WD passport 120gb for backup or traditional external backup?

[cranbers]

I bought a Western digital passport drive. It's small at 3.5 inches by say 5 inches weighs less then a pound is silent and runs on usb power alone it also comes with a nice case. I love it, but I am trying to figure out if it is prone to a failure more so then any other drive because it's based soley on usb power and not a power adapter. It has identical performance as a usb 2.0 full size external drive at 33 - 35 MB/s which is pretty sad if you think about it.

The only real difference off hand is the storage size at 111gb after being formatted. Compared to a external 300gb drive it is pretty small. But I find the size, noise, weight undesirable. Also at 150 dollars when a external drive that has twice the capacity is 50 dollars less makes it another issue worth considering.

Also anyone have favorite backup software they use? i have tried syncback and that works really well and is free. I also tried nero back it up and found it has tons of bugs that are really scary. R-drive image seems to be the best I found so far for windows drive image software.

So back to my main concern and reason for this post, is a 2.5 inch laptop hard drive that is usb 2.0 based on usb power as well reliable to use as a backup drive and be left plugged in 24/7 with the computer?

 

[Mondoman]

...
So back to my main concern and reason for this post, is a 2.5 inch laptop hard drive that is usb 2.0 based on usb power as well reliable to use as a backup drive and be left plugged in 24/7 with the computer?

Any general-use drive needs to be able to go into a "sleep" mode to last a long time (only special drives intended for servers are designed to be spinning 24/7 indefinitely). I don't know of any external enclosures that support a sleep mode, but then I haven't really looked into it. As long as the drive goes into sleep mode, being plugged in 24/7 should be OK. Otherwise, only turn on the drive when you will be using it.

 

[cranbers]

I thinkt he drive spins down automatically after 10 mins of inactivity. I know there were a few times where I picked the drive up and put it to my ear and I didn't hear anything or feel any vibration. I then transferred a file from the drive to the desktop and felt it spin up.

I don't think I will plan on leaving it plugged in except when using it. I wonder though if this in itself will cause it to wear out faster. Plugging it in and then unplugging it.

Also these drives only have a 1 year warranty. I thought that was a bit odd. Although I know from experience drives either go bad very soon or last at least a few years. I will just have to make sure that the files on this drive are also on my main computer. A good way to describe a backup drive right, that is redundancy.