External Hard Drive, Which To Go For?

I bought a western digital 160gb 3 months ago for 60$.
it hasnt given me problems yet works great.

I use Maxtor drives because I've picked them up real cheap (staples had really good sales) a few years back. Both my brother and dad prefer western digital but I haven't seen any difference and I have around 5 300gb drives. (I bought internals drives and a $40 enclosure, was much more cost effective at time and works in or out the PC)

Note: I've seen 1.5TB for under $130 (i think it was on New Egg)

since your in the uk i checked out pcworld.co.uk they have 1tb western digital external hard drive for about 80GBP that would be the one i go for... i have 6 WD EXT HD sat next to my desktop

however for me i still prefer multiple smaller 250gb external hard drives - if say the 1tb is your one and only external/backup drive and it gets near storage and it does fail.... thats a shit load of data to loose...

i use multiple drives and mirror it.... been there and lost a lot of data before... you sometimes have to learn the hard way...

ukescuba said:

however for me i still prefer multiple smaller 250gb external hard drives - if say the 1tb is your one and only external/backup drive and it gets near storage and it does fail.... thats a shit load of data to loose...

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Exactly why I am getting another drive. Any really important stuff I store on my server under a domain that is never used, but this is still the reason I am getting another drive, or two. Having over 600GB of media will not be fun trying to replace.

calisupplier said:

I use Seagate FreeAgents. I have about 10 that I use as server backups with no problems.

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Wow, that is a great testimonial for Seagate. They have two versions of the FreeAgent, one is just FreeAgent and the other is the FreeAgent Pro. Do you prefer one over the other or doesn't it make a difference. There is a price difference and the plain FreeAgent seems to go on sale frequently. A hard drive back up is not a place to pinch pennies if a few dollars more makes a real improvement.

Thanks

Western Digital is the best for me. I own 9 Western digital external hard drives.

This is the one I own, not all 9 but its the latest one I've bought.
Now there are some cons to owning it like the occasionally slowdown (which is rare) BUT the one thing I'm sure you will like is knowing that its not going to crash and lose everything.

I've owned 1 seagate external hard-drive before and after about 2 months it had a complete meltdown and I lost everything inside. All 500gb of movies and torrent files. I was pretty pissed.

So i don't know about you but the most important thing to me in an external harddrive is knowing that I'm not going to lose everything inside and western digital is the best for that.

xvoidx said:

I've owned 1 seagate external hard-drive before and after about 2 months it had a complete meltdown and I lost everything inside. All 500gb of movies and torrent files. I was pretty pissed.

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That can happen to any drive, i've had it happen to Western Digitals also. You can and do get bad batches of any brand drive, even drives of the same model one can go in months while the other functions for 5 years no problems.

The main thing with data storage is always REPLICATE to at least 2 different locations. My server for example has RAID 10 plus the data is backed up to 3 different locations in various stages of incremental backups in case one archive is corrupt simply because i can't afford to lose the data.

If a drive fails and you lose the lot, you have only got yourself to blame not Seagate/WD/Maxtor etc.

Sweetfunny said:

That can happen to any drive, i've had it happen to Western Digitals also. You can and do get bad batches of any brand drive, even drives of the same model one can go in months while the other functions for 5 years no problems.

The main thing with data storage is always REPLICATE to at least 2 different locations. My server for example has RAID 10 plus the data is backed up to 3 different locations in various stages of incremental backups in case one archive is corrupt simply because i can't afford to lose the data.

If a drive fails and you lose the lot, you have only got yourself to blame not Seagate/WD/Maxtor etc.

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I understand that, I was just giving my personal experience with seagate. I've only owned ONE seagate so I can't give a good overview. I have owned a lot of western digital so I stand by them. I was pissed that my hard-drive failed because it was so new not because I lost everything. I had my files backed up on a western digital hard drive.

I recommend getting an enclosed raid drive. That way you will get a extra protection as everyone has been saying. You don't want what happened t o live journal to happen to you.

