Hardware What should I buy? External Harddrives

[moozxy]

I'm looking to buy an external harddrive and am having a few problems in making my decision.
I'm going to mainly use it to store and use to play my music and videos.
I've been looking around ebuyer.com and I've found several different harddrives all around the same price so I don't know i'll be sacrificing performace for space or whether some are just more overpriced than others.

The ones I've found are:
Formac 120GB Portable Hard Drive USB2.0/Firewire 8MB Cache
Seagate FreeAgent Go 160GB USB 2.5" External Hard Drive
LaCie 500GB External Hard Drive USB2.0
Western Digital 160GB Portable Hard Drive USB2.0 5400rpm 2MB Cache
Western Digital 160GB Portable Hard Drive USB2.0

Or if all of these are bad and you know a better site with better deals please recommend me some!

 

[Salamantis]

I have a LaCie 500GB. LaCie is a good brand, I haven't had a single problem with mine.

 

[moozxy]

Ye I was looking to buy that one. IS there an issue with the desktop ones and the portable ones? As in does the desktop one break easily when carried around?
Also would there be alot of difference in a 8mb cache and a 2mb cache?

 

[Salamantis]

Ye I was looking to buy that one. IS there an issue with the desktop ones and the portable ones? As in does the desktop one break easily when carried around?

Well desktop ones are just that, made to be on the desktop. If you need to carry it around, get a portable. I'm just saying that LaCie is a reliable brand.

 

[moozxy]

Say if I wanted to take some of my data over to a friend's house, would that be ok? What are the limitations of it being able to be transported around?

 

[Salamantis]

Say if I wanted to take some of my data over to a friend's house, would that be ok? What are the limitations of it being able to be transported around?

I think if you don't move your bag around too much, and be careful placing it, you should be just fine. If it could withstand being shipped, it will be fine.

 

[Sinkhead]

You can transport any external drive, but the portable ones are for taking around regularly, and the desktop ones are for moving occasionally.

 

[arctic_flame]

If you looked on the next page: http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=69611

I'd recommend Western Digital, but only because I have 2 and they're excellent.

 

[War]

I recommend a Maxtor One-Touch 250GB one. Its not HUGE, it works really fast, and you can backup your files with the touch of a button. Its pretty cool.

 

[Banger]

I personally like the mybooks. But another option is buy an external enclosure and just buy a hard drive.

 

[arctic_flame]

I personally like the mybooks. But another option is buy an external enclosure and just buy a hard drive.

I also use the MyBook series of external HDs ( http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=357 )

There's a whole range of them.

 

[sekhu]

I have two mybooks, one of them died the other day with what I've coined as the click-of-death - which is a series of clicks made by the drive,not being recognised by the PC and with the drive not spinning up.

Although I have lost my data for one of the drives, the other one has been working fine for the past couple of years with torrent abuse, gaming and watching movies as well as playing music constantly.

WD also have an advanced swap out option if you drive dies, whereby they send you a new drive before you return the old one. Of course the advanced swap out requires that you provide CC details in case you think about keeping both drives.

 

[Jax]

I have a LaCie 500GB. LaCie is a good brand, I haven't had a single problem with mine.

That's exactly the one I bought the other day for my birthday.

 

[Urza]

Putting another vote in for the MyBooks, and also the Seagate FreeAgent (Desktop) series. The latter has a very slim profile, and you can pick them up for a bit of a discount over the MyBooks.

 

[moozxy]

Ok well I've decided to buy the LaCie 500GB, since its within my pricerange (the mybooks were a tad expensive) and offers alot of space. I'm wondering although two people have said it's good does anyone have any bad experience with it?

 

[Harsky]

I am currently using a Seagate Freeagent (not the one in the link but one that requires extrenal power) and so far, it's really good. I had a terrible experience with a extrernal HDD I bought from ebay that was powered by USB cable. It had a problem where just touching it is enough to think that it got removed but it was okay... until I was in the middle of copy and pasting some files when suddenly it happened and I was almost crying because I thought I lost ALL my data but a quick search for a recovery program helped. Saved the HDD but ditched the enclosure.

 

[moozxy]

There is another seagate freeagent that I'm considering, it's half the size of the LaCie, 250GB... but then it is cheaper... Atm though, the only thing other than price that is going for the Seagate is the looks, since IMO the LaCie looks kinda ugly.
Sooooo unless there are real horror stories about the LaCie, I think I will buy it