Full Featured Pocket Hard Drives?

Lifix asks: "I've recently been asked to be caregiver to about 150 Apple desktops. While building my software kit to handle these machines, I realized that I would need a good portable hard drive to restore the machines from when they crashed. Cost really isn't an issue but I only need enough room for 3 partitions each with restore images of less than 10 gigs, so a 40g drive would be fine. It doesn't have to be designer, it just has to work. Does anyone have any suggestions/experience with a drive thats going to be a small form factor (throw it in my messenger bag/toolkit), reliable, bootable, 7200 rpm (!important!) and support Firewire400/800 and USB 2.0?"

Solution

[DeathFromSomewhere]

1. Buy 2 1/2" hard drive. 2. Buy USB enclosure. 3. Assemble 4. ??? 5. Profit!

Steep requirements

[Professor_UNIX]

Does this really require an Ask Slashdot? For crying out loud, just go to Best Buy or Fry's and buy one. I'm sure the crazy fanboys will tell you to go out and buy a 40GB Video iPod to use as a bootable drive, but just save your money and buy a 100GB portable external firewire hard drive. Go to the MacMall website or something and you'll probably find a dozen different external firewire portable drives.

First Post put it best

[CliffH]

I would have thought this was a no brainer. My only question is why you are so stuck on the 7200rpm condition? Personally, I get by beautifully on a 30GB hard drive running at 5400rpm in a little noname USB2.0 enclosure for reimaging. Granted, I reimage Linux and Windows boxes but that doesn't really make a difference. Then again, if money is no object, there are plenty of Firewire enclosures out there for 2.5" drives and a good, fast, 7200rpm drive you should look at would probably be at the Seagate website. I would start there just based on their warranties to get an idea of what you can get. get ahold of resellers in your area to find out prices.

Re:Steep requirements

[toddbu]

Does this really require an Ask Slashdot?

Since when has it been a crime to ask for hardware recommendations on Slashdot? I was thinking about submitting a request to see what people though would be a good replacement for a LaserJet 6L based on user experience. I would hope that I'd get something other than a moronic response like this.

Obvious solution

[cgenman]

You need a portable drive that works with USB and firewire, has about 40GB of space, and lives comfortably in OSX and XP land. And money isn't a big deal.

Dude. You need to get your boss to buy you iPod.

Re:Steep requirements

[mnmn]

I was about to say the same thing... theres too many Shop-by-slashdot these days.

I realize many of my recent posts are sarcastic answers to extremely obvious questions posted on slashdot. That makes me wonder if slashdot is more about more novice geeks (oh boy, 64-bit! twice as fast!), than specialized people who work in their respective fields.

To get a harddisk enclosure, I'd first google the terms, calculate rate-of-transfers for usb, firewire etc, check prices on tigerdirect, do a quick look at ebay and pricewatch, pick up popular company/model names and search for them in google groups, check for issues in google groups, make a decision and make a purchase. Chances of me getting a good drive this way are way higher than having my shop-by-slashdot questions selected by editors.

To the original poster: a quick answer is at lacie.com. But I suspect your plan is flawed. You did enough research to conclude you need to boot from a USB drive, but not enough research to which drive is better. I think the first research is more worthy of a slashdot story... a repair and restore-OS mechanism for many similar desktops. For that I'd think of a knoppix-type CD with the OS image somewhere on the network.. and would try to put the knoppix-type image on a USB key. If you can network-boot the machines and have the OS installed with specialized admin apps (Windows and Linux can do these), all the better.

Other interesting questions include: Why would the OS crap out frequently or at all, and How much can I lock down the machine from the user to never have to reinstall the OS.

Sorry, but us tech support people feel we're providing tech support on slashdot too. Ask us questions we love to answer... not 'hey pick a harddisk for me'.

Uh, last generation iPod?

[Bombcar]

If you can drop the 7200 RPM requirement just get an older iPod that supports firewire + usb.