With memory so cheap, I’ve decided that it’s goofy for a two-person household to share a single backup drive. So I’ve been pondering a couple of options, both comparably priced and with similar feature sets.

The Western Digital Passport and Seagate FreeAgent Go external drives both offer 160 gigabytes of storage and sell for under $150 apiece. The WD model is about $20 less expensive. They run off of a USB 2.0 port, have rotational speeds of 5400 RPM and weigh less than seven ounces (the WD model is lighter). Both have fairly tiny footprints — 15 to 16 square inches.

According to several user reviews, the WD model has a fairly flimsy casing, and at least one person suggested that he or she would be buying a case for it. One reviewer said he couldn’t get it to work off of a single USB port (from which it draws its power), so he’d suggested a Y-cable that lets the user plug the device into two ports at once. (Sometimes, USB port availability can be a real challenge for me.)

The Seagate model also requires both two ports according to one reviewer, but at least the package includes a dual-connection cable. No mentions of a cheapie container. (I can’t wait for Pricegrabber to add that “virtual feel” function!) And since I tend to be hard on my components (by virtue of my relative clumsiness), I guess Seagate’s going to get my business this time around — even though it’s a bit pricier than Western Digital.

Posted on November 12th, 2007 by dian