External Portable Drive Suggestions

[Melodeath]

Not exactly recording related, but music and equipment related...

I bought my Macbook Pro in April, and I still haven't transferred all my music to the laptop, and I've hit the tipping point. I've transferred random albums I feel like listening to, but I need to get ALL my music easily accessible. I kept all my music on an external drive from my PC desktop days, which worked great, but now I have a Mac laptop, so having something HFS+ formatted so I can edit iD3 tags and something more portable would be great.

I would just transfer all my music to the internal drive, but I don't want the internal drive to be completely filled.

Unless someone has some brilliant suggestion, I think the best solution is to get a USB-powered external portable drive. However, I can't really find one that is perfect.

I'm looking for:

• Roughly 500 GB or more
• USB 3.0 (just for future compatibility) and possibly firewire (not necessary, but would be a nice plus)
• Bus-powered (I want this to be a portable and simple solution I can plug in and lay hidden, not tethered to a wall)
• 7200 RPM

The iomega 500GB eGo Portable looks perfect, but it's 5400 RPM. It's small and bus-powered, and USB 3.0. And it has some drop protection built-in.

Also, this looks perfect, but I can't find anywhere to buy it, and I have a feeling it's $200, and I don't know if it's 7200 RPM: Freecom Portable MG
And it's so thin I might worry about how sturdy it is

Is 5400 RPM decent enough? This drive will literally be just a hub of music I leave connected so that I can actually populate my iTunes library. I've always had 7200 RPM drives, so I have no experience with 5400 RPM externals. Is there going to be skips and glitches in the playback with a drive of that speed? Will album art take forever to load in iTunes as I'm browsing through albums?

If 5400 RPM would be fine for external music playback, I think I'll just get the iomega. I already have a firewire 7200 RPM drive for backups, and I record to my internal 7200 RPM drive, so as I said, this is just a external, portable, music storage device for the mac.
If 5400 RPM isn't fast enough, does anyone have a suggestion that matches what I'm looking for?

Thanks dudes

 

[Wolfeman]

Lacie Rugged sound like exactly what you need.

 

[arv_foh]

I have a WD Passport. Meets your requirements + it's so small you could fit it in your pocket. You shouldn't be concerned about rpm for just playing back music; 5400 will do you just fine.

 

[greyskull]

if you're planning to record sessions to it.. you'll need a 7200.

 

[006]

Glyph.

 

[aortizjr]

Personally I don't like using the internal drive for recording, but more and more people have had good results. I think these days with SATA and such it isn't a big deal.

Anyway, since all you are doing is storing MP3's and such. A 3400RPM drive would be just fine. It will even do WAV files just fine. You can stream those off of USB 1.1. Hell or even floppy disks.

So no worries.

 

[BLUElightCory]

OWC Mercury Elite Drives are excellent - great price, durable, and they use Oxford chipsets.

OWC Mercury Elite

Lacie Rugged drives are nice too.

I've gone through two Glyph drives that had technical issues so I can't recommend them.

 

[Vinny]

I love my Iomega. I have 2 of them. And they work fine for recording aswell in Logic.

 

[Melodeath]

Thanks for the suggestions! Anyone used the OWC On-the-Go drives? Looks a little more portable than the OWC Mercury Elite
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go

 

[mva801]

Thanks for the suggestions! Anyone used the OWC On-the-Go drives? Looks a little more portable than the OWC Mercury Elite
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go

Haven't tried the on-the-go drives, but I've used about a hundred of the OWC Mercury Elites with zero problems. Looks like they have exactly what you need (usb 3.0, 7200 rpm 500 GB) for $108. I love OWC.

 

[Melodeath]

True. How portable is the Mercury Elite?

 

[DanKraw]

Checkout the SeaGate FreeAgent GoFlex Pro. I have one that's 500GB, 7200RPM and you can change the connection format from USB 2.0 to 3.0 or firewire.

 

[-Noodles-]

I use G-tech or Western Digital drives..