Portable Hard drive for Powerbook G4

[tkilian]

I am looking for a portable, bus powered, hard drive to use with my powerbook G4 (17", 1.5Ghz). I know that most won't work, as the USB2 bus won't power most drives.

Does anyone have any expereince on a drive (USB or FireWire) that will work?

If I get a PC card adaptor with USB ports will that work? Any suggestion on Brands?

I actually bought a WD 120 GB Passport drive, so i know that doesn't work as it stands.

Any suggestions woudl be aprreciated.

 

[Eniregnat]

The Lacie Rugged drive will work.

I have a drive at work that is USB powered and has an external power supply. It works with my Mac sans power adaptor. I will post a response when I get to work tomorrow.

There are not FireWire Buss powered HDs that I know of. While FW can, and does provide voltage, the protocol demands an external power supply for most devices.

USB 1.1 and USB 2 protocols should provide the same bus power levels. There is a lot of variability in this, as the number of ma that any one port can supply should be 100ma more than the number of ports on the hub. That is if the Mac has 2 USB ports, then it should provide 300ma of power along the chain. All of this is from memory, so there may be flaws. I used to get pissy because some of the engineers that support my studio didn't read the USB specs, and had all sorts of non-compliant connectors and cables. This is an issue when your trying to trouble shoot problems, like induced noice along analogue cables, and data drop outs. But I digress.