USB bus powered enclosure for external HD?

Hi everyone! I have a question regarding the compatibility of USB bus-powered external hard drives and enclosures. I searched the forums but didn't quite find the answer I was looking for. I'm hoping to upgrade my Macbook's internal hard drive and would like to utilize the old drive as an external HD inside an enclosure.

I was doing some browsing and came across this product at OWC:

OWC Express 2.5" Portable USB 2.0 Enclosure... (ES2.5BPU2W) at OWC

Does anyone know if my Macbook's battery (on its own, or plugged in with the power supply) would be enough to drive this external device? I'm trying to avoid having to use an external power supply. Any suggestions about this or other similar products would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

Does anyone know if my Macbook's battery (on its own, or plugged in with the power supply) would be enough to drive this external device? I'm trying to avoid having to use an external power supply. Any suggestions about this or other similar products would be greatly appreciated.

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Your MacBook USB port power should be sufficient to operate that particular external carrier. As far as the device itself goes... it's as good as any other I've seen. OWC has a good reputation with the Mac world and generally their products are high quality.

Regards.

It should work. I bought this one to use with my old OEM 2.5" HDD, and it works just fine running the MB and MBP via battery or power cord.

OWC Mercury On-The-Go 2.5" FW800 + USB2.0 En... (MOTG800U2) at OWC

Thanks to both chscag and XJ-linux for your comments -- going to give this enclosure a shot.

Now I just have to decide if I'm going to go with a 7200 RPM hard drive or stick with 5400 RPM... I'm a little concerned about the possibility of too much heat generated by the higher RPMs. I'll do a search on the forums to find out more on this issue, but any additional comments are always appreciated!

I upgraded my MacBook hard drive from the original 5400 RPM to a WD Scorpio 7200 RPM model (320 GB). No difference in heat generated or noise as far as I can determine. I even tried it running on battery to see if the more powerful drive ran the battery down quicker. It did not.

Go for the 7200 RPM model. I recommend either the WD or Seagate models that are stocked at OWC or NewEgg.

Regards.

order placed @ NewEgg

chscag said:

I upgraded my MacBook hard drive from the original 5400 RPM to a WD Scorpio 7200 RPM model (320 GB). No difference in heat generated or noise as far as I can determine. I even tried it running on battery to see if the more powerful drive ran the battery down quicker. It did not.

Go for the 7200 RPM model. I recommend either the WD or Seagate models that are stocked at OWC or NewEgg.

Regards.

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I decided to go a different route with the enclosure, since NewEgg had a better price on a 7200 RPM hard drive in a 320 GB capacity than OWC did. Here are the two items I just placed an order for:

Enclosure: Newegg.com - Rosewill RX234 Aluminum 2.5" USB 2.0 External Enclosure - External Enclosures

Hard Drive: Newegg.com - Seagate Momentus 7200.3 ST9320421AS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive (Bare drive) - Laptop Hard Drives

I went with the Seagate drive for two reasons: It was recommended by chscag (thanks for that!), and it has a 3-year warranty as opposed to the Fujitsu drive for the same price that didn't have the same warranty... even though I currently have a Fujitsu drive running in my Macbook.

Here's my plan: Transfer data and install the new 320 GB Seagate drive in my Macbook, install the old 160 GB Fujitsu drive in my Playstation 3, and use the old 60 GB PS3 drive in the enclosure. It'll probably take me a while to transfer the old data to each subsequent drive, but I'll post again to let you all know how it went.

Thanks again for the advice!