External hard drives- any info?

[speedychrissie]

hi,
i have a standard dell computer which is great for my needs apart from the fact that it only has an 80G hard drive. i am fast filling this up and as such am considering getting an external hard drive to free up space and make it so that i dont have to worry about the fact that video from my camera comes in at about 10G per tape.

does anyone know anything about external hard drives that might be useful to know?
have you had any good or bad experiences with specific brands/suppliers?

thanks
chris

[pdV6]

laptop or desktop?

If the latter, it really is very easy (and cheap) to add a 2nd internal hard disk.

[speedychrissie]

its a desktop.
i havent looked into adding an internal drive. is it possible to get quite large internal 2nd disks (eg 250G)?

chris

[stuh]

speedychrissie said:

hi, i have a standard dell computer which is great for my needs apart from the fact that it only has an 80G hard drive. i am fast filling this up and as such am considering getting an external hard drive to free up space and make it so that i dont have to worry about the fact that video from my camera comes in at about 10G per tape. does anyone know anything about external hard drives that might be useful to know? have you had any good or bad experiences with specific brands/suppliers? thanks chris

There are some great products out there now. Many of the NAS's also serve as file and print servers.

I recently purchased one of these for my old man and it's been faultless:

www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=163393

If you need something bigger, Lacie do drives up to 2TB!

[cuneus]

http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20050308/index.html

[speedychrissie]

ok, so i have just done a quick search for internal hard drives. how do i find out what kind will work with my computer? there seem to be a few basic types:
serial ATA
IDE

and also, what about a controller? do i need to get another controller, or is it ok as i already have one in my computer? (i assume that i do as my computer does work!)

chris

[joospeed]

as an aside .. how do i know if i've got usb2 on my toshiba tecra8100 laptop? can't find a mention of usb2 looking through "my computer" .. my 10gb HD is almost full .. curse that pistonheads.tv and swedishladies.com

[ATG]

We use Lacie and Maxtor external drives ... various ones btwn 200 and 300GB. With USB2 or firewire they provide perfectly adequate transfer speeds ... and faster than can be achieved across a 100Mb ethernet (which is something to take into account if you were thiking of a NAS solution). We've had no problem with them at all. We use them primarlily for database backups and where their portability comes in handy for taking backups off-site, and also use them to shift large amounts of data from our development and production systems.

[Raify]

When you open the pc you'll find:

Loads of spare power cables bundled up (you can identify these because they come from the power adaptor)

A large, flat ribbon type cable that takes the data from the drive to the motherboard. Usually, the one that's plugged into your existing hard drive will have another plug halfway down it. this is the one for your new drive.

the back of the new drive will have 6 tiny pins. you need to put a small plastic clip over the pins in a particular position to make the new drive a slave. instructiuons will show you how.

Not sure about the ATA / IDE thing, but I think that IDE sounds right.

It's really much much easier to install an internal, and the data transfer should be quicker.

[roadsweeper]

ATG said:

We use Lacie and Maxtor external drives ... various ones btwn 200 and 300GB. With USB2 or firewire they provide perfectly adequate transfer speeds ... and faster than can be achieved across a 100Mb ethernet (which is something to take into account if you were thiking of a NAS solution). We've had no problem with them at all. We use them primarlily for database backups and where their portability comes in handy for taking backups off-site, and also use them to shift large amounts of data from our development and production systems.

I can second this. My company has a number of Maxtor external HDDs and they are excellent and also offer the OneTouch backup facility which is very useful. They require USB2.0 and an external power supply but they're reasonably quiet and fast enough to run a VirtualPC or VMWare Virtual Machine from.

[cuneus]

joospeed said:

as an aside .. how do i know if i've got usb2 on my toshiba tecra8100 laptop? can't find a mention of usb2 looking through "my computer" .. my 10gb HD is almost full .. curse that pistonheads.tv and swedishladies.com

www.toshiba-europe.com/computers/products/notebooks/tecra8100/product.htm

USB 1

[pdV6]

speedychrissie said:

ok, so i have just done a quick search for internal hard drives. how do i find out what kind will work with my computer? there seem to be a few basic types: serial ATA IDE and also, what about a controller? do i need to get another controller, or is it ok as i already have one in my computer? (i assume that i do as my computer does work!) chris

You'll be ok with your existing controller.
As to whether its an IDE or SATA one, what's the model of your PC?

[mcflurry]

dell's www will tell you the maximum size of internal drive you can connect to your model of pc and the type of drive it is (SATA/IDE etc)

As a by-the-by some older machines had a limit at about 500mb, 2GB etc which are overcome with drive manager software.

200 gb internals are a LOT cheaper than external drives...

[NiceCupOfTea]

I bought a Maxtor OneTouch2 300GB external drive. Beautifully machined case, solid, fast, USB2/Firewire, compact, just plug and play with any computer.

So I use it as file storeage, backup device, and portable HD (take it with me when away from flat so that if PC gets nicked I have everything backed up, and I can copy stuff from my brother if I am there, etc.)

Lovely bit of kit, haven't been that pleased with anything I have bought for a while now, just does what it says on the tin



£167.97 on Scan for the 300GB version. Bargain.

[malman]

Open the side of the dell and have a look at the existing drive if it has a 5cm wide connector (probably flat ribbon cable but can be round these days) and a 2cm power connector its ATA/IDE. If it has 2 x 1 to 2 cm connectors power and data cables then its SATA. If you can read the label then the model number will give it away.

While you're in there make sure that Dell have allowed you to fit another drive by providing the space in the metal cage for it to fit into. I have seen Dell cases with only room for 1 internal HDD :angry:. You can add a second cage but you can only buy it with a Dell HDD upgrade kit which comes with a drive and they are quite expensive compared to just fitting any HDD from somewhere else

links to pics of drives
IDE with round data and power cable
SATA drive with data and power cables

[chris.mapey]

I got my second hard drive drive from fleabay.

Seagate internal 160Gb drive for £45 delivered.

As new, proper packing & works great.

Chris