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| A Posse Of Portable Hard Drives |
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PCT Reviews October 2007 • Vol.5 Issue 10 Page(s) 44-46 in print issue |
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A Posse Of Portable Hard Drives Backups On The Road |
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When you’re on the road, you need a fast backup device that is small enough to fit in your notebook case. At the same time, you don’t want to worry about whether it has enough storage space for all your files. You’re talking about a hard drive, of course. Flash drives top out at 16GB, and you’ll pay top dollar for that capacity. Rewriteable DVDs are cheap, but they’re even smaller at 4.7GB or 8.5GB. BD (Blu-ray Disc) looks promising with its 25GB and 50GB capacities, but until prices drop below their current $20 (25GB BD-R) mark for each bare disc, there’s little incentive to pay through the nose for a BD burner. Today’s 2.5-inch portable hard drives fit easily in the palm of your hand, yet they can supply up to 300GB of fast, reliable storage. For example, Fujitsu recently announced its new 300GB External Hard Disk Drive ($229; www.fujitsu.com). This 4,200rpm drive couldn’t reach us before press time, but it should be available by the time you read this. To put the following drives through some standard paces, we tested them on a Windows Vista PC with 1GB of RAM, a 2.6GHz AMD FX-55 processor, and USB 2.0. We benchmarked their speeds at various simulated tasks using Futuremark PCMark05 1.2.0 and Simpli Software HD Tach 3.0.4.0. We also timed how long it took each drive to save 1GB of data. This is probably the most relevant test we performed, as the primary duty of most portable hard drives will be data backup. (Each drive was preformatted with the FAT32 file system. HD Tach can’t test write speeds on formatted drives.) Keep in mind that you should never try to carry around a full-sized (3.5-inch) external hard drive with your laptop. These heavy “desktop” drives are more fragile than their smaller, 2.5-inch “notebook” cousins. They’re meant to stay put next to a stationary PC or Mac, not be jostled around in your notebook bag or luggage. The rule of thumb: If an external drive isn’t marketed as “portable” on its box or manufacturer’s site, it’s probably not.  Iomega eGO 160GB $132.95 • www.iomega.com Gorgeous. Picture a Southern belle with her crenaline a-billowin’. She only has room in her pocket for a single medicinal flask, and she wants it to be as contoured and pretty as possible. Like its owner. That’s the motif of the eGo portable hard drive. Iomega enfolded the eGo in a feminine shell that’s tough as nails, yet beautiful. Its matte finish resists fingerprints, although the chromed endcaps will require touchups with a handkerchief ever and anon. A single LED glows a cheerful emerald green during operation, making a very lovely contrast to the enclosure’s lipstick hue. We think we’re in love. Iomega endowed this winning beauty with DropGuard, its term for a ruggedization system. With DropGuard, the eGo is able to withstand drops of up to 51 inches, the company says. That’s good to know when your important presentation is riding on it. The eGo is bus-powered through a single USB cable. However, the PC end of the cable has an additional USB connector, which you can plug in when the drive isn’t getting enough power from a single port. On the rear of the drive is a supplemental 5V power port, but there’s no corresponding AC adapter in the package. Normally, portable drive manufacturers stop after giving you a Plan B for auxiliary power, so Iomega deserves credit for supplying a partial Plan C, as well. If you need to make use of the 5V power input (namely, if your notebook only has one free USB port and it can’t supply enough juice to the eGo), you’ll have little trouble locating a suitable adapter in an electronics store. The hard drive inside the eGo is a 5,400rpm Seagate Momentus 5400.3 with an 8MB cache. Oddly, Iomega doesn’t currently offer the eGo in any other capacities. There’s no software CD in the package, but included with the drive is a software license for a download of EMC Retrospect Backup. The eGo is compatible with Win2000/XP/64-bit XP Pro/Vista and Mac OS X 10.1.5 or later.  Kanguru 2.5” Combo QuickSilver 40GB $84.95 • www.kanguru.com This 40GB, $84.95 version of the 2.5” Combo QuickSilver (U2F-HD2-40) kind of stands in the shadow of the 80GB edition, which doubles the available storage for a mere $15 more. Actually, the 160GB model for $159.95 is the best choice on a cost-per-gigabyte basis. Note that these prices are identical to those of the USB-only QuickSilver U2-HD2 series, which doesn’t have the “Combo” in its name. In other words, you might as well buy the Combo drive because you’re getting free FireWire support. (And if you buy a Combo online from Kanguru’s online shop, you also have the opportunity to get a free one-year subscription to one of PC Today’s sister publications, such as Smart Computing or CPU.) The QuickSilver is shaped like a small, thin book, with one edge curved like a book’s spine. The drive will stand up on its flat edge, but it’s lightweight enough that the torque from the cable connected to it may be enough to flip it over. The hard drive inside it is a 5,400rpm Toshiba MK4032GAX with an 8MB cache. The QuickSilver’s gloss-black shell is very pretty. However, it’s probably admissible as evidence in court