Anne Onime said:
From what I see in shops, I gather that 500 GB is the
current limit. I presume above that an extra platter must
be added, or a bigger diameter used and then it will be too
much for a motor on a diet of 500 mA.
500mA is not really the limit. The limit is the spin-up
current (up to 1A in some 2.5" notebook drives) and how the
port reacts if that is drawn. Many mainboards I have seen
(from Asus and Gigabyte) have an 1.6A resettable fuse on
each USB port _pair_. Some notebooks have "high-current"
ports that can deliver 1A or more for external disk to
spin-up reliably.
If the port does not deliver the spin-up current, the disk
will abort and spin-down immediately. AFAIK, except for SSDs
and USB FLASH, there are no current external USB-powered
drives that can work with a 500mA hard current limit.
Arno