External Hard Drive

[Dkong1026]

I'm looking for an external hard drive for the holidays.

Minimum space I need is 30 gb (not sure if they even make external HD's that small, but I really only need to back up like 20 gb worth of crap).

Price Range- $50-150, preferably, unless those are all crap.


So what's a good external HD that meets those specs and lasts a long time?

[hobbes_fan]

Buy your own HDD AND Case. Better value and idiot proof to build
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817392002
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152052

$140 for 500gig as opposed to

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152052

Warranty is the same for the HDD-3 yrs.

[Ledgem]

Somewhat related to my thread. I've been doing some external HD research for a while... here's what I've found.

If you find a really good deal on a HD, consider that prices for PATA enclosures seem to start at $20 (Newegg has a few for $8 or so, after $15-20 rebates). There was a really nice one that had USB and firewire 400, as well as a fan, for $26 - currently sold out. SATA enclosures can be even cheaper, unless you want firewire, in which case they're more expensive than the PATA counterparts. (I'd really like a drive with firewire if possible...)

I think the smallest HDs you'd find would be 80 Gb or so these days (excluding solid state, which are damn expensive anyway). The thing is, when you get that low, the price difference between that and a drive twice the capacity is usually under $10.

If you don't want to mess with getting a drive and an enclosure, you can just get one regular. Check Newegg's offerings in your price range.

To be honest, I'd always heard and believed that it was cheaper to buy a drive and an enclosure than to buy a premade one, but you have to work pretty damn hard to realize any savings by doing so. The only advantage to getting your own enclosure is that you have more control over both the enclosure and your drive. If you're going to go with a cheap enclosure, you might as well just get a premade external drive, in my opinion.

In all cases, consider your usage. If you're just going to back stuff up and rarely use the drive (don't back up too often, don't play games off the drive, don't watch movies off the drive, don't make the drive multitask), a USB drive/enclosure without a fan would be perfectly fine. If you're going to be using the drive heavily, consider getting a unit that has a fan. I don't think PC users can realize the full benefits of firewire over USB, but if you're running a Mac system by any chance, firewire is nice. Not only does it perform better overall (Firewire 400 does beat out USB 2.0, despite the fact that the theoretical transfer rate of USB 2.0 is 480 mbps and Firewire 400 is 400 mbps - this has been proven by benchmarks, and the difference is rather significant in my opinion), but you can daisy chain drives together. That'd only be of use to you if you foresee having many firewire drives and/or devices - the drive could be used as a hub for other firewire devices. Really neat stuff.

Unfortunately, firewire adds a fair bit of cost to anything, enclosure or pre-made external drive.

If you're eying external drives, I've heard many bad things about the Western Digital Mybooks. We have three new ones at work, and they seem to be OK so far. Western Digital also recently released the second version of their MyBook line, which has received mixed reception - I plan to brave the lines and rush Best Buy tomorrow to pick up a 500 GB MyBook 2.0 for $100 (USB 2.0 only, but I'm desperate for disk space). Western Digital uses their own drives inside of the enclosure, of course. The added benefit is that they also look a hell of a lot nicer than Seagate's "Free Agent" line of external drives. I haven't heard anything bad about the Free Agents, but there are complainers everywhere, so I'm sure that bad reviews exist. Western Digital and Seagate are the two big HD manufacturers, and I've had good experiences with each of them.

If you go with a different external drive maker, I'd recommend reading the reviews carefully. Some people note what drives are being used inside of the enclosures. I also think it's important to be able to crack open the enclosure and remove the drive - ideally you'd never need to do this, but if the enclosure fails, you want to be able to get the drive out and salvage your data. I've had this happen with another work drive (a LaCie - avoid LaCie if you can, they're overpriced and IMO not that reliable). Always worth being prepared for a worst-case scenario.

Hope it helps. You can definitely meet your needs, have fun!

[Supreme1]

Well i been using Western Digital MyBook external HDs for more then a year now with no problem so i looked on new egg and here is a few lower capacity ones i found

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136021
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136022

Currently i have about 1.5 terabytes in External HDs and have had no problems yet

[grey_moon]

One thing to keep in mind about 3rd party enclosures is that they might not support drive sleeping. I've got an Akasa, and 2 other unknown ones and the drives stay spun up. Not that big an issue as I only switch them on to back stuff up.

[Aoie_Emesai]

I'm gonna assume you live in the United States, so i'll be referring to the US for their prices.

Like Ledgem, a little different from him but I've been wanting one for quite a bit just to move files from place to place and on average a 500gb external will run for about 145 US dollars. But you can pretty much find deals on them everywhere, you can try newegg like hobbes_fan posted or Cnet for some reference and information and you should try zipzoomfly.com, it's not as organzied as newegg, but they pretty much have free shipping on most things.

I do know for smaller external harddrive, as size goes down the price from 500gb externals doesn't decrease too much. Most likely you'll probably be getting a thumbdrive or something of that nature.

