Just a simple product endorsement.

While I was in in The Valley recently, Fry's had a sale on Seagate 2.5" 160GB external USB2 drives. These are the largest notebook PATA drives currently available. Fast, quiet, and cool running.

I wanted some of these to replace internal drives in a couple of machines here, so I picked up two of them. Now these came with/inside Seagate's fancy enclosures, which are great!

There's a thick and soft rubber gasket that cradles the drive, and the external shell is hard/rugged aluminum, with wrap around ventilation on all four side edges. So the drive is well protected, and doesn't overheat. In use, there's a soft whooshing noise, as if a fan was inside, but it's just the drive (no fans). 29-30MB/sec transfer rates over USB2.

Anyway, great enclosures, and the drives insides seem to be quite fast and quiet in use.

I've now removed the Seagate 160GB drives, and installed them directly inside some machines here, and then put the old drives from those machines back into the Seagate enclosures. Again, everything works fine.

I want more!!

The price I got at Fry's was US$190 for the 160GB drive+enclosure. They've since been marked back up another $30-40 or so. I wish I'd bought another two or three at the sale price. The bare drives (no enclosures) were US$230.

Cheers