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Portable External Hard Drive- Below $175?

J

jason2811

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
I'm looking to buy a portable external hard drive to hold all my movie files. I want one that is between 160 and 400GB, and is less than $175, it must also be compact and portable. I was thinking about the Western Digital Passport? Any personal reviews on this product? Any other recommendations? Thanks!
 
One option is to search by price, then check the reviews manufacturer's external drives e.g. FW400/800 self powered small drives, or larger 3.5' mains powered drives. E.g. Newegg, dabs, amazon - the main sites to geta drive will all do search by price band, then review/compare functions
Another option is to get an enclosure for $30-60 and then find the OEM drive of your choice.
Depends if you want portability (e.g. unpowered drive for a laptop) or drive size (A nice OEM drive in an enclosure.
 
Not sure where you are located, but I bought a 250GB Acomdata portable hard drive from Fry's electronics for $130. I am using it for the same same thing you are looking to use it for backing up movies. It is portable with no external power source needed, Western Digital also makes one that is a 250GB portable but I don't know the price on it.
 
250gb portable in canada is $180, the 160 gb portable is $130
those are made by western digital, and model is passport. im going to be picking the 160 up shortly/
 
I've had a 120 GB Passport and it works great.

I know you can at least get 250 GB easily for less then US$149.
 
All the OfficeXXX places have 500 gig drives on sale every week for something like $120. USB2 - plenty fast for streaming DVD-quality Handbrake rips.
 
If you want a portable hard drive then you're going to want to go with the 2.5" laptop-type drives. Maximum space you're going to get on one of those is 250GB though. WD Passports go on sale quite often and are pretty solid, although it only uses one USB port so it's drawing both power and data through the one cable. Students in my class last semester with the two-usb Seagate Go seemed to have better speeds/reliability. You could also buy your own drive and enclosure off Newegg; this would allow you to get a firewire or eSATA drive if you so choose (faster!).
 
I just bought a 3.5'' enclosure and a 2.5'' from OyenDigital.com. The big enclosure has a FW/USB2 chipset from Initio and can be booted using my iMac G5... HDs are mac oriented, prices were cheap and customer feedback excellent (I had to reset my FW bus...).

Nick
 
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