due to its propensity to fingerprint its user. In front is Kanguru’s long-tailed marsupial logo, which is nicely illuminated in blue. This kangaroo blinks during drive accesses. Four bumps on the bottom of the enclosure act as feet, but they don’t have non-skid rubber pads on them, so the drive may slide around on a smooth desktop. In back are USB Mini and FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394) ports, along with a 5V DC power jack. Kanguru includes both types of data cables, but like Iomega, it supplies no AC adapter. The Quick-Silver can get its power directly through a USB 2.0 or 6-pin FireWire port, as can most portable drives of this size. Also like Iomega, Kanguru opts for a double-headed USB cable in case a second port’s power is needed. However, Kanguru’s cable one-ups Iomega’s because the auxiliary power plug is of a pass-through design, meaning it will allow another USB device to plug through it. In other words, even if your QuickSilver takes two USB ports in order to run properly, you’ll really only lose the use of one port. Usually, the FireWire interface offers slightly faster reads and slightly slower writes as compared to USB 2.0. However, the QuickSilver proved to be the exception to that rule in our tests. Neither interface can support speeds greater than about 33MBps in practice, so when they are connected to any hard drive fast enough to be bottlenecked by USB 2.0 or FireWire, there’s really no difference between them in a practical sense. Kanguru includes a soft, black carrying case with a zipper, as well as an OEM version of NTI Backup Now! 4.0.22.2. The latter runs under Win98 (but effectively Win98SE, as that’s the earliest operating system that supports the drive) and WinMe/2000/XP/Vista. The drive is compatible with Mac OS 8.6 and later.  Toshiba USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive 200GB $179.99 • www.toshibastorage.com This drive has an understated, no-nonsense presence. It’s dressed all in matte black. If you’ve ever lost control over a presentation because your clients were more interested in your flashy computer equipment, this may be the portable drive for you. Ventilated polymer bumpers enshroud both ends of the Toshiba’s textured metal shell. These provide extra protection from bumps and knocks, but they also add a little width and length to the unit’s overall dimensions. So does the gorgeous blue activity LED, which stands proud in a ramped, chromed setting. Toshiba sells various versions of this drive. The series starts with a 100GB ($99.99) model, but there also are 120GB ($119.99) and 160GB ($149.99) devices in the lineup. The company takes a different tack than Iomega or Kanguru in that it supplies two separate USB cables instead of a combo cable. The first is a typical USB data cable. The second draws additional power from a second USB port and terminates in a standard 5V power plug. Toshiba recommends this drive for Win2000/XP/Vista and Mac OS X 10.3.9 and later. There’s an included CD with NTI Shadow 3 for Windows and the Mac, plus a 30-day trial of NTI Ripper.  Western Digital Passport Portable 250GB $199 • www.westerndigital.com This beautiful drive straddles the line between subtle and hip design. Curves here, angles there, and it’s done up in gloss and matte black. (Yeah, you’ll see fingerprints on it. But it’s so pretty, you may not care.) Rubber feet do a surprisingly good job of keeping the Passport Portable solidly planted on a clean desk. It’s slightly lighter in weight than the other drives we reviewed because its solid-feeling enclosure is made of plastic, not metal. There’s a pop-out rubber section on one end that hides the USB port. There’s no provision for auxiliary power for this bus-powered drive, and the 11-inch cable seems short compared to the others. Still, WD throws in an awesome, padded carrying case with a rubber zipper pull tab. There’s even an outer pocket on this useful black accessory. Of course, it’s a Western Digital drive on the inside, specifically a 5,400rpm WD2500BEV with an 8MB cache. On the drive is WD Sync, which as you may surmise is Western Digital’s file synchronization program. There’s some other stuff like Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer, Google Desktop Search, Picasa, and Acrobat Reader. All of these are already available free online, but they’re somehow more enticing when you don’t have to spend time downloading them. The Passport Portable is backed by 30 days free phone technical support and a long three-year warranty.  Portable Powwow All of these drives performed about the same, as they’re all based on recent notebook drives and they all stuff data through an overtaxed USB 2.0 and/or FireWire data cable. Think of our “Portable Hard Drives” benchmark results chart as nice, supplementary information, but don’t base your purchasing decision entirely on performance. Kanguru’s QuickSilver seems to have an edge in backup writes, as long as you use its USB 2.0 connection. Most portable hard drives spend the majority of their time as backup devices, so this point is worthy of mention. More general usage seems to favor Western Digital's Passport Portable on paper, but again, none of these drives will really "feel" any slower than the others as you use it. These two drives also had the longest warranty, which means quite a bit when you're talking about mobile gadgets.  by Marty Sems View the chart that accompanies this article.
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