As I have discussed in the previous few posts, my family now is the proud owner of an Asus Eee 4G PC. This is used primarily by my youngest son, but has proved to be quite popular with all the family. However as we said in my last post the Eee 4G PC comes with only 4GB of solid state storage, and since the majority of that is used by the operating system there is not much room for other content. In the previous post I looked at adding extra storage via a SDHC memory card but in this post I thought I would look at external hard drives.

Eee External hard drive

As the external hard drive is designed to be used with an Eee PC, I really wanted one that would fit well with the “small is good” theme that the Eee stands for. So any external hard drive had to be as small as possible, but still provide a good amount of storage, look good and work easily with the Linux operating system installed on the Eee.

After searching around I manage to find something that seems to fit the bill. Take a look at the
Passport Essential from Western Digital which is neat looking, small enough to fit into a shirt pocket, and has plenty of storage space. As it is a USB drive it will be supported by Linux and should therefore work fine with the Eee.

Check Linux compatibility

This last point is an important point that one needs to be careful off when buying equipment for a Linux PC. Thanks to the Linux community most devices will be supported by Linux, even if the vendor does not provide drivers. However this takes time and so when buying for Linux and especially for new devices it pays to do some research on the Internet first. In this case although the manufacturer does not state that it supports Linux, a quick search of the Internet shows that a number of people haved confirmed the Passport Essential working with the Eee.

Do have an Eee PC? Do you use an external hard drive?