small (form) portable hard drive

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mrgrimsby

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Could someone please recommend a good reliable portable hard drive. Minimum size 160GB but preferably more, Jessops do one for £78 seagate passport I think, but other retailers do the same one for much less, this is a shame because I have a £50 gift voucher from jessops and would have bought one with it if they were reasonable...any advice welcome.
Thank you.
Pete.
Isle Of Wight
 
Pete
I got a 320gb Western Digital from PC World about a month ago for approx £65. Not sure if it was on sale at the time, but worth checking their website.
Andrew
 
I've got a bunch of WD Passport drives like these. They've been bounced around in luggage on 100's of flights and I've never had one fail yet.

Bob
 
mrgrimsby said:
Could someone please recommend a good reliable portable hard drive.
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Freecom ToughDrive/ToughDrive Pro.

I've dropped them off desks, accidentally kicked them across the floor on more than a few occasions, dropped them and watched them bounce down several flights of stairs, left them outside overnight in the freezing cold, sent them all over the country via Royal Mail and never had one fail on me.

Impressive pieces of kit.
 
Canon Bob said:
I've got a bunch of WD Passport drives like these. They've been bounced around in luggage on 100's of flights and I've never had one fail yet.

Bob
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We have a couple of these too, as Bob says our's have taken a few knocks and still work fine. Wayne
 
Canon Bob said:
I've got a bunch of WD Passport drives like these. They've been bounced around in luggage on 100's of flights and I've never had one fail yet.

Bob
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I use the WD ones as well, just before Christmas got a 1 GHz for about £80.

Sorry, was the larger desktop 1GHz that was that price, the 350GHz WD passport was about £65.
 
Canon Bob - that's the same style I bought ... just couldn't remember the name!!

Glitch - are you naturally that accident prone or do you have to work at it?!!
 
stretchy25 said:
Glitch - are you naturally that accident prone or do you have to work at it?!!
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Well, that was just my experiences through working with them for almost every day for about 12 months.

I originally started buying them as our users were so accident prone or careless that I needed something that could take a good hammering and still work. Only the ToughDrives passed that test.
 
can also recommend WD great hard drive for the price.

never had any problems with mine but would recommend getting a case as they seem to mark easily (comestic only)
 
Yep, I'm another WD Passport user (y)
 
Thank you for the great advice (as usual!) I have ordered the Western Digital 250GB Passport Essential 2.5" Hard Drive from PC world just under 60 quid delivered...spot on , It,s sad that Jessops will not compete with these prices though.
Thanks again for the help
Pete.
 
I had a WD 250gb fail on me before xmas, the actual drive was fine it was the circuit board that packed up so i could recover everything from it. WD replaced it with no problems whatsoever so i'll be sticking with them for a while.
 
Euan said:
I had a WD 250gb fail on me before xmas, the actual drive was fine it was the circuit board that packed up so i could recover everything from it. WD replaced it with no problems whatsoever so i'll be sticking with them for a while.
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Euan, how did you get the info from the hard drive, did you rip it apart? Sadly, I've just attempted to plug mune into my Mac and it isn't seeing it, the light comes on but no whirring sounds and no icon on the desktop :crying::crying:

Edit..5 mins later.... I've just put it on my wife's computer and it's fine, need to investigate further, but still interested in your answer.
 
that sounds the same as mine, i wedged a credit card into it and SLOWLY got the case apart then plugged it into my other laptop (it has 2 drives) and copied it across. then i put it back together and rma'd it to WD and got a shiny new one.
 
Euan said:
that sounds the same as mine, i wedged a credit card into it and SLOWLY got the case apart then plugged it into my other laptop (it has 2 drives) and copied it across. then i put it back together and rma'd it to WD and got a shiny new one.
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Did one laptop see it and the other didn't?
 
when it was in the proper caddy the light would come on but neither my mac or my windows laptops would recognise it. i took it out of the caddie so it was just the hardrive and plugged it in direct to the motherboard not via usb and it worked fine.
 
Ah, ok thanks, Ewan. Actually mine's got even more strange.....plugged it in to one of the usb ports on the mac and, although that port seems ok with card readers etc, it just won't see the external hard drive, although I've used it in the past for this. If I plug it in to the other usb socket, it's fine!!

Will have to do a bit more investigation, can't see that it's a power issue.
 
Well, further to my comments above, I now think it is a power issue in that for some reason the external HD is not getting sufficient power from this particular usb port for some reason. When I plug it in to the other one or either of my wife's usb ports (you see what I mean..!!) it's fine but on this particular port it lights up but doesn't spin up. The port works fine with a card reader, though....but that has minimal power requirement. Looks like the lappy could be going back to the Mac hospital. First prob I've had in 2 yrs!

Thanks for your help, anyway!!

George
 
Canon Bob said:
I've got a bunch of WD Passport drives like these. They've been bounced around in luggage on 100's of flights and I've never had one fail yet.

Bob
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I'm also interested in one of these. Reading some of the reviews on Amazon, there seems to be a bit of an issue with power required to run these from laptop usb's. Can anyone tell me what power they require and also how to check what my laptop provides.
I may have misunderstood what i read, but any help would be appreciated before I pop out and buy one. :)


Kev.
 
kevshore said:
I'm also interested in one of these. Reading some of the reviews on Amazon, there seems to be a bit of an issue with power required to run these from laptop usb's. Can anyone tell me what power they require and also how to check what my laptop provides.
I may have misunderstood what i read, but any help would be appreciated before I pop out and buy one. :)


Kev.
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Kev,

There can be issues with some smaller machines not providing enough power when running off batteries. I've always used mine on Dell's (and an HP for a while) and not had any problems. The power required is above the USB2 spec but most modern machines output far above the spec anyway. Problems will arise is you try to connect via a non-powered hub.

Bob
 
I alwyas buy these sort of things off ebay but last time I did I picked one up for around a tenner and stick a hard drive in them as it turns a hard drive into a media player as well.
 
Canon Bob said:
Kev,

There can be issues with some smaller machines not providing enough power when running off batteries. I've always used mine on Dell's (and an HP for a while) and not had any problems. The power required is above the USB2 spec but most modern machines output far above the spec anyway. Problems will arise is you try to connect via a non-powered hub.

Bob
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Yea, Bob, that's what I thought, which is why I'm surprised at the problem I had last night (see above). Think I may have an issue with one of my ports, will have to speak to Mac when I get back from a few days in the Highlands. BTW, are you going to Focus this year, Bob?
George
 
Well Pete (the OP) is sorted so that's good then

But for anyone looking for a small slim carry everywhere USB Ext HD then I've just bought one from Tesco for £38 as discontinued stock ....... Philips, 160GB, Shockproof (whatever that means), 480 Mb/s, 5400rpm, 8Mb cache, comes fomated in NTFS & C/W USB leads (one built into the body for single connection & an alternative 'double' for separate power & data transfer lines.

.... just in case you were thinking of getting one

Dave B.
 
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