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My current system had an iomega (Seagate) external hard drive (500gig). It connects over USB and have a weighty power cable.

I am slimlining my system somewhat, and have purchased a 360gig external hard drive. It's a more pocket sized device (using a laptop drive) and draws it's power over a secondary USB cable. Sure it's smaller (gb) but it's still big enough for now.

My question is this... It will plug into a powered hub, using 2 ports (1 for data, 1 for power). How reliable is this? Is there any reason I should see it as less reliable than a drive with a dedicated power supply?

The answer is, yes it will. Curious, why didn't get the Free Agent Drive from Seagate?

http://freeagent.seagate.com/en-us/hard ... Agent.html

This drive rocks, as you can leave it flat or get the Dock and set it on end:


http://freeagent.seagate.com/en-us/hard ... Agent.html

The highlight being that the data, and power uses the same cable. No secondary cable for power needed.

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Good music, good friends, howling good times!

This has just 1 cable, but splits off to 2 usbs at one end. And sorry, I misstyped something:

What I was basically asking is, are such drives reliable.

I have all my tunes on this:



Small footprint, huge amount of storage (320gig), and entirely powered through the 5-volt USB bus.

And, they are getting cheaper by the day...mine is now $79! I know I paid closer to $129.

http://tinyurl.com/dlp7vw

EDIT: And yes, it has been very reliable. I do have a backup, but I am considering getting a second one now, just for one more layer of redundancy.

If you are looking for the best deals, I can find em. I agree with Barry, the drives with the single USB cable for everything are the best and easiest to use.

Personally, I currently run everything off my internal drive, but some may disagree with that choice. I have about 13,000 songs right now, and zipped they take up under 100 gigs.

A good value in an external drive is this Western Digital 250gb for $56.99 with free 2day shipping. And it has only 1 usb connection for power and data transfer.

http://tinyurl.com/cx4ub8

NOTE: Apply coupon codes "LXZFJ64GXX3LS0" and "ZBC8LPSBMMRB28" to cut it to $56.99 and yield free shipping via 2-day delivery ($0.23/GB), respectively. (Choose "2nd Business Day Delivery" before applying the shipping coupon.)

And if you can live with a little smaller drive (160gb), you can pick up this Verbatim drive for $59.99 at buy.com , free shipping, AND a $20 mail in rebate drops it down to $39.99 DELVERED! Only 1 usb port needed as well:

http://www.buy.com/prod/verbatim-160gb- ... 03592.html

Cheers

I went with what I went with because I bought the HDD separately to the enclosure. Reason was, I am swapping the HDD to a smaller one shortly as I need it for my laptop.

But as long as they are reliable I always have a spare drive with me anyhow - in the form of my iPod.

That URL does not work.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Long Version: http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/prod ... -ARTICLE-0


New Tested Tinyurl: http://tinyurl.com/cx4ub8

Apply coupon codes "LXZFJ64GXX3LS0" and "ZBC8LPSBMMRB28" to cut it to $56.99 and yield free shipping via 2-day delivery ($0.23/GB), respectively. (Choose "2nd Business Day Delivery" before applying the shipping coupon.)

NOTE - THIS DEAL ENDS APRIL 2nd (TODAY). Hopefully at midnight.

Hmmm...works fine for me.

I have found USB powered drives to not be very reliable. We rack mount our hard drives. That and they just are not large enough. Our Library is about 700 gig. We use 2 - 500 gig drives 1 for music and 1 for karaoke. Unfortually I have been ripping cd's lately and the music drive is full and I'm spilling over to the karaoke drive.

We use the Wersern Digiatal My books. I have 12 of them and never have had a problem.

What has happened to them?

Just to share an idea, I keep meaning to buy a little case that is meant for mounting guitar FX pedals in it, and put my hard drive, TV converter, and wireless TV transmitter in it. I have not got around to it yet but it sounds like you are trying to save time and cable mess. Those guitar players have it right with the little briefcase-looking thing that has half a dozen pedals all neatly mounted and organized.

I've never had a problem with a usb enclosure case for my regular hard drives.

I HAVE bought some unreliable usb enclosures, that when I read the data on them after buying them, realized they had some limitations. Wouldn't recognize a drive unless it was in a certain format, wouldn't recognize over 300 GB, etc... but those were bargains that I KNEW had limitiations.

The ones I've bought for my personal use, and for my show computer... never had a problem.

I also use trays that are key removable in my desktop/tower systems... never a problem with them, either!

I was tempted to go that route, but truggled to find a mouting for them in a 19" rack...

The 2 1/2" runs quieter and is more reliable. Over the years I have lost several external hard drives from leaving them on all night or longer and the computer shut down. Presently I have 3 hard drives and it is a pain when adding a few songs and copying them to all 3. Folder Clone is the best software I have found yet to do this.

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Interesting.

Rules with this external Do not boot up attached. If you run a wireless mouse or sound plug in the external HDD first after bootup THen the USB hub I do like to run the external HDD direct and not with a hub. Windoz still has a problem with multiple USB attachments.

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the external usb drives are not designed to let them run all night long. Extended periods to be sure, for most have a cooling fan.

This is why your desktop or tower units have the case fans, to keep everything cooll.

If you have a drive that's built for internal use, and you put it in a smaller contained area, the heat dissipation is going to be noticiable.

But all night? That's certainly not the fault of the enclosure!

I have accidentally found I left one on, and never lost a drive. But I also use the larger 5 1/4" enclosures for the smaller 3" hard drives! So there's cooling room!

Matt remember Im the one that found the wirelees mic in the beer cooler!!! My biggest problems were lose connections on the power supply to the HDD case and hard use banging around. Never did spill a drink on one but came close. I do like to use internals with a small one for OS or partitions for OS.

With an internal HDD the heads are parked during shutdown. Did you ever hear the heads slamming and seeking on an external? Also moving a HDD while spinning is hard on it. It tends to precess like a gyro.

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Who said that??? I have 4 computers at home which all have many USB components connected...from webcam, hard drive, keyboard, mouse... NEVER had or heard about what you just described I do agree that an external drive shouldn't be connected on a hub... but I really don't see the problem of having it connected on boot up