[ale] USB external HDD

[H. Adrin Story]

 From what I have seen most if not all 3.5" drive USB device have 
external  Power Supplies. And the 2.5" can us power from the USB or you 
can plug them in. I would think it would eat a laptop battery alive.

I thought the same thing about the laptop drives being more mobile. But 
I have no proof.

Interesting to note to is that some say they are daisy chainable.  I 
would think though going this far on USB would be way to slow unless you 
are just doing off-line backups while you are asleep.

Geoffrey wrote:
> Richard Atcheson wrote:
> 
>> On Monday 30 May 2005 10:26 pm, H. A. Story wrote:
>>
>>> Then later I will have to wonder what is the best cross platform format.
>>> FAT,FAT32,NTFS,or Linux) probably the old FAT32 so I can read/write with
>>>  Linux and Windows.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>  Adrin;
>>
>>     I have been using the Coolmax enclosure for the 2.5 inch ide 
>> drives.  I've installed several laptop type drives into that enclosure 
>> and simply plugging them into the USB port has worked fine.  I've had 
>> the drives formatted for FAT32, and Reiser and EXT2 and all working 
>> fine.  My linux is SuSE 9.2 and 9.3.
> 
> 
> This is a good point.  I suspect that this enclosure has a smaller 
> footprint then the Maxtor 'one-touch.'  Also, if you plan on moving the 
> thing around a lot, a laptop harddrive would be a better choice as they 
> are designed to handle a bit more of such handling.  I've carried my 
> Maxtor 'one-touch' around and never had any problems, but the laptop 
> size enclosures are about 1/4 the size of this thing.
> 
> Of course you get what you pay for, the laptop drive/enclosure will end 
> up costing more, but you're paying for the reduced size and mobility 
> design.
> 
> The maxtor has an external power source as well, I don't know if any of 
> these devices can use the usb power, maybe Adrin can share?
>