External Hard Drive - Which one is best?

[Mazdagirl]

PJ S said:

Mazdagirl said:

Mrs Fish said:

James here:

Do not leave all your vital stuff on ONE Hard drive, make sure you BACKUP.....

Plenty of nice drives out there, buy two and get them to syncronise, if one breaks you haven't lost it all.

Personally I'd go for a NAS drive which can get tucked away and left to it's own devices. The Buffalo ones are good.

Now theres the thing I was just going to get one - so sounds like I should get 2 to make sure have a back up. Don't back up now... suppose I should really! Thanks for the advice.

Is your internal drive short on space or something?
I thought that backing up was the point of buying an external one.
Is this a VAIO laptop you're using?

Long story - the short version is: -
Have a PC which is going and wanted to copy all mp3's and photos onto an external drive which I could choose to plug into my Vaio laptop when I wanted to download/upload music etc

[spants]

tapes and dvds degrade....... as I found out! but are ok for archiving if you rewrite them couple of years at least

I use an external hdd for backups which I replace every couple of years. Drives do not last forever ( especially MAXTOR ). So my data is held on machine and external so if one drive goes, I still have a backup. Tried RAID as well but drivers were a problem when updating OS.

Remember to keep an offsite copy if data is important (house fire/thefts)

[Podie]

The following is from my personal experience, based on supporting a large multi-national company's IT across Europe for the last 4 years.

You should be fine with anything from Samsung, LaCie, Western Digital, Hitachi and Seagate.

Avoid Maxstor and IBM Deathstars (IMO) - the only drive failures I've witnessed in the last 4 years.


In fact some of the Seagate drives (like the ST3320620A) has extra protection for being moved around. Pretty solid, very reliable and fine in an external caddy.

[cjs]

Mazdagirl said:

PJ S said:

Mazdagirl said:

Mrs Fish said:

James here:

Do not leave all your vital stuff on ONE Hard drive, make sure you BACKUP.....

Plenty of nice drives out there, buy two and get them to syncronise, if one breaks you haven't lost it all.

Personally I'd go for a NAS drive which can get tucked away and left to it's own devices. The Buffalo ones are good.

Now theres the thing I was just going to get one - so sounds like I should get 2 to make sure have a back up. Don't back up now... suppose I should really! Thanks for the advice.

Is your internal drive short on space or something?
I thought that backing up was the point of buying an external one.
Is this a VAIO laptop you're using?

Long story - the short version is: -
Have a PC which is going and wanted to copy all mp3's and photos onto an external drive which I could choose to plug into my Vaio laptop when I wanted to download/upload music etc

Although Firewire is quicker you will be fine with a USB HD, this will give you more of a choice.

For what you want to do I would go for the Iomega on Ebuyer, excellent value.

Remember these are 'full size' 3.5" drives, if you want something more portable then you need to go for a 2.5" device, these are Laptop HD's in a caddy, they are more expensive.

[ajg31]

If you want futureprofing then look for an eSata connection. This has the benefit of sharing data at the same speed as if it was plugged into the motherboard. Most eSata hard drives work out 20 pounds dearer. You could do alot worse than WD Mybooks. I have 2 and they are very good, and the eSata one is amazingly fast (presuming you have/will have an eSata hookup at some point

[Mazdagirl]

ajg31 said:

If you want futureprofing then look for an eSata connection. This has the benefit of sharing data at the same speed as if it was plugged into the motherboard. Most eSata hard drives work out 20 pounds dearer. You could do alot worse than WD Mybooks. I have 2 and they are very good, and the eSata one is amazingly fast (presuming you have/will have an eSata hookup at some point

Whats eSata?

[Podie]

ajg31 said:

If you want futureprofing then look for an eSata connection. This has the benefit of sharing data at the same speed as if it was plugged into the motherboard. Most eSata hard drives work out 20 pounds dearer. You could do alot worse than WD Mybooks. I have 2 and they are very good, and the eSata one is amazingly fast (presuming you have/will have an eSata hookup at some point

Fair enough, but USB is going to be about for a while yet...

[ATG]

Mazdagirl said:

ajg31 said:

If you want futureprofing then look for an eSata connection. This has the benefit of sharing data at the same speed as if it was plugged into the motherboard. Most eSata hard drives work out 20 pounds dearer. You could do alot worse than WD Mybooks. I have 2 and they are very good, and the eSata one is amazingly fast (presuming you have/will have an eSata hookup at some point

Whats eSata?

SATA is an interface standard (i.e. a specification for connecting things so they can communicate with each other). Most new PCs now use SATA as the standard way to attach hard discs inside the PC's case. (Of course there are plenty of other standard interfaces apart from SATA that are faster/slower cheaper/more expensive, but SATA strikes a nice balance between price and performace and is therefore popular).

eSATA extends the SATA specification to make it more suitable for using with external hard discs. For example, the plugs it uses have been made stronger and the electrical signals that is uses are beefed up so that they can travel longer distances without distortion.

