of juice to power the thing, peak. 3 watts is EVIL to the battery life.

 

[undefined]

Obviously I understand what he's saying, but what do you guys make of it?

Heh... Standard response these days from a hardware vendor that doesn't put Tux on the box. It's a WD passport, right? Unless they've broke something in the recent models that makes them not properly USB 2.0. Storage spec compliant drives, they should work about as well as my 120 I bought a while back for my laptop.

Having said this, has anyone done the math on what the watt-hours that the HD consumes will do to the Pandora's runtime? I suspect not.

At full operation, the Passport will consume roughly 3 watts of power. Idle, it'll burn something like 1.2 or so watts (round it up for argument's sake to 1.5 for this discussion...).

At 3 watts of use, you will see a total runtime of a fully charged Pandora weighing in at about 2.7 hours, max. At 1.5 watts of use, you will, at best, see 3.8 hours.

Way shy of the stated 6+ hours, which IS for real, by the by. The battery they're using has roughly 13.5 watt-hours of capacity. The Pandora uses while at the stock mode, with everything powered, about 2 watts. Each thing you tack ON to the Pandora had better be self powered or you will lose one of the bigger selling points.

Based on the above...if my 1.8 ZIF drive label says 500mA in theory it should function and be within the power scope?

Yeah, it should work "okay", but at 500mA, you're talking about 3-ish watts of juice to power the thing, peak. 3 watts is EVIL to the battery life.


Thanks for the perspective. Sounds ok for brief transfers on the go and use with AC power. Appreciated!

 

[Svartalf]

Thanks for the perspective. Sounds ok for brief transfers on the go and use with AC power. Appreciated!

You're very much welcome. Just for the rest of the gang- I'm not telling you "no, it can't be done". I'm trying to point out what your expectations should be on these things. They don't impact the laptops all that much because the laptops are fielding 40-90 watt-hour batteries and the external self-powered devices present a teacupful of load compared to the laptop's motherboard, CPU, GPU, HD, etc. (which is usually something between 20 and 40 watts on average...think about it...).

You will want to use SDHC for main storage and do quick transfers from these devices or do a quick usage of LG's slim USB powered DVD burner (for burner sorts of things... )- but to use it dedicated, you're going to need a mains supply or a backup battery. If you use that occasionally that way, you're going to be "okay". If you need to do it more often, you might consider getting a real laptop for those sorts of things (An eeePC or a Dell Mini comes to mind there... ).

 

[crimsonnight]

what i was thinkin was just goin for the portability thing - even if i had to have the HD hooked up to mains, it will still make an exellent portable DVD player/Playstation/Hi-Fi etc when combined with the TV out on the Pandora... maybe even the occasional movie if ur close to ur destination. Thats a point actually, Im on holiday atm, and it's the same thing with my video ipod - when running videos/games, it only has like a 2-3 hour battery life, so the pandora would be pretty much the same (according to your calculations)
also, it would be awesome if someone made a joint carry case for the pandora and simular-sized exernal hard drives
i'll post the guy's reply when i recieve it, hopefully confirming compatibility ^^

 

[Svartalf]

what i was thinkin was just goin for the portability thing - even if i had to have the HD hooked up to mains, it will still make an exellent portable DVD player/Playstation/Hi-Fi etc when combined with the TV out on the Pandora... maybe even the occasional movie if ur close to ur destination. Thats a point actually, Im on holiday atm, and it's the same thing with my video ipod - when running videos/games, it only has like a 2-3 hour battery life, so the pandora would be pretty much the same (according to your calculations)
also, it would be awesome if someone made a joint carry case for the pandora and simular-sized exernal hard drives
i'll post the guy's reply when i recieve it, hopefully confirming compatibility ^^

Heh... No worries... You're at least thinking more along the lines someone wanting to do this sort of thing should have in their head. It's when you start stepping out of that model that you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

 

[lobski]

I'm not getting the portable HDD usage idea with the Pandora. Unless it's got a constant power feed (hooked up and not portable), it's gonna drain most of the batteries and you won't even last for a few hours...

 

[cosam]

I'm not getting the portable HDD usage idea with the Pandora. Unless it's got a constant power feed (hooked up and not portable), it's gonna drain most of the batteries and you won't even last for a few hours...

I think that's exactly the point people are trying to make here. I'm definitely not planning on using a hard disk on the go - I doubt mine would even work without external power. What they are useful for is taking large amounts of data with you for use when you know you'll have (at least occasional) access to a mains socket. That could be for watching movies via TV-out, or simply copying files to SD for use on the move.

 

[crimsonnight]

aw no, it's not looking good T_T

"Response (Danny Z.)10/21/2008 07:39 AM
Dear Grant,

Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support.


The drive is in need of 1000mA during boot up so I'm afraid that if the pandora only supplies 500mA it will not work.


If you have any further questions do not hesitate too contact us.

