Smallest External Hard Drive Without Sacrificing Storage...

[Svartalf]

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.

It won't come cheap compared to the HD's most people are talking about- it'll be more expensive because it's a 1.8" drive. Moreover, while you will have capacity, etc. There IS a reason they're not putting this IN the Pandora. 500G of acceleration's nice. But it still means you have to treat the thing with kid gloves, compared to what the SD's bring. It's not undoable. Just not practical.

Serious.

If you're carting around that sort of thing and velcroing a hard disk on the outside, you're not gaining anything and are making a more fragile system as a result. (That USB cable can be easily broken if you're carting the device around- and that doesn't get into the HD's operation or that a good solid impact will KILL your hard disk...something that can happen even with today's modern moving disk devices.).

By all means, do what you'd like. I've done this sort of stuff for years and it never QUITE works out the way you're implying it will. If you need that much capacity, you're not going to get it into ANYTHING this portable without issues- and I'm pointing out the issues from the voice of experience.

 

[eksasol]

Most of these hdds are just labtop 2.5", just buy one and buy a case that you like and plug it in, which are all about the samesize. I have posted this before on the other forum, but my 320gb wd 2.5" required more than one usb plug to power it on. But the reviews seem to indicate that smaller sized hdd like 120gb may only need one.

1.8" hdd are becoming popular but still are expensive, they are mostly uses in skinny labtop and ipods, and there aren't a large selection of cases. The current version are 4200rpm and usually udma100 and they have slower transfer rate. You'll have to wait later this year for Toshiba to release their 1.8" SATAII 5400rpm drives, which should effectively work just as fast as 2.5" 5400rpm. Expect hefty price. Toshiba is the reliable brand in this 1.8" catergory, I stay away from Hitachi since both of their 1.8" crapped out on me (mp3 player). You'll have to becareful since these 1.8" uses different type of connectors, such as ZIF, compact flash like plug, and micro-sata.

I swear by WD because no WD I own have ever died on me including one that is over 10years old, but for some reason their pre-cased hdd doesn't have a good review compared to their internal hdd, so I did not buy their external ones yet, though I must say they are a lot cheaper.