Hi all,
Looking around the internet, before indulging myself to a 2'5" external hard drive, I couldn't find any information if the Macbook Pro USB ports could provide enough juice to make the drives spin. There was a lot of speculation and it was reported that the Powerbook 15" could not spin up a 250 GB WD Passport drive.
So I took the risk, bought myself a 160GB 2.5" lacie and a 320 GB WD Passport.
Initially:
1. Tried the Lacie, with the Firewire 400 port. It worked wonderfully, with the only problem of the cable being too easy to pull out from the Macbook Pro firewire 400 port, which had happened a couple of times while I was watching a movie off it in my bed...
2. Tried the Lacie with the USB connection. I attached it to the port on the left of the computer and it did not work. The drive could not spin up, with the computer either plugged in or not. Then I tried the port on the right, the one next to the Firewire port and it worked wonderfully. I didn't see any speed differences, the maximum throughput that I've seen was around 30mb/sec from both Firewire and USB connections.
3. Tried the WD Passport 320 GB on both USB ports and it worked like a charm. Speed is practically equal, with aroung 28-29mb/sec max throughput.
Hope the above help you in any purchasing decisions ;-) It would have saved me tons of time and provide peace of mind when purchasing an expensive external drive like the WD Passport...
Macbook Pro 15", C2D 2.16 GHz, 2 GB Ram, 120 GB 5400 internal drive, ATI graphics.
Looking around the internet, before indulging myself to a 2'5" external hard drive, I couldn't find any information if the Macbook Pro USB ports could provide enough juice to make the drives spin. There was a lot of speculation and it was reported that the Powerbook 15" could not spin up a 250 GB WD Passport drive.
So I took the risk, bought myself a 160GB 2.5" lacie and a 320 GB WD Passport.
Initially:
1. Tried the Lacie, with the Firewire 400 port. It worked wonderfully, with the only problem of the cable being too easy to pull out from the Macbook Pro firewire 400 port, which had happened a couple of times while I was watching a movie off it in my bed...
2. Tried the Lacie with the USB connection. I attached it to the port on the left of the computer and it did not work. The drive could not spin up, with the computer either plugged in or not. Then I tried the port on the right, the one next to the Firewire port and it worked wonderfully. I didn't see any speed differences, the maximum throughput that I've seen was around 30mb/sec from both Firewire and USB connections.
3. Tried the WD Passport 320 GB on both USB ports and it worked like a charm. Speed is practically equal, with aroung 28-29mb/sec max throughput.
Hope the above help you in any purchasing decisions ;-) It would have saved me tons of time and provide peace of mind when purchasing an expensive external drive like the WD Passport...
Macbook Pro 15", C2D 2.16 GHz, 2 GB Ram, 120 GB 5400 internal drive, ATI graphics.
