Decision: Portable Hard Drive Solution

[MesBoogie]

I am looking for a portable storage solution to be used between my home pc, my work pc and my laptop. Trying to keep everything synced is really becoming a hassle. I'd like to have a swappable drive between my three PCs.

I'm considering several options including the Iomega Peerless Drive (either USB or Firewire). I'm also looking into other external firewire or usb-type drives. I'm looking for something small, portable, relatively fast, and reasonably priced.

Your suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

-mb

 

[AkumaBao]

Try rather an external ZIP 250, but then again a 20GB external HDD is only $20 more. I would actually go with the hard drive. More reliable. Besides you will be taking it from one place to the other anyway. Or just network them all together.

 

[MesBoogie]

The Zip is too small for my needs. I'm a college teacher and run my own small (one-person) consulting firm. I have tons of graphics, presentations, and other information that I'd like to have centralized. Trying to keep each of the three computers synced up can be done, but it is such a time-consuming endeavor.

The external hard drive seems the way to go. I'm torn between USB and Firewire. All my machines have USB but only the laptop has a Firewire card. I'd need to install FW cards on the other two machines. The speed increase may be worth it though. What about USB 2.0? Is this a software or hardware issue?

Looking for more insight!

-mb

 

[sathyan]

Firewire or USB 2.0 is much, much faster.
USB 1.0: 12 Mb/sec 11 min per GB
Firewire : 400 Mb/sec 20 sec per GB
USB 2.0: 480 Mb/sec 16 sec per GB

I would not want to transfer multiple GBs over USB 1.0. Both USB 2.0 and Firewire (IEEE-1394) require special hardware. I would get Firewire, given the choice, as it has been around longer (full OS support), is available in storage from many vendors and can be used for digital video as well.

Maxtor sells some HDDs which use Firewire and come with a free (after rebate) adapter card

 

[corkyg]

I just got myself a cute little external Firewire HDD, and it is well suited. It is small and requires no external power unless you have it on a laptop. It comes with a nice padded case, two types of 1394 cables, a belt clip, a suction cup mount and other extras. It is a QPS Model M2, and it uses a 2.5-inch laptop HDD (6 MB.)

M2

Cost was $151.80.

 

[MesBoogie]

I've been taking the comments from you folks and trying to make some sense of it all. I think I may have found a solution that will work pretty well.

The Addonics Combo Hard Drive Kit is a device that can be used to make a hard drive removable by plugging it into the IDE cable, connecting via Firewire, connecting via USB 2.0, or connecting via PCMCIA. The only catch that I can see is that I'll have to buy additional patch cables to connect to something other than Firewire (providing I go that way). I've not been able to find many reviews, but it does seem like a decent way to go. The Firewire setup is about $150. The additional cables (PCMCIA and/or USB 2.0) are about $60 each. Throw in a cheap 3.5" hard drive, and this looks like a winner.

Anybody know of or use this set up?

-mb