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Best/Top 2.5" External Hard Drive for the price?

S

Shaitan00

Member
I was looking into buying a portable external hard-drive, simply a bigger "usb-key" to transfer & store data from one place to another (such as between home/work and home/friends) and therefore portability is rather important (small, light, no power cord, not loud) - thus 2.5" external. Nothing fancy and therefore nothing expensive (looking to spend around $125 CDN or less if possible), I've been doing a bit of shopping and have a few ideas of what would be some good choices but before making a purchase I wanted to get some feedback from experts & people who may already own these devices and see what the general concensus is.

My current main contender seems to be the Western Digital Passport Essential 2.5" 250 GIG USB drive, I've read a bunch of reviews and for the price (~ $125 CDN) it seemed like one of the best ideals around at the moment. Anyone have anything negative to comment on this drive or better alternatives? The only real negative I've seen is a lot of people saying it is actually a lot uglier then shown in the pictures and that it marks (scratches, finger prints, etc...) very easily.

I know FutureShop / BestBuy sell the ComStar/Zdata 2.5" 250 GIG USB drive for $99 CDN (unless I am wrong the Comstar [FS] and Zdata [BB] are actually the same unit), this was initially my frist choice (given the low price and the ComStar is on special) but from what I've read they are really cheap and seem to be nothing more then cheap HDDs in cheap enclosures (random at that) - anyone ever actually buy one and give some real feedback on their experience?

The only other alternative I considered was Fujitsu HandyDrive & the Verbatim 2.5" 250 GIG usb drives, however I found practically no reviews on either drive so I am hesitant to risk it.

BTW - I really don't care for any one of the backup software or anything fancy like that, I simply want a big USB KEY (backups will use some nifty eSATA drives when I have the $ in the future, not what I need for now).

Any advice or information would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
 
I'm not gonna check-out any of your possibilities, just give you some general info.

Pre-built 2.5" external drives have the same inherent problems as pre-built 3.5" drives...generally a 1 yr. warranty and if you need to remove the drive from the case for troubleshooting, you'll void the warranty.

The solution is to buy whatever flavor HD suits your fancy, and install it in whatever 2.5" case catches your eye.

About the only differences in 2.5" cases are the chipset. If you really want to get into it, here's some chipset benchmarks.

I've had Vantec, Hot Drive, Hi Speed, and a few others and they're all about the same.

Most, if not all, of these units will require a USB "Y" cable to be powered by a laptop. I've never had to use one for a desktop.

Good Luck!

 
Just bought a Toshiba 320gb 2.5" external from Office Depot for $129 a couple of weeks ago, works great and comes with a 3 year warranty. I believe the WD also have a 3 year warranty.
 
Originally posted by: Elstupido
Just bought a Toshiba 320gb 2.5" external from Office Depot for $129 a couple of weeks ago, works great and comes with a 3 year warranty. I believe the WD also have a 3 year warranty.
Click to expand...

Cool! I didn't know they had 3 yr. warrantys.

There's still that pesky problem of troubleshooting and warranty voiding........
 
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