I just bought a new external drive - AAARRRGHHH!
 

I was shopping in Microcenter while my wife was at a shower. I saw a nice 3.5inch hard drive enclosure in the clearance aisle for $15 marked down from $20. I wasn't sure I wanted to buy an open box, so I went looking for a new one as well as a cheap drive to go with it.

Then I saw a Buffalo Tech 250 GB SATA drive for $70 after rebates. Now I hate rebates and it turns out that the $50 rebate is actually two rebates. Still, it's a SATA drive bundled with encryption software and backup software.

So I get it home and sit down to read the paper. Staples is having a Western Digital 400GB PATA drive for only $20 more after rebate starting tomorrow. The rebate is a single Easy Rebate instead of having to mail out two rebates.

So I keep on telling myself that it's a SATA drive and that the integrated bundled software (I have have to use the word integrated to pretend that somehow the software is designed to work with the drive when I know different) makes up for the 150GB, as well as the increased bus speed, even though both are USB 2.0 connected to the computer.

I had to read this three times before I figured out that it was "at a" and not "in the."

Yep, she was at a wedding shower at the Radnor Hotel.

you plug it in and it vibrates? (ARRRGGGHH!)

I don't think you can take those things back.

;)

Cloud, if there's anyone in the world who owns a USB powered vibrator....;)

MORE POWER!

rich, I recently (six months-sih) got a standalone 400 GB sata drive from WD. I paid 129.00 and was happy to do so. I deliberately paid a premium at the local Mom and Pop computer store (Hard Drives Northwest, not really mom and pop, but compared to Fry's and CDW, they're small potatoes) to spread my business around and because I didn't want to wait for, say, overnight shipping. I've about 130 GB free. Time to go shopping again.

I got the drive bare because I already had an enclosure and that dictated the drive interface in this example. But I really don't need the backup or encryption software you described. I have tools that take care of those functions when I need them. I was primarily looking for a place to hold my music library (libraries actually, as I'm trying to merge the multiple islands of music scattered everywhere into one coherent library. A big portable drive is ideal for such a quest) and my pictures. The picture situation is the same but even more scattered and potentially more voluminous. They're *everywhere* and I don't have a very good tool for weeding out the duplicates and of course the naming conventions established by the cameras are not especially helpful in this task.

Eventually, I'll get a handle on it, and then I'll be able to use the drive for image backups of the boot volumes of the systems at home. Or, maybe I'll have graduated to an additional drive by that time.

As to your original question, the issue of speed is secondary for me, since I can't always count on the fastest connections (Firewire, USB 2.0, USB 1.0, morse code, etc). Portability, capacity first, speed later for my preferences. YMMV.

SSD's are the way to go....just wish they would come down in price.

Price is a far lower barrier than capacity for SSDs. 64 Gb is the largest I've seen discussed so far, from Samsung. You can get a Dell with one. I thought that was cool.