Sincerely,
Danny
Western Digital Service and Support
http://support.wdc.com"

does that mean it's not gonna work even if it's connected to external power? T_T

 

[WizardStan]

1) Go to ebay
2) buy an iPod with a broken screen but still functions as an external hard drive
3) Profit!

 

[crimsonnight]

good idea - not enough space for me though >.< would be great if i could get that HD to work - would it work with one of those powered hub things do u think?

 

[kaprikawn]

Surely if power is going to be an issue then something like this would suffice?

 

[TaG]

The point I see to having the ability to hook up a portable hdd is for things like holidays or business trips etc. You load your sd's with most of what you want. You take your hdd to take other stuff you may want or need. When needed, mount the drive transfer to sd, unmount. It's fine people saying things like "get two 32gb sd's" but not everyone can afford to do that.I have two portable hdd's, so I hope they work - if they don't I'll have to save my pennies.

 

[cosam]

It's fine people saying things like "get two 32gb sd's" but not everyone can afford to do that.

Yep, you can get a 320GB USB disk for less than the price of a 32GB SD card. I'm sure there are also plenty of people who'll simply want to take more than 64GB of data with them at some time.

I have two portable hdd's, so I hope they work - if they don't I'll have to save my pennies.

If they don't work directly off the Pandora, you can always make them work ;-) Either with an external power adapter (if it takes it) or a powered hub.

 

[Svartalf]

The drive is in need of 1000mA during boot up so I'm afraid that if the pandora only supplies 500mA it will not work.

Ouch... So much for simple "mobile" use. Even if it could source that much, that's a hideous drain on the battery with 5.5 watts or so on spin up, settling down to 3. Definitely going to be a booster pack hub that's powered by a separate battery/mains wall-wart.

QUOTE

does that mean it's not gonna work even if it's connected to external power? T_T



Not at all. It just means you need to source power to it via a powered hub with a battery backed or mains powered hub- it needs 1A to spin up, however it gets it. You'll have to use a powered (however it's powered from somewhere OTHER than the Pandora...) USB hub unless the HD offers a 5v jack (at which point you supply just the drive the power in the same manner as the hub.

 

[Svartalf]

Yep, you can get a 320GB USB disk for less than the price of a 32GB SD card. I'm sure there are also plenty of people who'll simply want to take more than 64GB of data with them at some time.

Heh... The biggest issue I see with all of this is practicality.

If you're dragging that much data around, shouldn't you be using a bit different of a device? I've found issues with trying to force the issue with my N800. It mostly works as intended, but I always come back to the "This would have been 'better' with my..." and insert eeePC or Laptop on the end of that phrase...

You're going to have to lug around a mains supply or battery pack for the hub.
You're going to have to lug a HD around with you.
You're going to have to lug the Pandora around with you.

A bit more bulky than nabing the Pandora and going.

I'd rather spend a bit more money, have a handful of SD's (I can accomplish 64Gb with 8's easily and cheaply enough- and realistically, that'll handle QUITE a bit of things- and if something doesn't fit on an 8, the 16's are still cheap enough...) and keep completely mobile.

If you've got that much you're trying to make "mobile" I might suggest picking up a Beagleboard and coming up with a small "brick" lashup that accomplishes the same thing for TV use that you can cart along and move things off onto SD's for the Pandora. Done right, the combo would be mind-blowing and just rock.

QUOTE

If they don't work directly off the Pandora, you can always make them work ;-) Either with an external power adapter (if it takes it) or a powered hub.


Heh... That you CAN do. In fact, I was going to do things like that- as a "because I can" thing, but not seriously plan on doing it. It's not practical for a handheld device to do things like this.

 

[cosam]

@Svartalf: I totally get your point, in fact I agree with most of what you're saying. I'm definitely not planning on dragging all this kit around with me on a daily basis! If folk want to do so, well, the best of luck to them. These are the sorts of things it's handy to take with you on holiday or whatever, but in my case they'd be confined strictly to the hotel room ;-)

 

[sdedalus83]

http://www.toshibastorage.com/main.aspx?Pa...MKxx31GAxSeries

No price information yet; however, its quoted power consumption efficiency is about half of the current single platter 1.8" drives. That would put it around .5 watts during reads and writes. The idle consumption won't decrease as much, but it will definitely be lower than the .4 watts of its predecessor.

Usb to ide bridges use less that 100mA, so an external drive using that toshiba would probably consume around .6 watts at its worst. It'll cost more than $300, but the 15 16 gb sd cards you would need for the same amount of space come in at around $525. I think you can imagine just how infuriating carrying around 15 sd cards would be.

I forgot to mention; if the Apricorn Aegis came with that drive, it would be less than 4 ounces, and .67" h, 2.7" w, and 3.38" l. That should be small enough to velcro to the bottom of the Pandora, or, even better, have a portable docking station with a usb hub, a slot for 1.8" ZIF drives, and a lithium ion battery and 5v boost converter to power the hub and act as a backup battery for the pandora.