best drive to use as portable storage

[name]

Hello.

While I'm on a vacation, I'd like to be able to store photos on a
portable drive and I was thinking of buying the PD70X:

http://www.eastgear.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=444

However, I'll probably be buying a version that doesn't include a 2.5''
HD and I'm
wondering which drive would be most suitable to use in this device.

Should I go for 5400 rpm or 4200 rpm, 8 mb or 2 mb buffer size and are
there any
specific brands to recommend or avoid?
I'm assuming faster drives might get hotter and perhaps 8 mb is a bit
of overkill or
is this likely to yield a notable increase in performance?

Any feedback or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance and kind regards, Niek

 

[Jimmy]

Hello.

While I'm on a vacation, I'd like to be able to store photos on a
portable drive and I was thinking of buying the PD70X:

http://www.eastgear.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=444

However, I'll probably be buying a version that doesn't include a 2.5''
HD and I'm
wondering which drive would be most suitable to use in this device.

Should I go for 5400 rpm or 4200 rpm, 8 mb or 2 mb buffer size and are
there any
specific brands to recommend or avoid?
I'm assuming faster drives might get hotter and perhaps 8 mb is a bit
of overkill or
is this likely to yield a notable increase in performance?

Any feedback or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance and kind regards, Niek

The link you provided shows (in red bold type), they use a Samsung 5400rpm
8mb buffer model drive. The Hyperdrive (Americas version) shows using a
Hitachi 5400 rpm, 8MB cache drive.
http://www.hyperdrive.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=5 Given this
information, a 5400rpm 8MB cache of any brand should work fine, as long as
it will fit the device. For a little background on the companies and
products involved:
http://www.hyperdrive.com/shop/information.php?info_id=15

 

[Rod Speed]

While I'm on a vacation, I'd like to be able to store photos
on a portable drive and I was thinking of buying the PD70X:

However, I'll probably be buying a version that doesn't include a 2.5'' HD
and I'm wondering which drive would be most suitable to use in this device.

Really doesnt matter much in this particularly situation.

Should I go for 5400 rpm or 4200 rpm,

The speed is irrelevant except that the lower
speed would normally give better recharge life.

8 mb or 2 mb buffer size

Completely irrelevant in this situation.

and are there any specific brands to recommend or avoid?

I dont like the lack of diagnostics with the Toshibas.

I'm assuming faster drives might get hotter

Yes, and reduce the time between recharges if you have it on much.

and perhaps 8 mb is a bit of overkill or is this
likely to yield a notable increase in performance?

Nope, you wouldnt be able to pick it in a proper double blind trial.

 

[dannysdailys]

namewrote
Hello

While I'm on a vacation, I'd like to be able to store photos on
portable drive and I was thinking of buying the PD70X

http://www.eastgear.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=44

However, I'll probably be buying a version that doesn't include 2.5'
HD and I'
wondering which drive would be most suitable to use in this device

Should I go for 5400 rpm or 4200 rpm, 8 mb or 2 mb buffer size an ar
there an
specific brands to recommend or avoid
I'm assuming faster drives might get hotter and perhaps 8 mb is bi
of overkill o
is this likely to yield a notable increase in performance

Any feedback or suggestions would be appreciated

Thanks in advance and kind regards, Nie

I didn't see a price on what you are looking at, but I think it'
overkill for what you want to do. Why do you need a battery powere
external

The cheapest and easiest way to do it, is to get a 2 1/2 drive in
USB2 housing. The beauty of the small form factor is that the driv
get's it power from the USB cable. No need for a power brick

As far as speed and size go: I don't think this is much of an issu
really, USB2 is much slower then a native hard drive connection, s
you won't see any improvement from the 5200 to the 7200 RPM drive i
terms of throughput speed

MWave.com has it's own kits. I picked up a 60 gig Toshiba drive an
housing for under 100 bucks. Can't beat that, and it works like
charm. If you can't format a small drive, have them pre-format i
for you

I use mine as a backup for my RAID system and my office computer. I
fireproofs the backup process and compliments the RAID. Nero Ultr
has an excellent backup utility that makes this a one button affair.
Using it in this way, may also make sense to you. I'd shudder t
think how many pictures you can fit on a 60 gig drive. Overkill t
the max

Cheers

 

[name]

I didn't see a price on what you are looking at, but I think it's
overkill for what you want to do. Why do you need a battery powered
external?

Because I'll be travelling to asia for a few months and plan to take
lots of pictures
and perhaps some movies.
I wouldn't want to rely on internet cafe's there to back up the
pictures to CD
and it would probably take too much time to dump them on my ftp.

The cheapest and easiest way to do it, is to get a 2 1/2 drive in a
USB2 housing. The beauty of the small form factor is that the drive
get's it power from the USB cable. No need for a power brick.

As far as speed and size go: I don't think this is much of an issue
really, USB2 is much slower then a native hard drive connection, so
you won't see any improvement from the 5200 to the 7200 RPM drive in
terms of throughput speed.

MWave.com has it's own kits. I picked up a 60 gig Toshiba drive and
housing for under 100 bucks. Can't beat that, and it works like a
charm. If you can't format a small drive, have them pre-format it
for you.

