External Hard Drives

[orangeskittles]

Posted: 1/18/07 at 5:16am

I've started looking into getting one and wondered if anyone here had recommendations (or warnings, as the case may be). I know I want one in the 100-300GB range, but other than that, I'm open to any suggestions that won't break the bank.

Updated On: 1/18/07 at 05:16 AM

[TheHumanTorch]

Posted: 1/18/07 at 8:40am

I have a Seagate 120 GB and it works fine... i forget how much it cost, but i haven't had the misfortune (yet) of having to use it...

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/18/07 at 8:50am

Use them before you have to.

I have one I didn't use and my hard crashed. Dell replaced it but the warranty didn't pay to restore my data. I had to spend $500 to have it restored--and the external hard drive was just sitting there. Now I use it regularly.

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/18/07 at 9:03am

I have several LaCie external hard drives.

Love 'em. Very reliable. We use them at work too.

[Craig]

Posted: 1/18/07 at 9:09am

I swear by my Western Digital MyBooks. I have several.

My suggestion is to stay away from the more generic names and/or trying to save money by buying an internal hard drive and a casing. These typically lack fans and you definitely want your external to have a cooling mechanism

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 1/18/07 at 10:35am

Ditto to what Craig says.

Go visit Amazon or Buy.com and look at some of the customer reviews.

I think Costco has one on sale right now with a coupon for 100 bucks, that is a decent one. I have a couple - one is for a complete back up of my current hard drive just in case. They are so cheap now it is almost silly not to have it.

[pab]

Posted: 1/18/07 at 10:48am

I have a number of external drives for video editing. You should determine the uses for your dive and if video is one of them you should look at getting one with a speed of 7200 RPM. If video is not something you will be using it for then 5400 RPM should be fine.

External drives come in all sizes and configurations. You can get USB, firewire 400, firewire 800 or a combination of two or all three.

You have portable drives (usually 2.5" like this one: http://store.technoavenue.com/b202f5-01.html) and drives that sit on your desktop. There are bus powered drives and drives that need a power cable.

As I said, I've used all kinds and one place that I would recommend that you might want to look at is:
Other World Computing

[MLE]

Posted: 1/18/07 at 2:16pm

I have two 80G from Western Digital. I got them a while ago. My old computer had to be restored and I lost ALL of my music, documents and pictures. I paid an ex-cop who now has a restoring business to get my data back. I bought them and took out one fresh out of the box when I got there and just told him to put everything on there. The other one was used for an old, slow computer in the basement which had virtually no hard drive space (compared to today's standards).

I love it, it works great. On my old desktop, I used to use it to store all my music and videos. Now that I switched to a laptop (with 2 100G hard drives), I just use it for videos I don't readily need and to back up my other data every once in a while.

The BEST thing about them, I find, it the ability to switch to a new computer without having to loose all of your favorite pictures and songs. I just gave the other one to my sister since her laptop has been brought back from the dead a couple times already. Since so many things can go wrong on a laptop, they work great as a back up. She moved all her music on there so whenever she wants to update her iPod, she just plugs in the hard drive, too.

Western Digital has worked great for me. Whether it's permanently plugged in to a desktop or just an occasional laptop back up, I haven't had a single problem. I'd highly recommend it.

[Gingersnap2]

Posted: 1/18/07 at 2:46pm

Just avoid I/O Magic.

Someone gave me their Gigabank Ultra since I needed to back up all of the files for Hugh's site. It lasted about three months before the USB cable started to come loose. I barely got my stuff copied to a new one...SeaGate...before it detached entirely. And I wasn't hard on it...I connected it maybe twice a month...it was just junk.

I love this SeaGate, though.

[Broadwayboobs]

Posted: 1/18/07 at 2:49pm

Check out Overstock.com .... they had a selection when I was looking for one.

[swerve]

Posted: 1/18/07 at 3:13pm

I also have a Western Digital MyBook, and absolutely love it. Works great. I waited too long to get one and lost everything when my hard drive crashed, so having one is a must for me now.

[Craig]

Posted: 1/18/07 at 3:15pm

A nice feature of MyBooks are that they turn on/off with the computer so you don't need to press a button or worry about leaving it on after shut down. You can turn this feature off or do it manually I'm almost positive as well.. but I like knowing it goes off automatically when I shut down

[pab]

Posted: 1/18/07 at 3:46pm

Looks like a nice drive. I've been reading some of the reviews on Amazon.com. My only concern would be the size. I'm usually running about 10 to 12 external drives so space is always a concern.

[orangeskittles]

Posted: 1/18/07 at 5:39pm

Thanks everyone. I'd already been looking at the Western Digital models, it's good to know people have had positive experiences with them.

[pushdabutton]

Posted: 1/18/07 at 9:47pm

I have a 250 GB and a 300 GB Maxtor OneTouch external hard drive. Great luck with both.

The Mator OneTouch lll 200GB USB Hard Drive is on sale at OfficeMax this week for $89.99 (regularly $159.99) a savings of $70! It was in this week's local flyer that we got with the newspaper. Click on the link to see the item on their website
Maxtor External Hard Drive at OfficeMax

[pushdabutton]

Posted: 1/18/07 at 11:49pm

bump

[shira467]

Posted: 1/18/07 at 11:51pm

I like my Lacie drive -- works for me.

However, my external harddrive before completely crashed and i lost everything. So now I back up my external with another external. Because I'm OCD like that.

[pab]

Posted: 1/18/07 at 11:55pm

There is the possibility of ANY drive failing. I had a 250 GB Lacie drive that failed once and others that performed flawlessly.