Posted: 10/14/2009 7:02:37 AM EDT
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So my computer's hard drive died a couple of days ago....I hadn't backed up in a few months like an idiot. Well I'm looking to buy a new external hard drive that is good, reliable, and easy to update. What do ya'll recommend?
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I got this one.
Free shipping and $20 rebate. My rebate took like 2 1/2 months to arrive though. Still going strong and can not tell when the HD is on. It's very quiet. |
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Quoted: Buy a good enclosure and buy a good, reliable drive to put in it. If you buy a premade one, they seem to all do their best to hide exactly what model drive is in the thing. This. And reading about them after I toasted several 'premade's, Seagate/Maxtor (and others) use a different spec for the same size internal drives specifically for the premades. They aren't as robust, and the intention is that you don't run them all the time. ALL my premades have crashed/burned within 16 months when I left them connected to the bus. Do your own googlesearch on reliability and see. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153071 These have worked the best for me so far. I bought 4 different types at the same time. This is the one I haven't sent back for malf's. Best Buy has doubles for sale on the shelf. Buy one of these and a good internal drive to plug into this for your backups, Get a larger internal drive and Acronis to clone your c: drive to a larger unit. |
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I've had really good luck with the Western Digital Passport drives. 320 gigs at Newegg.com for under $70. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136227 |
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Quoted:
Just go to Best Buy and buy whatever they have, they've got 500 gig and terrabyte drives for cheap, dont make it more complicated than it has to be. Got a 500 gig verbatim external, it was cheap, and it holds files, end of story. Every time I've ever looked at hard drive prices at Best Buy, they've been astronomical compared to Newegg. |
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Quoted: True. The only advantage is being able to walk out with something in your hand right now.Quoted: Just go to Best Buy and buy whatever they have, they've got 500 gig and terrabyte drives for cheap, dont make it more complicated than it has to be. Got a 500 gig verbatim external, it was cheap, and it holds files, end of story. Every time I've ever looked at hard drive prices at Best Buy, they've been astronomical compared to Newegg. |
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Comparing the prices it doesn'l look like that big of a difference on them right now....I'm sure when they put them on sale it is no comparison though. Quoted: Quoted: True. The only advantage is being able to walk out with something in your hand right now.Quoted: Just go to Best Buy and buy whatever they have, they've got 500 gig and terrabyte drives for cheap, dont make it more complicated than it has to be. Got a 500 gig verbatim external, it was cheap, and it holds files, end of story. Every time I've ever looked at hard drive prices at Best Buy, they've been astronomical compared to Newegg. |
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I use a WD 500 gig model. I downloaded a Microsoft add on called Sync-Toy 2 for free, and every morning @ 2:00am my computer checks both locations for changes, and updates the portable drive. Best solution that I've found yet. It isn't a mirror, so I would have to re-install the OS and my programs if I lost my CPU, but that is no sweat. |
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Quoted:
Would a solid state hard drive be worth the money to make into an external? Well, that depends on how much money you have to burn... 
Seriously though, I would not recommend that for the simple reason that specific cost of SSDs is still very high ($/GB) and overall capacity of the drives is nowhere near conventional HDDs. For backup purposes I would buy a reliable large capacity SATA II hard drive with good customer feedback. Western Digital Black 1TB comes to mind for around $100. Speed is not an important factor for home backups, the drive could even be a 5400 rpm drive and you'd not see a big difference because you don't run your system off of it and mainly perform sequential read/writes. The 5400 rpm drives are also cheaper by the way. You should buy an external enclosure that lets you connect using any one of three ways: USB 2.0, Firewire (IEEE 1394), and eSATA (external SATA). That way you'll be covered on just about any computer. Of course you'll want to use the eSATA connection any chance you get because it's the fastest of the three. I have such an enclosure and it works great. If you want to speed up your system and vastly improve boot/response/load times, then SSDs are hard to beat. You could get a 80GB or 160GB Intel SSD (make sure its second generation that supports TRIM technology) and use it as your system drive (where the operating system resides). However, these drives are still very pricey. |
| just bought eSATA after much looking: LaCie 1TB. got $15 off chatting with rep, since the promo code EMCHDD10C was not working for me. |