Re: External Hard Drive Recommendation

Also, currently I have a small 60 GB Simpletech drive that's a great little
storage unit. It only requires one USB port from my laptop but no Y cable.
Not so sure how great their larger units are though.

rg


"Dave Martindale" <davem@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:fv6atl$pel$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Sharkbait" <sharkbait999@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

I agree Dave. I am trying to stay away from carrying extra cables and
power
adapters, so the USB, 2.5 inch drive would probably work for me in the 250
GB - 320 GB range. The Seagate 250GB FreeAgent Go looked pretty good but
I
notice it requires two USB cables, which is not clear on the company
website. I guess one for data and one for power.

Two cables, or one cable with two USB "A" plugs to obtain enough power
for the drive?

I have several 2.5 inch drives in external cases, and all theoretically
use more than 0.5 A under some conditions. I've had some experience
with them now, and I *do* have a double-plug cable that came with one of
the drives, but I've found that I don't need it most of the time. In
particular:

1. The motherboard USB ports (Asus P5K MB) provide sufficient current
from a single port for all of my drives, provided the cable is up to
snuff (see below).

2. The USB ports on my Gateway laptop also provide sufficient current
from one port to power the drive.

3. Several different external USB2 hubs, with their own 5 V power supply
wall warts, do *not* provide enough current from one port - they will
shut the port down.

As for cables, you need a cable that does not produce much voltage drop.
The short (6 inch) cable that came with the WD Passport drive is fine,
but that means putting the drive 6 inches from the port - OK for laptop,
not for desktop. I also have a ~6 foot long USB cable where the
pair of wires that carry power are 20 AWG (signal pair is 28 AWG) which
also works fine. But many cheap USB cables use 26 or 28 AWG for both
power and data, and those do *not* work - too much voltage drop.

In summary: if you use the motherboard USB ports (not a hub), and have a
suitably heavy cable, you may find that you don't need the double-plug
cable.

Dave


.

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