The Outsiders: Disks That Do More
An external hard drive gives you lots of storage space, as well as a safe place for backups.
IOGear's $220 Combo 2.5-Inch Ion Drive (far left) puts 40GB in a small, light package. For $130 more, LaCie's chic Data Bank squeezes that data into a pocket-size package. For desk-bound duty, Maxtor's 250GB OneTouch drive takes the prize.
Are you a data pack rat--obsessively archiving your e-mail or incessantly collecting digital photos and new songs? If so, your PC's internal hard drive may be getting cramped. And what about backing it all up? Whether your drive holds the hottest tunes or the dullest financial records, losing your data is a disaster. An external hard drive adds storage space and provides a safe place for your backups. We evaluated and lab-tested nine external drives: six semiportable desktop units based on 3.5-inch hard drives and three ultraportables based on 2.5-inch or smaller drives. Maxtor's OneTouch desktop drive won our Best Buy designation thanks to good performance and smooth operation (made easier by a detailed manual). The 250GB model is pricey at $350, but Maxtor sells other sizes, such as a 120GB (USB-only) unit for $200. Among ultraportables, we picked the $220, 40GB IOGear Combo 2.5-Inch Ion Drive for its compact design and relatively low price.
Choosing an external hard drive offers some advantages over simply installing a second drive inside your system. You can use an external model with multiple PCs, and as a means to shuttle data from place to place. And you don't have to crack the case to install it; you simply plug it into a USB or FireWire port in most cases, and for some models you install drivers. All but one of the drives we evaluated have a USB 2.0 interface (which we used for our performance tests). The models from IOGear, LaCie, Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital also have FireWire ports. Ximeta's NetDisk augments its USB connection with an ethernet port. External hard drives are especially handy for notebook PCs, which tend to have hard drives of lesser capacity than desktops and typically don't carry bays for a second hard drive.
Fast Enough?
You'll have to give up some speed with most external drives, as those with a USB 2.0 or FireWire interface can't keep up with drives that use internal parallel or Serial ATA connections. But external SATA drives should match the performance of internal products. At press time, the SATA II Working Group was still polishing up the external standard, and compliant products will probably not appear until late this year at the earliest. But CMS Products issued a prestandard kit that simply provides a pass-through for the PC's internal SATA interface to an external port you install in one of your system's slot covers. (If you own an older system without an internal SATA port, you can buy CMS's $39 SATA PCI Controller Card.) On average, the company's Velocity SATA Automatic Backup System drive completed our four file-copy tests in nearly 40 percent less time than the next-fastest drive (which used a USB 2.0 connection).
We saw notable differences in performance among the USB 2.0-connected drives. Ximeta's NetDisk was the fastest desktop drive overall, though Maxtor's OneTouch was a close second. Western Digital's Dual-Option Media Center drive was the slowest of the desktop models by about 10 percent on average. It was also slightly outpaced by two of the slower-spinning portable drives, Sony's 5400-rpm Giga Vault and IOGear's 4200-rpm Combo 2.5-Inch Ion Drive. Western Digital says that the performance hit on its product may be due to overhead from using a single USB connection to support the device's hard drive, USB hub, and card reader.
Back Me Up, Scotty
An external drive provides a key safety feature by keeping backup data separate from your system. Losing a laptop is a hassle because of the expense; but it's a tragedy if you also lose your only copy of key business files or archived e-mail.
Western Digital's Dual-Option Media Center includes a hard disk, a card reader, a USB 2.0 hub, and a few too many buttons.
Five of the six desktop models include software that lets you schedule backups. Maxtor and Western Digital bundle Dantz Retrospect Express; once you configure it, backups happen automatically at the times you schedule, or you can run them on demand. Maxtor's OneTouch drive takes its name from a single button on the front that launches the Retrospect backup job. Western Digital uses the same trick, but it adds a second button that launches Retrospect so that you can configure or alter a backup set. With only cryptic, faintly stamped labels, though, the two buttons are hard to distinguish.
The button on Seagate's 160GB External Drive launches the BounceBack Express utility from CMS Products. CMS Products' own Velocity drive, meanwhile, lacks the launch button but comes with BounceBack Professional, which can make the external drive bootable in case a hardware or software glitch trashes the PC's internal disk. Ximeta provides its own basic software, called NetDisk SureSaver. No backup software comes with AcomData's RocketPod DrivePod desktop drive or with the ultraportable drives from IOGear, LaCie, and Sony.
Decked-Out Disks
Many of the desktop drives have amenities you'll never see on an internal model. Best-equipped honors go to Western Digital's Dual-Option Media Center, which has a two-port USB 2.0 hub and an eight-in-one media card reader. (You can buy a version without the card reader for about $40 less.)
AcomData's RocketPod DrivePod hard disks snap together and can share a single power supply and USB 2.0 connection.
When you stack two of AcomData's RocketPod DrivePods, the unit above snaps into a socket on top of the drive below that provides both power and data connections. Each bundled RocketPod power supply can handle two stacked disks, and a separate DockPod module powers up to five. Either way, you need only one USB connection to accommodate up to five disks.
Besides attaching to a single PC via its USB port, Ximeta's NetDisk can connect to a single PC or to a network hub via its ethernet port. Software installed on each networked PC allows the system to mount the NetDisk and retrieve data. At press time, Ximeta was working on software to permit more than one PC to write to the NetDisk, as well.
Three for the Road
We tried out three 40GB ultraportable drives that sport travel-friendly design innovations. IOGear's Combo 2.5-Inch Ion Drive has a durable, lightweight aluminum case. Additionally, regardless of whether you use its USB 2.0 or FireWire data connection, you can plug in a Y-cable that draws power from either a USB 2.0 or PS/2 (mouse or keyboard) port. According to IOGear, the Ion Drive gets enough juice from most laptops to allow you to leave the drive's standard power supply at home. You can also forgo the power supply for a while with Sony's Giga Vault. Sony says that the built-in battery can power the drive for 1.5 hours. Our unit had a snap-on USB 2.0 interface module; FireWire modules are also available.
The 40GB, 1.8-inch hard drive in LaCie's Data Bank can get all the power it needs from its USB 2.0 or FireWire connection. Resembling a small block of silver bullion, the Data Bank is the only drive in this review that can easily fit in a shirt pocket.