External Hard Drive

[JD]

Well apparently I need one for college since I'm going to be working with a bunch of VMs and moving them back and forth from school and home, so I don't really have much choice but to get one. Professor even said we MUST have one.

So I was looking on NCIX and came across two at the $100 price point. I don't really want to spend a ton of money on this, but if you think I should, do tell.

I'm thinking either the Seagate FreeAgent Go 160GB or the LaCie Little Disk 2.0 by Sam Hecht 250GB

LaCie seems to have a better bang for my buck but I haven't really heard of them before so I have no idea if they are any good. Both are 5400RPM drives so I don't think there'd be much of a speed difference between them. LaCie seems to have a few neat features like the retractable USB cord but if it has shoddy build quality, then that's just going to break and be annoying.

Of course I'm open to other choices too. Just keep it in the 120GB+ range and $100 or so price point.

EDIT: Hrm actually, I need it for Monday so I guess I have to find a local store with some...

[SugarJ]

Why not a $20 enclosure and a regular 500 or 640 gb drive? Or even a cheap 250?

[JD]

That requires a power adapter/outlet which is next to impossible to find in computer labs surprisingly...

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by jdrom17

That requires a power adapter/outlet which is next to impossible to find in computer labs surprisingly...

2.5 hdd with 2.5 enclosure.

Power is fed through dual usb cords.

[JD]

Originally Posted by enaberif

2.5 hdd with 2.5 enclosure.

Power is fed through dual usb cords.

Yeah I know, thus why I picked pre-packaged 2.5" ones.

Any recommendations on a good enclosure + hard drive?

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by jdrom17

Yeah I know, thus why I picked pre-packaged 2.5" ones.

Any recommendations on a good enclosure + hard drive?

NCIX.com - Buy Vantec Nexstar 3 External 2.5IN eSATA Black Hard Drive Enclosure USB2.0 - NST-260SU-BK In Canada.

plus whatever hard drive.

[JD]

Well I'd like to keep it local seeing as I'd have to pick it up this weekend...

Canada Computers - Hard Drives > Notebook Drives > 2.5" SATA Drives : Western Digital Scorpio (WD2500BEVS) 250GB SATA 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" Laptop Hard Disk (OEM).
Canada Computers - Hard Drive Enclosures > 2.5" Enclosures : Tagan Icy Box IB290StUS 2.5" SATA Aluminum External Enclosure USB2.0 & eSATA.

Don't know if I really need eSATA though.
Canada Computers - Hard Drive Enclosures > 2.5" Enclosures : Tagan Icy Box IB-221BGW 2.5" SATA Enclosure USB2.0.
About half the price without eSATA.

The Vantec enclosures CC has look kinda cheap. Poor finish on them from the pictures I looked at.

[chrisk]

I have a Vantec 2.5 and a 3.5 enclosure and the quality is pretty good with them. I also have a 2.5 Tagan Icy Box and its really good too. Closest model at NCIX to what I have is this one: NCIX.com - Buy Raidsonic Icy Box IB266STUSD 2.5IN Black Aluminum SATA HDD Enclosure USB eSATA 3.5IN Hotswap - IB-266STUSD-B/10072 In Canada.
Looks like the only difference is that the NCIX one has a dock that you can place in a 3.5 inch bay of your desktop so you can hot swap it to sata in your desktop and usb for anywhere else.

[chrisk]

Lol you posted before I did and I did not see your post.

I picked up the same Tagan you want to buy at CC and it has been great. They also have the other one I mentioned above.

[JD]

Yeah I saw that one with the "hot-swap" bay and I was like "Wow, that'd be great" but I realized I don't have any free drive bays to put it in

Mind telling me how long you've had the Tagan and how much you use it/abuse it?