Seagate Momentus XT in an external USB 3.0/2.0 caddy

hero9989

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Apr 27, 2009
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My brother wants a 2.5" hard drive with a USB 3.0 caddy for xmas, I was wondering if this will work. My main concern is the power consumption.

According to This the device requires upto 3.76w of power. I realise USB 3.0 will support that kind of power (900mAh x 5v = 4.5w)

But when he plugs it into a USB 2.0 device (the PS3 or 360 for example) it won't be able to draw enough power (USB 2.0 is 500mAh x 5v = 2.5w).

Am I right in thinking this won't work? The drive would be useless without the ability to be used on his games consoles to watch videos.

Thanks in advance
 

erdinger

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Hi, I don't know if it would work, but I advice against using a momentus XT for an external drive. The momentus XT is a good boot drive but you don't benefit from the speed the SSD part in it gives you when you use it for data storage.

Buy a less power hungry and expensive 2.5inch hd or directly a WD portable(or any other portable 2.5inch HD) which will work with usb 2.0 and also usb3.0 (for a little extra price) out of the box.

Kind regards Erdinger
 

hero9989

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I just googled what you said and you're right, seems the XT only benefits from the SSD as a boosted cache so it'll only help in read speeds, not really very helpful for an external drive...
Thanks for your advice :)