External Hard Drives?

[CaptainKirk]

I've never had an external hard drive, but think that it might be a good idea for backing up the college things and such.

I'm thinking that something in the 1TB range would be excellent, but the price variation between brands is so stark that there must be some appreciable difference. What is the cheapest one of these beasts that still performs up to par?

Thanks for the help.

[=98=]

Re: External Hard Drives?

Samsung Spinpoint F1

[CaptainKirk]

Re: External Hard Drives?

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/productmodel.do?type=61&subtype=63&model_cd=249

That is an internal hd?

[=98=]

Re: External Hard Drives?

Yeah.... then buy a case?

If you buy them in combo, you usually pay a premium. Just get an internal disk and a caddy. Icybox make nice ones.

[AlecJ32]

Re: External Hard Drives?

Build or buy a hard disk drive enclosure and slap a Western Digital or Samsung drive in it.

[cloakster]

Re: External Hard Drives?

Definitely buy an internal drive and an enclosure. Its cheaper, faster and if you ever need to, you can use it in your comp.

Get this enclosure: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817145167

[[MyIS]Dan]

Re: External Hard Drives?

I have a WD My Book Studio Edition II, I know it's WD and I heard of issues some of the My Books have, but my old one was fine for three years plus this one offers RAID0 and 1 plus user serviceable.

It has a big price tag, but I wanted the RAID feature. :)

[CptainCrunch]

Re: External Hard Drives?

What I did, and recommend to others, is to pick out a case and buy an internal drive. Like a few people have mentioned, its cheaper and you get what you want.

ALSO, it seems these external setups are built on the cheap. The drives seem to last maybe a year then you have failure of some kind. All of them. Ive ran into many that have done that.

I put in an eSATA system with an internal drive for about $85.

Crunch

[megawhompertoo]

Re: External Hard Drives?

Also depends on how portable you want it to be.

I typically recycle my old HD into a new case, and then pop in an hd upgrade.

The last time, though, I wanted a skinny one, so I splashed out on a WD passport notebook-based portable hd. It's certainly not going to win any speed races (runs on usb), but it fits in my shirt pocket when I'm feeling reckless with my data :)

Having said that, if it's for external data that you will access or be moving around quite a bit, nothing is going to beat a fast desktop HD (F1) inside an externally powered eSATA enclosure.

[=98=]

Re: External Hard Drives?

Having said that, if it's for external data that you will access or be moving around quite a bit, nothing is going to beat a fast desktop HD (F1) inside an externally powered eSATA enclosure.

Behind the times good sir, it's all about the F3 now :p

[CaptainKirk]

Re: External Hard Drives?

Behind the times good sir, it's all about the F3 now :p

I actually went with that reccomendation, and the enclosure mentioned earlier in the thread. They should arrive next week.

Thanks, everyone.

[Rambo]

Re: External Hard Drives?

i have herd of alot of failures!also the need for a extra powerpoint can suck

im not sure if they all need a power sorce though