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PRODUCT SHOOTOUT
Portable hard drive hit parade
By David Gewirtz
Computing Unplugged's product shootout features are among our most popular series. You've told us you really like seeing a large group of similar products compared, side-by-side. Shootouts are a fabulous tool for getting a good feel for your purchasing options and really help you see which products stand above the rest.
In this article, we're doing a shootout among mobile hard drives (and some other mobile mass-storage media options). Although the topic of hard drives seems pretty prosaic, the pace of innovation and the wide variety of form factors and approaches actually made this an interesting article to work on. In this shootout, we're comparing the seven media devices shown in Figure A.
FIGURE A
 
We compare seven impressive media storage devices. Roll over picture for a larger image.
Product shootout articles are more difficult to do than a single product review. It can often take a huge amount of coordination among manufacturers, PR reps, and our editorial team to get all the devices in and compare them side-by-side. Fortunately, we've managed to assemble an interesting collection of drives. Among our contenders is a drive that could have been great, but is a terrible failure due to a stupid marketing decision, one that failed because it came out years later than it should have, and two surprising drives that rate perfect 5 out of 5 scores.
Seagate External Portable Hard Drive 100GB
We reviewed the Seagate External Portable Hard Drive, model number ST9100801U2-RK, shown in Figure B.
FIGURE B
 
This is 100GB, although they go up to 160GB. Roll over picture for a larger image.
The one we reviewed was 100GB, although the drives are available up to a 160GB capacity. We found the 100GB unit available online for between $150 and $190, which isn't bad for a portable, external drive.
"This was a cost-saving strategy on the part of some short-sighted product manager and is inexcusable."
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We really liked the drive, but it has a fatal flaw which brings its rating down tremendously. As is the case with most larger capacity hard drives, this device draws considerable power -- in fact, more than a single USB 2.0 connection can power. Seagate attempted to solve this problem by splitting the USB cable, giving you two USB connectors to plug into your computer, one for an additional power feed.
Unfortunately, not all computers generate enough power across even two USB feeds to power the drive. And some laptops, like our sleek, little Dell Latitude, only have one USB port on the drive. As a result, the drive performance is sketchy.
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