best drive to use as portable storage

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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
 
name said:
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
Click to expand...

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
 
name said:
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.
Click to expand...

Really doesnt matter much in this particularly situation.
Should I go for 5400 rpm or 4200 rpm,
Click to expand...

The speed is irrelevant except that the lower
speed would normally give better recharge life.
8 mb or 2 mb buffer size
Click to expand...

Completely irrelevant in this situation.
and are there any specific brands to recommend or avoid?
Click to expand...

I dont like the lack of diagnostics with the Toshibas.
I'm assuming faster drives might get hotter
Click to expand...

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?
Click to expand...

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

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
 
dannysdailys said:
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?
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
dannysdailys said:
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?
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...

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 said:
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?
Click to expand...

What performance is there in sequentially storing data from a Flash card?
Or offloading the drive to a PC?
 
Rod Speed said:
Really doesnt matter much in this particularly situation.
Click to expand...

And then you go say just the opposite below.
The speed is irrelevant except that the lower
speed would normally give better recharge life.
Click to expand...

Depends on the power consumption of the actual drive in use, not the RPM.
Completely irrelevant in this situation.
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...

Doesn't make a single difference whether you're blindfolded or not,
with that stopwatch in your hand, silly.
 
Folkert said:
What performance is there in sequentially storing data from a Flash card?
Or offloading the drive to a PC?
Click to expand...

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.
 
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:
Click to expand...

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.
 
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