There are tons of light and portable hard drives on the market, but most of them lack in an important area – speed. Most truly portable USB and Firewire-powered hard drives have just a 4,200RPM or 5,400RPM hard drive inside, many with just a 2MB data buffer. If your working with video projects and heavy multimedia files, 4,200 RPM and 5,400 RPM just doesn’t cut it. My personal favorite is Lacie’s Mobile Porsche Series, which has the USB 2.0 and Firewire Mobile Portable Hard drive design by FA Porche, a 60GB model with a 7,200 RPM drive. It’s so light, I hardly notice that it’s in my bag, and even better is the fact that I don’t need to carry around a clunky AC adapter to power it like so many similarly powerful hard drives which require one. Transfer speeds on the Lacie are excellent, and so are access speeds. Unfortunately I can’t find this specific model on Lacie’s web site anymore. But I did some research and dug up two very similar alternatives. These two other similar mobile hard drives series run at 7,200 RPM with an 8mb data buffer or higher:
The G-Drive Mini
is available in capacities up to 160GB, it weighs less then 9 oz, it’s available with a Firewire 800, 400 and/or USB port, and it comes with a leather case and a 2 year warranty.
OWC Mercury’s On-The-Go Portable Solutions is available in capacities of up to 100GB, it weighs less than 11 ounces, and has Oxford 911+ and 912 chips inside which also guarantees reliable speed. All of these hard drives are both PC and Mac compatible.
If you need more help deciding which one is right for you, MacWorld has a collection of reviews for portable hard drives. None of these hard drives come cheap, but for video professionals and multimedia enthusiasts, these hard drives are worth every penny.
