Opinions On External Hard Drives?

I have been doing some research on external hard drives, and would like to hear opinions on the various manufacturers.

Also, advice on what options I should definitely be looking for is very welcome.

 

What do you want the drive for?

Is it to be easily portable, or do you just need extra storage?

 

If you want non-portability then I would buy a regular SATA 3.5" Hard drive (1TB should be around £60) and then buy an e-sata case for about £20, possibly saving some money.

All you have to do to install the drive is do up some screws in the hard drive case and slot it all together.

If you want to go full speed you can get an e-sata case for 3.5Gb/s (up to) transfer speeds, which are the same as internal), for which you may need an internal adapter card which are easy to install, or you could go USB or FireWire, both of which are slower than e-sata.

 

I'm pretty much in agreement with these suggestions.

One thing to be aware of when considering the purchase of pre-built external drives is the effect of any software that may come ready loaded and sometimes auto-installed on first connection.

Using WD external drives and software as an example, here's one that made the owner think he had a major rootkit, another that caused some confusion when trying to backup and a third that triggered issues with Bitlocker and backups.

 

Thank you for the information. I want it for storage and for backup with my laptops. I don't need very much space.

I would like to store everything I can on it.

melissa

Thanks again.

 

For the actual drive I can highly recommend Western Digital. I know that hard drives do fail but I have never had a WD fail on me at any point, even after being hit by a lightning-induced power surge.

Something like this may fit the bill: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136606

 

Thanks for the helpful suggestions. I am buying a western digital from newegg. :wave

 

I have a Buffalo 1 TB stationary external HDD. This comes with backup software on it from Memeo, and is very much excellent. Herr Flick also points out a good model, that being WD drives.

I got my Buffalo for 75 USD just as an FYI.

 

Thank you :wave