The last time I looked into Portable USB hard drives, in the end, I simply gave up. I ended up purchasing a 160GB Acomdata drive unknowning what a nightmare connecting it to two USB ports would be. This particular drive requires either an external power connection, or two USB ports to be occupied in order to supply it enough power to operate. The fact that my (old, terrible, crappy) work laptop only has two USB ports, means it’s basically unusable.
At that time, Justin clued me in to bus-powered USB drives that are capable of working when only occupying one USB port. However, he also warned me that they were a bit expensive and can be problematic and unreliable because USB power isn’t always reliable. I poked around here and there, and the prices were enough to scare me away, let alone the worry that, when I needed it most, it wouldn’t work.
So I dropped it.
Until yesterday.
Sheridan pointed out that bus-powered drives are affordable and work well enough that his employer relies on them in heavy use by multiple developers. A couple of links later and I had several very affordable, seemingly reliable options for moderate capacity, portable, USB powered hard drives that didn’t occupy more than one USB port.
But there is a catch. First of all, it has to be a USB 2.0 port. Secondly, if it’s a port from a non-powered hub, if your USB cable is too long, or isn’t up to the standards required, it may not work at all, or may only work for small files and fail on larger files or during extended use. Finally, even if your USB hub is powered, if it isn’t built and operating in a certain fashion, it may still fail. On top of that, not all laptops are created equal. Some laptops don’t supply the right amount of power the right way so even using one of the built-in USB ports and the USB cable supplied with the drive, you can end up with a drive that just can’t get enough power.
So I’ve got two questions for you.
1) Do any of you use bus-powered USB drives? If so, do you have any problems with them? Are you using the cables supplied with them? Do you use them with a laptop or a desktop?
2) Does anyone have any use for a 160GB portable USB drive that requires two USB ports to operate? It even comes with a special cable that connects to two ports on your computer and leads into one port on the drive.
My Lacie 80GB stays connected to my laptop pretty much all the time with just the single USB port with not problems.
Thanks!
I used to have a few Lacie devices. The ones I had were very unreliable, but I’ve read that they’ve gotten much better, and that they’ve even jumped segments from super-cheap to super-reliable.
They also have a line called “Big Disk” which is, hands down, the best name for a storage product EVER.
Excellent. Good to know. That may be the route I take for all of this then.
Still really want a N800. And, hell, and iTouch too. :)
WD Passport with MacBook Pro and short USB cable works fine.
On Windows, old FireWire Direct drive works fine with short cable but fails with longer (Blackberry) cable. Maxtor has problems with its short Y-cable but works partially with longer cable.
I've found that the success it highly dependent on both the host USB
ports and the cable. I am now able to get a WD Passport and an
Acomdata drive working on 3 different machines with only one USB port.
Just took a lot of trial and error to figure it out.
WD Passport with MacBook Pro and short USB cable works fine.
On Windows, old FireWire Direct drive works fine with short cable but fails with longer (Blackberry) cable. Maxtor has problems with its short Y-cable but works partially with longer cable.
I've found that the success it highly dependent on both the host USB
ports and the cable. I am now able to get a WD Passport and an
Acomdata drive working on 3 different machines with only one USB port.
Just took a lot of trial and error to figure it out.