I've used multiple Maxtor externals that i have gotten on sale over the years and never had an issue. I leave my computer and my externals on 24/7/365

Be sure to grab and enclosure with a fan if you are going to be using the drive alot or leaving it on.. Most external hard drives die from the heat and poor cooling.

Check out for reviews

When looking to buy an external drive, you want to get the following things:

USB 2.0 capability
Aluminum or other sturdy case
More than 100GB or space (or less if you pefer)

Look on ebay if your looking for price. The ones you'll get at best buy or equivalent will be around 250GB but extremely overpriced. You can get a 1TB drive for around $150 on ebay!

If you go with a thermal take blacX enclosure, you can pop in hard drives like it's a toaster. I have one and use a sharpie marker on the label for websites and programs etc. I use a ton of data so it might not be for you. But the toaster and the 500Gb drive was under $100 bucks in the US.

I have a 1tb maxtor one touch 4. Ive had it for a while and had no problems with it. http://www.maxtor.com/en/hard-drive-backup/external-drives/maxtor-onetouch-4.html

Using computers since Dos and when computers didn't even have a HDD,
MHO is Maxtor First,Seagate,Western Digital next.

Keep in mind they ALL break down, for someone.
Hopefully not me or you !

So, the posts about redundant backups are sage advice.Do it.
Backup, backup and backup some more.

Personally I like buying empty enclosures then I can get a sale discount on the drive
to put into it.
Every Sunday there are great sales at the office stores.
I am a fan of Newegg.com too but, don't know if they ship to you also, Tiger Direct

I also practice proper HDD maintenance by doing a scan with "Spinrite" which stress tests the discs to find failing sectors which prevents data loss.
It has also saved drives which I thought were trashed. Then I was able to transfer to a new back up.
Being they have mechanic bearings they will all eventually fail.

RAID set ups are what I really think I should do.

Dan08 said:

hi all. am looking to buy a external hard drive. but i dont know jack about computers etc. but i want a decent one that does the job and will not delete my shit..

also bare in mind im in uk so cannot go buying just anything.

do any of you have any input on what to get? have been browsing amazon.co.uk and seen many but i just dont know which to choose...

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I have 1TB Western Digital buts its new so cannot give you a full review on it except it was really quick to transfer all my "stuff" to.
Also have an older Seagate (only 80G) and it has never missed a beat but was so slow to transfer to. Reliable though.

I have 5 seagate external hard drives, each 1tb. I choose seagate because it also had 32mb cache size. Super quick and quiet.

I used to be a WD user but last year I went through three of them in a row that went bad and lost a lot of data. (Yes, I backed up but unfortunately the back up went bad too.)

They run around $135 each with s/h.

Key Features:

* 7,200 RPM desktop performance - high performance for PCs / Mac and entry-level ATA servers
* 3D Defense System - best reliability and handling damage protection
* Fast data transfer rates
* Carry tons of your digital images and movies everywhere you go!
* Add Multiple Number of External Drives to Your PC or MAC system
* Simple Plug and Play Installation
* Hot Plug and Play Storage
* Transfer Rates up to 480Mbps via USB 2.0

Specifications:

* SATA to USB 2.0, support transfer rate up to 480Mbps
* Fitting for 3.5" SATA Hard Drives
* Universal Mass Storage (UMS)
* Compatible with PC Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP/VISTA
* Compatible with Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP/VISTA
* Compatible with Mac OS 9.X / 10.X or above (Ver.10.3,10.1,10.12)
* USB 2.0/1.1 interface
* 3.5-inch internal SATA device
* For Window ME/2000/XP/VISTA and Mac 9.0 or higher use build in driver. (No need to install driver)
* Window 98SE driver installation required

Yes I agree with grafxextreme. Seagate is the way to go.

And I've had problems with Western Digital in the past

One of the best hard disk manufacturers is Maxtor, but they are not as inexpensive as other brands.

I've been a computer tech for about 20 years and I don't know about portable USB Western Digital units, but I have always had bad experiences with their regular IDE devices, so I would rather stay, as the others said, with the Seagate one if a Maxtor unit is not available.

Rick