I had all but given up on buying anymore 2.5″ external hard drives because it looked like the 100gb editions were going to be too expensive (Lacie, for example, is selling its 100gb 2.5″ external for $319).
But Seagate is selling a 2.5″ external hard drive under its own brand name, that has a couple advantages that have me rethinking whether to buy another one.
First, the price — the 100gb drive is going for $229 at NewEgg. It might be available for slightly less at other outlets, but that’s a pretty good deal considering the size. Unlike the Lacie drive, this one’s strictly USB 2.0, however. Firewire doesn’t mean a whole lot to me for these portable drives, but it might be an issue to some.
Second, this is a 5400 RPM drive. Excellent. The 4,200 RPM drive in my 80gb Firelite is more than adequate for most tasks, but it does have its shortcomings when I need to do intensive tasks like index 20gb worth of PDFs with DTSearch. Bumping up to a 5400 RPM would be very nice.