Buying a usb external drive in America

Thorbar · 28-02-2003 8:50pm #1

I've just started my co-op in America and I'm thinking about buying a laptop. The best value I can find for the laptop seems to be bestbuy.com which is handy as they have a store near where I'm living. I'm looking to buy an 80 gig usb external harddrive. Sorry if this is the 100th thread of this nature I did a search on the forum and couldn't find anything along the same lines. I also had a read through the cheap components thread and the only US vendor mentioned was newegg.com, I found a 80gig for $190 there which seemed like good value. Also found an 80 gig for $185 on amazon.com. On Tiger direct I found a a 80 gig for 170 but it doesn't say if the speed is 5400 or 7200 on it. On bestbuy.com I found a 80 gig for $140 but its an maxtor drive and I've heard a lot of bad things about them. Well would anyone suggest a particular brand or make?

Saruman · 28-02-2003 10:47pm

What version of USB will your laptop be? And what version of USB are the drives? If the answer is not USB 2.0 for both then forget it.. it wont matter how fast your drive spins.. You will be limited to USB 1.1's 2mb/sec (thats megabit NOT megabyte!) at most. At least USB 2.0 is about the same as firewire so about 450+mb/sec

marauder · 01-03-2003 9:41am

.

Forget Best Buy - they are overpriced ( equivalent to PC World in Ireland) Try Frys Electronics if there is one near you. Or buy online from dell or somebody

Ive used newegg.com and they are excellant. I have also hear good things about googlegear.com

BigEejit · 01-03-2003 10:33am

Isn't USB 1.1 = 12mbs? ... USB1.0 is 1.2mbs AFAIK

Thorbar · 03-03-2003 3:57pm

Actually we got a good deal with best buy and their service plan is fairly decent too. A 2.4ghz p4, 512 megs of ram, 40 gig hard drive, geforce 4 mobile graphics card, cd burner / dvd player internal combo all for $1400 isn't too bad. I got 1 usb 2.0 and 2 usb 1.1s and a firewire port.

tribble · 03-03-2003 4:20pm

USB 1.1 = 12 Mbits(Mb) per second = 1.5 MBytes(MB)
USB 2.0 = 480Mbits/s = 60MB/s

Bard · 03-03-2003 4:33pm

Originally posted by Saruman
What version of USB will your laptop be? And what version of USB are the drives? If the answer is not USB 2.0 for both then forget it.. it wont matter how fast your drive spins.. You will be limited to USB 1.1's 2mb/sec (thats megabit NOT megabyte!) at most. At least USB 2.0 is about the same as firewire so about 450+mb/sec

You can get USB2.0 Cardbus adapter cards (PCMCIA cards) for $/€ 30 (or less) so it's a moot point really. Just buy a USB2.0 based HDD and if your laptop doesn't handle USB2.0 (which chances are, it doesn't), grab an adapter card.

spongebob · 03-03-2003 9:25pm

make sure the external drive is USB powered. an external power supply may not work here...

this would apply whether you have a built in usb port or use bards solution, a PC card

Thorbar · 03-03-2003 10:10pm

Surely you could just buy a transformer, radioshack sell em for a fiver over here?

Buying a usb external drive in America

Comments