I need an external portable drive with spin speed of 7200 and an external power supply...or else an SSD. Any recommendations?
473964
The drive you have selected here might not fit what you are looking for; this is a portable usb HDD with no external power--everything is done through the USB cable. I can figure out the RPMs, but I am pretty sure it is much lower than 7200 since its USB powered. Take a look at the WB MyBook Studio: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004QGXOP2/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 -This should better fit what you are looking for in a drive. I have one of these, and it works great. The firewire is so much faster than USB 2.0--probably on par with 3.0, I don't have any 3.0 ports or devices. If you have Thunderbolt, they do make Thunderbolt variants, but they are far more expensive--thunderbolt is the fastest connection you can get, but HDD won't use the full speed bandwidth of Thunderbolt; firewire or USB 3.0 should do just fine for HDD. The only reason to get SSD is speed, and you better be prepared to spend a lot of money #1) SSD is more expensive than HDD: HDD is $1 per GB while SSD is about $2.5 per GB 2) the real catch is unless you get an external SSD with Thunderbolt connectivity there is no point in having SSD because the speed will be bottle-necked by the USB or Firewire connection--you won't get the full speed of the SSD. Thunderbolt will also drive up the price as well. If you let me know exactly what you are planning to use this drive for I could give you a better recommendation tailored to your uses, but I hope this helps you find something that will meet your needs.
473965
I believe the Western Digital Passport series qualifies for the 7200 rpm speed but this USB powered drive is powered from the USB port with no means to power it with an external power source. If you must have an externally powered drive you might consider purchasing a external hard drive enclosure that supports that feature and a bare drive with compatible specs and then assemble them yourself.
1090938
I have the MCE drive. It's much faster than the Apple drive & works better. A no-brainer.
1807793
Kerry,How long will my tires last? Depends on how hard you use them. Same for an SSD vs conventional. You understand that a motor has to spin up little metal disks in response to certain commands when you are talking about a mechanical drive. No motor needed for SSD. Other operations (data placement and recovery are the same). Get an SSD if you can afford it. But get it for the rugged reliability not the energy savings! One engineer's opinion. BEV
1064246
Whatever fits your personal need. I would do cloud storage since I'm on the go. But here are some of your options 1) External HDD 2) Cloud storage 3) USB sticks
461740
Asus makes a decent, inexpensive external drive. I use this one:ASUS External Slim 8X DVD-RW Stylish Cut Design Optical Drive SDRW-08D2S-U/BLK/G/AS
2109860
In youtube there is such a video. A dude connects a flash drive into this and jumps to further velocities compared to 7200 rpm seagate backup plus
884747
You would be far better off to get an SSD and USB 3.0 UASP enclosure...you would spend about the same amount of money to get twice the speed and twice the storage for your photos. :)
572969
I use the portable device all the time on 7200 RPM 2.5" drives. It works just fine for reading and duplicating drives at those speeds without issues for me. I can't answer to anything faster like 10K drives since I don't have any of those just yet. Don't have any 5400 RPM drives either. I recommend this product - easy to use.
10332
We also bought a Samsung Slim extermal CD/DVD/RW drive ($20) to go with it. Works great!
1293093
Thank you--the "bootable sd cards" sounds like a more appealing alternative. I'm not wild about the idea of having an external CD/DVD drive--kind of defeats the purpose of this highly portable option. Thank you!
1835267
They sell external CD/DVD Drives ... not very expensive . We bought one ourselves. SANOXY Slim Portable USB 2.0 External CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive
2062746
I would recommend using one on Thecus's compatibility list: http://www.thecus.com/download/compatibility/hdd/N4520SERIES_N2800_N4800_N4800Eco_N5550_N4510U_N7510_HDD_SSD_list.pdfAlso consider that Enterprise rated drives will last longer and potentially perform a bit faster, but might not be worth the price bump for just backups.
1899629
If you are asking about optical media, there is no CD or DVD drive, so you have to get an external one. The hybrid 1TB disk is OK; not as good as a true SSD but it boots pretty fast. Windows Performance Information gives it a disk data transfer rate score of 5.9, and that's the lowest subscore, so that determines the overall 5.9 score for the computer. Not sure if that scoring mechanism is really fair for hybrid drives though.
1727352
This model has a SSD (Solid State Drive) which does not have any moving parts and hence does not spin. A SSD is MUCH Faster than a 7200 rpm drive
568099
I've only tried SSD but it worked great. Other units I tried had insufficient power to support the SSD.
588653
I tried a hybrid drive and it gave me similar performance to a SSD, 10 to 25% in initial load, no diference in between game load time and not much difference in start time. Basically not really worth it. The difference is like 36 sec vs 40 or 55 vs 102 sec.
1364586
This drive needs not a special cable but a cable witch support 3.0 speed, I think you can find the cable in Amazon.