Originally Posted by hobbes_fan

Buy your own HDD AND Case. Better value and idiot proof to build
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817392002
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152052

$140 for 500gig as opposed to

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152052

Warranty is the same for the HDD-3 yrs.

You know internal are always cheaper, plus i'm out of SATA slots now too >.< My older motherboard only support 2 SATA connection, and I don't want my space hogging IDE in my case anymore ^_^

--
If you have Fry's around you, you should check them out. They are more specialized in electronics than ol Best Buy plus they have a much better variety. Price wise, I can't really say it's better. Sometimes.

[Edgewalker]

About the fan thing: just get a unit that has a fan. You may change your mind on its usage later, and the fan wont hurt it if you decide not to heavily use it.

[hobbes_fan]

Originally Posted by Aoie_Emesai

You know internal are always cheaper, plus i'm out of SATA slots now too >.< My older motherboard only support 2 SATA connection, and I don't want my space hogging IDE in my case anymore ^_^

You got a spare PCI slot? (And hopefully you're not running a *nix based system hardware support for these things is a bit iffy) As an example, not 3.0gb/s but 1.5gb/s (note that all these speeds are theoretical even in optimum conditions I've yet to see any benchmark hit 1/2 of that) which is still better than the IDE interface, as a result of the limitations of the PCI slot
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815124020
Or alternatively if the ribbon cable is what's pissing you off (which is what gives me the shits not the performance) rounded IDE cables are a cheap alternative.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812105901

[Dkong1026]

I ended up getting this one.

Question- why does it have a power cord and junk? Does it have a fan?

All in all, I probably don't need a fan...but 160gb for $80, I'm fine with that .

[grey_moon]

The drive is externally powered, but the psu is a good one and doesn't get hotter then a mini nuke. The essential gets good reviews as it didn't have all the issues that the premium had with its firewire cables and device numbering.

I've got the premium 500 and it does get a little hot when fully spun up, but not as hot as the maxtor onetouch 2, prbably on par with the onetouch 1.

Just don't put it on top of a hot item like the back of your pc (ive seen ppl cook drives that way), or in an enclosed space.

The button is useless if you don't run windows or mac, but the good thing is it does power save (even though people reported the power save functions to be in the drivers).

Oh one really annoying design issue, is the rounded end on the back. Hold the top before you push the button or it might pivot up and fall back down again. Even a little shock can bugger up a spun up drive that is read/writing.

[Potatochobit]

Did you actually leave your house this week? because that is not a great deal. it is better than normal retail though.

I picked up another 320 gb internal for 50$, but they had 500Gb externals for the same price you paid.

[Ledgem]

I ended up braving the crowds at Best Buy, 5 AM on Friday, and got a hold of one of the new MyBook Essential Editions: $100 for 500 GB. It's currently partitioned into two (one for my usage, one for OSX 10.5's "Time Machine" backup stuff) and I'm very pleased. This one is USB 2.0 only - I wanted a firewire drive because my system only has two USB ports and I don't want to buy a USB hub to further clutter my desk; a firewire drive could also chain with future external firewire drives, further saving me on ports. But for the price, I can't complain. Even after an hour of constant usage the drive barely gets warm.

The only difference between this and the "v1 MyBooks" is that there's no power button, and the exterior is extremely glossy. We use three 1.5 TB MyBooks (v1) at work and I barely use the power button on them, so that's not an issue for me. The glossy exterior looks very sleek, but it shows dust and fingerprints very easily. Curses, I'll probably be polishing this obsessively for a while, just as I did when I first got my iPod a few years ago ;P

I hate to remark on a bad deal, but I've got to agree with Potatochobit - that drive is overpriced. Before this Black Friday deal on the drive I ended up getting, I was going to get a Western Digital Element, 320 GB for under $100. But I know you said that you didn't need an incredible amount of disk space, so what you got should meet your needs. I hope it'll give you many years of good service

[Ryusiangel]

sorry if i'm bumping this but recently got a WD thats 160 GB i was wondering how long can it last? usually i like to put unlicence anime and my itune videos on there and i'd get worried that i could loose my files speciall my itune videos that i spent on i spent bout 100 bucks per month on itune videos

[cyberbeing]

How long can it last? Somewhere in the range of 'your drive is already dead' to 'your entire life'.

If you really care about your data, don't take any chances and store it in multiple locations and on multiple mediums and every year or so, replace the old backups with new backups. Then comes the question: Is it cheaper to store your data long term and securely or should you just pay to replace the data?

[Ledgem]

It depends on your usage patterns. If the drive is used daily and/or always on it should be able to last 5-9 years. It could fail earlier, or it could fail later. From a statistical point of view, drives tend to fail either within a year or two of when they're put into use, or after five years (the first year is when the bad drives are weeded out).

If your data is very important to you then you may want to consider making duplicates of it. Storing it on two hard drives, burning backups to CDs or DVDs - that sort of thing. Just keep in mind that nothing lasts forever (including DVDs).