Ask Engadget: What's the best rugged portable hard drive?
By Darren Murph 
posted June 12th 2008 11:56PM
posted June 12th 2008 11:56PM
Yeah, we've let you folks toss out suggestions for a similar question back when a 1TB internal HDD was nothing more than a pipe dream, but it's about time we gave this one an update, don't you agree? Hear Ian out:"I was wondering which portable hard drive was good enough to stand up to the life of a student. Something that can take a few bumps and not be harmed. It doesn't have to be huge in capacity, but I need one larger than 80GB. I'd obviously like FireWire and USB 2.0 if possible, but I'm not trying to spend a fortune here either."
Had any particularly good / bad experiences with battle-tested portable HDDs? We want to hear 'em all, so don't be shy, alright? To get your question up in the lights, send us a note at ask at engadget dawt com -- just don't forget to include the secret password.
I use one of those OWC 2.5 portable hard drives to shuttle files between home and my studio. It works great. It goes in my bicycle pack, survives the 10 1/2 mile ride, hooks up via firewire or usb2 and gets it's power from the bus. Flawless so far (2 years of usage).
Probably dropped it a couple of times too........
I got some cheapo brand enclosure and a wd 2.5 inch hdd and i dropped this thing atleast 100 times since i started using it last year its traveled with me from the US to taiwan to china and back for half of last year and i got no problems with it. It really is just luck I think.
I got a 320GB Western Digital MyPassport Studio delivered a couple of days ago.
See: http://westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=469
It has USB 2.0 + FireWire 400, doesn't require a power adapter, and is encased in metal (with some black plastic trimming). $219.99 for 320 GB, 250 is $159, 160 is $129. I was looking at the the Iomega eGo drives but the warranty on those is balls, WD gives you 5 years to Iomega's 1. So the WD MyPassport Studio seems like it'll take enough of a beating but the black glossed plastic trim is a bitch, it already has a few little scratches and I've only had it 2 days. It comes with a felt case/bag for you to slip it in, though.
OWC (Other World Computing) for sure!! I have four (4) Mercury Elite Pro 250gb hard drives networked at home. I have gotten one every year for four years. They all work perfectly and are fast. They have the best chipset and best hard drives out there (reliable). I also just picked up a 200gb Mercury-On-The-Go for my laptop pro dj needs. This thing is fast, and reliable, super small and it is firewire powered. It has a laptop hard drive that is more rugged than others as well. I have heard of other hard drive manufactures failing but never OWC. Am I biased, you bet after four year of bliss and backups!!!
working pro photog and working pro dj
I second the comments about the Western Digital drives. You couldn't give me one. In my circle of friends we count 5 failed WD in desktop systems, and two portable WD drives failed.
I have a battered old add-on case with a 250G Seagate drive in it. I think I've finally managed to cause it grief after I dropped it off the fourth shelf of my bookcase for the third time.
As far as having my files handy, I have to confess that most of my essentials live on the drive of my 40G Archos AV400. Older model, but I've beaten it up and it's still cooking along :)
Maxtor sucks... i'll never buy one of those POS's again
Why would you ever buy a Maxtor in the first place.
The two best rugged hard-drives are Freecom's Toughdrive pro and LaCie's Rugged drive. Both can easily withstand knocks without affecting the disk or data.
I have been through many Trekstors (external) and Seagates (internal) and only my toughdrives haven't failed me. I now even keep all my music and photos on them! The Freecom one even has it's own usb integrated so you don't have to worry about carrying wires if you have a laptop.
For ultimate longevity but with a hefty pricetag find a solid state external drive...
hi there.
we are offering the freecom toughdrive for a good value and including additional free gadgets and dj/music-software, perfect for students :-)
free shipping across europe and usa.
it´s a little bit more expensive, but really tough and rugged.
but there are several rugged mobile hard drives from other companies, too, such as lacie or transcend.
the integrated fold out connector (usb or firewire) makes the use of the toughdrive very comfortable and you just can´t forget the connection cable ..:-)
http://www.tuneskeeper.com
cheers,
michael
I vote for the rugget Lacie HD, its great. But all HDs are HDs and are very fragile while ON, a SSD portable would be great.
It is all relative. I had 4 Seagate drives crash on me in a one year time-span. I then bought only Western Digital drives and didn't have a single problem. But other people report great results with Seagate. In my new Mac Pro, I switched to thew new Samsung disks as they were silent, energy efficient and cheaper. Fact is that only 3 or 4 companies manufacture harddisks (i believe WD, Seagate, Samsung and Hitachi) so whichever brand you buy, the harddisk itself comes from one of those four. And harddisks feature mechanical parts so there will always be like a 10% failure rate (within the first year). The brands (like LaCie etc. are mostly not to blame). Also, good harddisks like those of Western Digital come with a 5 year warranty in Europe so when it fails, you just send it in and they send you a new one. The only way to really protect yourself is to make good back-ups so when one fails you can recover your data. Because the capacity of harddisks increases with 200% each year few people use a harddisk for longer then 3 years.
It's gotta be Glyph PortaGig. Good looking and the specs to match. I especially love the "2 Years Free Basic Data Recovery".
I saw several comments referring to enclosures which probably use Oxford Semiconductor's 924 bridge chip (bridges dual SATA to FW400/800/USB). Beware that I've had two enclosures which use this chipset fail within about a 1 year MTBF. The symptom is the enclosure intermittently dropping off the bus (on any interface). This is the same for both enclosures (which are from different mfgs, one is OWC and the other is G-RAID). The drives are fine so it's something with the enclosure apparently and the 924 chip is the common denominator. Thought this might be of interest.