Firewire and USB interfaces can create a communications bottleneck between a high performace external disc and the computer. eSATA removes that bottleneck. Will you notice the difference? If you are just storing backup files, photos and music, then frankly, probably not. Firewire or USB 2.0 will be fine. If you want to use the external disc to store applications, database files, etc, then you might well notice the difference.

I'm not aware of many laptops that come with an eSATA port as standard. You'd probably need to buy an eSATA interface to add to your laptop if you wanted to use an eSATA disc. Frankly, it will probably be more expense and trouble than it is worth unless you really want the extra performance.

One other thing to consider is if you want to be able to use the external disc on the move with your laptop. If you do, you'll want to look for one that doesn't have to be plugged into the mains. As far as I know (but I'm certianly not claiming any expertise) you can't get firewire or eSATA drives that don't need their own external power supply. I think only USB can provide enough power to run an external drive (usually the little 2.5 inch hard discs).

[ajg31]

I agree to the above, but part of the spec was "i want something futureproof" eSata i think is that, Most motherboards carry it now, so it will filter down to lappys. I like WD and Seagate personally, but WD seem the most quiet i have owned and totally reliable.

[Podie]

ajg31 said:

I agree to the above, but part of the spec was "i want something futureproof" eSata i think is that, Most motherboards carry it now, so it will filter down to lappys. I like WD and Seagate personally, but WD seem the most quiet i have owned and totally reliable.

Fair point, but nowt is truely future proof.

Then again... PC I'm using here (brand new) has parallel and serial ports...!!

[Mazdagirl]

Ok so this is what I'm looking at: -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000EXZB0...

What do you think?

[PJ S]

So long as the VAIO has USB2.0 (which it should) then that'll do just fine.
Do you really need 500GB though? I'd have thought 320 would've been more than sufficient for photos and music.
I suppose you'll need it if you start keeping video/doing video editing.

[cjs]

Mazdagirl said:

Ok so this is what I'm looking at: -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000EXZB0...

What do you think?

That will do exactly what you want and is an okay price, go for it!

[ajg31]

Perfect for what you want. Amazing how much storage you need. I thought 250 gig would have been enough to backup my museic. I was wrong

[spants]

dont over worry about futureproof - you 80quid purchase now will cost you 25 quid to replace in 2 years time

[Mazdagirl]

ajg31 said:

Perfect for what you want. Amazing how much storage you need. I thought 250 gig would have been enough to backup my museic. I was wrong

Oh I probably don't need that much but when you look at the prices for the smaller ones you might as well pay more and get something bigger - I think its probably girl logic all to do with convincing ourselves we're getting a bargain even if we don't need it!!

[DaveMitsLancer]

Is bigger always better? he he ;0)

Are you loosing quality in the brand over size.

[Mazdagirl]

DaveMitsLancer said:

Is bigger always better? he he ;0)

Are you loosing quality in the brand over size.

Well as long as its a bargain, size doesn't matter I suppose. Personally though if I can get a larger drive for only slightly more money surely gigabyte for gigabyte its better value?! Well thats how Tesco explain stuff anyway with their per 100ml!

[PJ S]

Mazdagirl said:

DaveMitsLancer said:

Is bigger always better? he he ;0)

Are you loosing quality in the brand over size.

Well as long as its a bargain, size doesn't matter I suppose. Personally though if I can get a larger drive for only slightly more money surely gigabyte for gigabyte its better value?! Well thats how Tesco explain stuff anyway with their per 100ml!

Argh....she said the T word!
Everyone scarper. Quick!
Too late....

[Mazdagirl]

PJ S said:

Mazdagirl said:

DaveMitsLancer said:

Is bigger always better? he he ;0)

Are you loosing quality in the brand over size.

Well as long as its a bargain, size doesn't matter I suppose. Personally though if I can get a larger drive for only slightly more money surely gigabyte for gigabyte its better value?! Well thats how Tesco explain stuff anyway with their per 100ml!

http://www.pistonheads.co.uk/gassing/smilies.htm
Smilies


Argh....she said the T word!
Everyone scarper. Quick!
Too late....

PMSL Apologies everyone I don't know what came over me!

Well I did it I purchased a Western Digital MyBook - Love it! Have downloaded all my music and pictures onto and it works on my laptop

Couldn't figure out how to partition it though but don't suppose that matters. It works and thats the main thing. Have copied some of the data onto my laptop just in case but fingers crossed I won't have any problems with it!

Thank you for you help guys. Now I just need a new keyboard for my Sony Vaio VGN-A317M - have broken a key and the little metal bits its clips into on the keyboard - don't ask how I don't want to lie!!

Edited by Mazdagirl on Sunday 19th August 22:12