About external hard drives?

Question

I'm planning to but an external hard drives, but i need a few suggestions

Maxtor (9)

Seagate (8)

Iomega (6)

which one has the best reputation

# Drive Connectivity

# EIDE

# eSATA

# Ethernet

# Ethernet and USB 2.0

# Serial ATA

# USB 2.0

# USB 2.0 and eSATA

# USB 2.0 and FireWire

what is the difference of these connectivity

what should i look for when i but a hard drive

Answer 1

out of those seagate would probably be the best, from what I've noticed the 2 best are seagate and western digital, you will probably want a usb type of connection, I'd probably go with firewire myself and depending on your computer and how you want it set up will be a deciding factor too, because you can get a portable but you have to have a powered USB port, or you can get a tower that runs it's own power, you can usually get a bigger drive on the self power, but there is a convenience to a portable

Answer 2

DO NOT GET MAXTOR

Seagate is your best option of the 3. It has the best reputation, best quality, and should have a 5-year warranty.

Western Digital is probably a slightly better choice than Seagate, but their warranty is usually 3 years.

For speed, you'll want eSATA, it's the fastest of the bunch. You won't be able to use it unless you have a eSATA port on your computer. This is either built in, or added on by adding a peripheral (PCI) card in the back.

For universal use, you'll want USB 2.0- this will allow you to use it pretty much anywhere on any computer.

If you want to connect it to your router and let everyone on your network access those files, Ethernet is the way to go, but it's probably the slowest choice. This is also called NAS (Network-Attached Storage).

EIDE is only a concern for inside your computer, or if you're taking an internal drive and putting it in an external case to make your own external drive. Otherwise forget about that or email me for more info.

Same with SATA. Unless you're making your own external drive, don't worry about it. If you ARE, then you'll want to use SATA-300 if you plan on using a eSATA connection. In fact, an external case with eSATA connections probably will only let you put a SATA drive inside of it.

If you're using any other kind of connection, either EIDE or SATA is fine (as long as the case will accept that type) because neither will reach their full speed potential with firewire, usb, or ethernet, so you don't need to buy the best/fastest in that instance.

Firewire has a slightly slower top speed than USB 2.0 (400 vs 480Mbps), but USB 2.0 almost never reaches its top speed and firewire runs consistantly at its top, so realistically it's faster, but not nearly as universal as USB is.