120 GB of Sweet, Sweet Portabilty
I've been lugging around 3 of the 40GB ArchOS mini USB drives for a while now. I typically carry a bunch of ReplayTV shows & some movies, plus leave one mostly free for storing stuff - very handy for when I travel. But what is not handy is the fact that there are 3 of them and trying to remember what is where.
Technology to the rescue. For about the price I paid for one of the 40 gb drives a year ago ($250, but they are $199 MSRP, and about $180 street price now), I bought the Toshiba MK1233GAS 120GB ATA/100 2.5-in 4200RPM Mobile Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer and a little cool USB case, the Vantec NexStar 3 NST-260U2-BK External 2.5in Hard Drive Enclosure (Onyx Black). I always check between NewEgg and ZipZoomFly for the best prices (froogle searches invariably uncover one of those two as the lowest). This time, ZipZoomFly came in at $226 including free 2 day shipping, which beat NewEgg by over 30 bucks, so ZipZoomFly it was.
Together, the whole thing weighs 215 grams, vs 297 grams for the 3 ArchOS drives (and costs $226 vs about $550). So the total savings for this solution is about 25% off the weight and 59% off the price. I love Moore's law!
The case was super easy to use - pull the mounting board out, attach the drive with the 4 included mounting screws, slide it back in, and two screws seal it up. It comes with a cool dual USB to USB mini-B cable. If you have a drive that draws over 500 milliamps (this one draws 700 milliamps), you can plug the cable into a 2nd USB drive to get power. I have it on good authority that I can charge my SP5m phone using this cable and it will charge way faster, but I haven’t been brave enough to try that yet.
The only trick to getting the thing going is that it is unformatted, so you have to go into Administrative tools in the control panel, click into Computer Management then into Disk Management, and format the drive. Intuitive, yes?
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