I use mine as a backup for my RAID system and my office computer. It
fireproofs the backup process and compliments the RAID. Nero Ultra
has an excellent backup utility that makes this a one button affair.
Using it in this way, may also make sense to you. I'd shudder to
think how many pictures you can fit on a 60 gig drive. Overkill to
the max.

I also like to shoot some movies occasionally. A 1 gb movie
(640x480x30fps) is
only 8 minutes. So filling up a 40 gb drive with movies would result in
over 5 hours of material. Typical pictures are just 2 mb (with my canon
powershot s2), so 40 gb might be indeed a bit of overkill to store only
pics during a 2 month vacation.

 

[name]

I didn't see a price on what you are looking at, but I think it's
overkill for what you want to do. Why do you need a battery powered
external?

Because I'll be travelling to asia for a few months and plan to take
lots of pictures
and perhaps some movies.
I wouldn't want to rely on internet cafe's there to back up the
pictures to CD
and it would probably take too much time to dump them on my ftp.

The cheapest and easiest way to do it, is to get a 2 1/2 drive in a
USB2 housing. The beauty of the small form factor is that the drive
get's it power from the USB cable. No need for a power brick.

As far as speed and size go: I don't think this is much of an issue
really, USB2 is much slower then a native hard drive connection, so
you won't see any improvement from the 5200 to the 7200 RPM drive in
terms of throughput speed.

MWave.com has it's own kits. I picked up a 60 gig Toshiba drive and
housing for under 100 bucks. Can't beat that, and it works like a
charm. If you can't format a small drive, have them pre-format it
for you.

I use mine as a backup for my RAID system and my office computer. It
fireproofs the backup process and compliments the RAID. Nero Ultra
has an excellent backup utility that makes this a one button affair.
Using it in this way, may also make sense to you. I'd shudder to
think how many pictures you can fit on a 60 gig drive. Overkill to
the max.

I also like to shoot some movies occasionally. A 1 gb movie
(640x480x30fps) is
only 8 minutes. So filling up a 40 gb drive with movies would result in
over 5 hours of material. Typical pictures are just 2 mb (with my canon
powershot s2), so 40 gb might be indeed a bit of overkill to store only
pics during a 2 month vacation.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Hello.

While I'm on a vacation, I'd like to be able to store photos on a
portable drive and I was thinking of buying the PD70X:

http://www.eastgear.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=444

However, I'll probably be buying a version that doesn't include a 2.5'' HD and I'm
wondering which drive would be most suitable to use in this device.

Should I go for 5400 rpm or 4200 rpm, 8 mb or 2 mb buffer size and are there any
specific brands to recommend or avoid?
I'm assuming faster drives might get hotter and perhaps 8 mb is a bit of overkill or
is this likely to yield a notable increase in performance?

What performance is there in sequentially storing data from a Flash card?
Or offloading the drive to a PC?

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Really doesnt matter much in this particularly situation.

And then you go say just the opposite below.

The speed is irrelevant except that the lower
speed would normally give better recharge life.

Depends on the power consumption of the actual drive in use, not the RPM.

Completely irrelevant in this situation.

As relevant (or not) as rpm in regard to the power consumption of the actual drive in use.

I dont like the lack of diagnostics with the Toshibas.


Yes, and reduce the time between recharges if you have it on much.

Depends on the power consumption of the actual drive in use.
So you look at the power consumption spec of the drive you want,
not the RPM or the size of cache, if your concern is battery life.

Nope, you wouldnt be able to pick it in a proper double blind trial.

Doesn't make a single difference whether you're blindfolded or not,
with that stopwatch in your hand, silly.

 

[name]

What performance is there in sequentially storing data from a Flash card?
Or offloading the drive to a PC?

I have no idea, that's why I'm asking in this forum to see what people
would say who are
knowledgable on the subject. It might be that certain drives are faster
so it might be
worth searching for a particular drive with certain specifications. Or
perhaps it doesn't
matter which drive you pick, in that case I might simply buy the
cheapest one I can find.

Maybe some brands or models of notebook drives are prone to failure or
have excellent
performance, people might have experience in this regard and convey
this here.

 

[Rod Speed]

Some ****wit pseudokraut claiming to be
Folkert Rienstra <[email protected]>
wrote just the pathetic excuse for a troll
that any 2 year old could leave for dead.

 

[Neil Maxwell]

While I'm on a vacation, I'd like to be able to store photos on a
portable drive and I was thinking of buying the PD70X:

I took a slightly different approach a few years back, and used a
portable CD burner (Roadstor) as a travel backup device for photos. I
also have a HD backup, but I'm a bit paranoid about data loss.

Here are my experiences and thoughts - YMMV, as always.

- Hard disk backup is faster, and can be lighter and more compact than
CDR backup.

- CDR backup allows multiple copies of your data, so it can be stored
in separate luggage, or even one copy mailed home.

- If your HD backup device dies or is stolen, all your data is gone
with it.

- If your CDR backup device dies or is stolen, your previously backed
data is safe, unless it gets stolen with it and hasn't been shipped
off or stored separately.

- CDR gives you essentially unlimited space, and blanks are available
in many parts of the world. I never ran out of space, even with a 20G
HD, so this may be a moot point for photo storage.

I tested both devices pretty thoroughly before using them in the field
and used Taiyo Yuden CDRs for data longevity. I've never had a
failure with either one yet, but I like the extra data security CDR
gives me.