I got a seagate free agent 750GB (usb/needs wall outlet) for $150 on sale at office max a few days ago. it is average sized, and has a pod it sits on. Pretty nice and its a 7200RPM drive as well.
i have much love for my iomega ego.get on in camouflage and it will be rugged.
everything in camo is rugged.
I've got several external drives - WD, Lacie, Seagate - I'm a consultant and I have one for each of my clients - not real efficient but it keeps things clean and when I go visit them I have all their stuff in one place. The best one I've found so far is the OWC Mercury on the Go. I've got the 500G version and it's been great. They're available in several configurations and price points.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go
this is a great topic, I've been thinking long and hard about my next hard drive purchase for the last few weeks. I started off about 4 years ago with a maxtor (seagate) 300gb hdd, I've never had any problems with it, its absolutely superb!! I've dropped it quite a few times as I'm also a student and on the move a lot, I used to use it as a portable hard drive and take it everywhere. It's never ever let me down, I think thats probably partly to do with the fact its in a full metal enclosure which also helps keep it cool.
I've since bought a maxtor mybook studio 2 1TB, I've always like western digital hard drives so it seemed like a good choice as it had the connections I needed and also matched in nicely with my mac :p
Although it hasn't really failed me its been a bit of a nightmare that I wasn't expecting, the enclosure is completely plastic as seems to be the norm these days, it gets really hot and for some reason decides it doesn't always want to show up. When it doesn't show up its a pain to get it working again as it has to be powered up with no leads in and then the leads have to be reconnected, which is ridiculous :p whoever thought that was a good idea... it's even more annoying when the hard drive is under you desk and hard to get to :p
It might be an idea to buy a hard drive you are happy with and trust, then buy an enclosure separately, that way you can also add extra protection to it if you wish, you will also know exactly how safe it is and if the hard drive fails, you wont be voiding the warranty by taking it out and trying it in a different enclosure :)
you can buy just about any sturdy enclosure, put the drive inside, dont mount it with screws just fill the enclosure inside space with non-hardening silicone (squirt it inside) and the hard drive will survive almost all falls/impacts, it's the same method they use in the panasonic toughbook that the military and many companys pay outrages amounts of money for.
I love my LaCie Rugged. It's travelled all over the country...takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'.
uy a SATA (not IDE), because then at some future date you have the option of using it as an internal drive in a modern computer.
For greatest convenience, buy a 2 1/2" Disk and an enclosure that uses USB. Because most 2 1/2" Disks can be powered through the USB Cable off the USB Bus, without needing a Power Brick.
If your Laptop has an eSATA (External Sata) Port, or you are prepared to buy an eSATA Express Card adapter, then you could buy an Enclsoure that uses eSATA. This will give much faster data transfer than USB.
But in the current version of eSATA you will need a power brick since eSATA is data only.
If they are not powered up, most modern disks will probably survive a drop on to carpet. The Seagate Momentus 7200.2 2 1/2" Disk contains a motion-sensor. If it detects the drive is in free fall, it immediate and quickly moves the read/write heads away from the platter to prevent them damaging data upon impact.
Fortress - rugged drives for the commercial, professional and military markets, www.4tress.com
Our studio used other "supposedly" rugged drives such as the LaCie and they couldn't withstand the abuse.
Fortress drives can be dropped onto concrete from a height of 7 feet (2+ meters), are immune to vibration so can be used in helicopters for example and have built in heatsinking to improve releiability and drive life.
They're the best in our opinion.
I have an old 37GB Lacie USB Porche-design one (not even one of the newer rugged ones) that I'm very happy with. I've carried it back and forth everywhere in my backpack every day for just over 3 years now without any problems. It's survived a handful of drops along the way. Along with file synch software (Syncback or comparable) it's great for both file transfers as well as a backup strategy (essentially I have 3 copies of important files at all times). The bigger Lacie USB drives might require two USB ports or external power in order to run on USB power ... so I stick to slightly smaller ones and separate out files I don't need to back up every day.
I've got a LaCie Rugged and I really liked it, except it's started acting up within the last couple of weeks or so. I..e., sometimes it doesn't show what's on it (when I try to download a file to it, which means I can't find the directory (or anything else), and when I try to eject it then, it freezes my ibook.
The only way to get things working again is by unplugging it from the ibook and then I get this big error message.
And when I plug it in after that, sometimes it doesn't turn up at all!
Eeeeek!
After reading all the comments above, I think it may be on its way out :(
It has my iTunes library on it plus a ton of other stuff I don't have anywhere else because my ibook ran out of capacity. Sheesh. I will have to get TWO of the things now and double back up!
I just ordered a new one (not rugged) from Amazon. Should have read the recommendations first, but was impatient.
Hope i can get it to work tomorrow so I can move the data over....
I't s the orange one, and I think it's the 120 GB one, just FYI, and I've had it for at least a year, maybe more. Don't remember, though hmmm, maybe the info is still on my Amazon.com account where I bought it.
Actually, I just checked my Amazon order and it IS a rugged one I bought:
"Iomega eGo Rugged Portable Hard Drive, USB 2.0, 160GB, Flamingo Pink - 33984"
Electronics; $98.24
It was really cute ;-) and small as well as decent reviews...
Well... whaddaya know.
I just discovered my old receipt, it's been less than a year since I bought it (9/4/07) on Amazon, and then I found the Lacie support site, registered it, and opened a support ticket about my troubles with their hard drive.
Will report back on what they say ;-)