How good are the external hard drives? ?

Question

I'm looking to make an upgrade and get more hard drive and was looking into external ones and was curious to those of you who have or had them what do you think? Any certain brand I should look into? Looking for suggestions and thoughts on this product. I wanted to find out before I went and got one, I don't know anyone personally who uses one.

Answer 1

In this day and age of digital data, an external hard drive is extremely important whether you want it for extra space or not.

I have two. One is to store files on that will not fit on my computer (as well as backing up files from my laptop), and the other one is a backed-up mirror image copy of the first external hard drive.

This is important so that, in the event of one hard drive failing, you haven't lost all your important data

Brand name usually isn't that important (if you buy from eBay for example) as they usually use Samsung hard drives anyway.

However, if you are buying from a reputable store, they usually only stock quality brands.

I think you should get at least a 500GB hard drive. Even if you don't think you will need all that space, it will be good to have for the future.

I think you should go to the store and talk to the sales assistant (preferrably an expert on computers) to see which External Hard Drive would suit you and your budget (if you have one) best.

Expect to pay around $200 or so for a 500GB External Hard Drive.

Good Luck!!

Answer 2

Captain Obvious had some good advice. Of course this does depend on if you have a Firewire port. It will have 1394 next to it, or it looks like this,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:FireW...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewire

(If you're planning on gaming with an external harddrive, okay. If not, you probably won't need the added speed.)

A USB 2.0 connection on your computer should do just nicely, if you're just going to use an external harddrive for more storage.

(But ultimately the choice is yours of course! lol!)

Which external harddrive to recommend? Everyone has their own opinion of which is best. I believe, you should check reviews on the internet for this. There are computer websites that do this all the time.

Here are some examples of external harddrives.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/...

These are the 3.5 inch external harddrives. (Desktop computers use a 3.5 inch harddrive. Laptop's use a 2.5 inch.)

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/...

Edit: Nope, no 'nays' on the Western Digital Passbook. I have a preference for WD harddrives. If I were to buy an external harddrive, I would choose WD's first.

(From my experience, they tend to be quieter. Plus in the 'Geekazoid' world here, Western Digital was the first to bring out the 10,000 Rpm spindle speed harddrive. ->Raptor. {This is mainly for gamers. Normal spindle speeds are 7,200 Rpm. There are harddrives with MUCH faster speeds out now. 15,000 Rpm up.)

They usually have large buffer sizes. They have great seek time.

Answer 3

They are great, especially for pics, music and backing up really important stuff.  You will be surprised at just how much you can put on one and save the hard drive space on your computer. There are many out there but I prefer Maxtor and Western Digital (normally cheaper than the rest).  

Answer 4

forget brand names for right now, you need to know what you need it for. iF you want to just backup files, any ole usb ext HDD will do, just pick  size. Your planing on using it frequently then then get a Firewire drive (ieee 1394) Like everything else you connect to your computer bus speeds determine pricing and performnce just cause it say firewire there are different speeds to that as well. Plus you need to make sure your computer has a ieee 1394 port. I have a usb Western Digital 250gb Passport and still havent filled it yet. A rule of thumb for me, buy one the same size as your hard drive. I have 3 computers and esstientialy one hdd amongst them

alirght now the second question is how much data do you have and how much do you want to spend http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory....

third do you want it to be portable, thats the difference between a 3.5 drive and 2.5 inch drive. If you dont care a 3.5 will more often than not will be cheaper than a 2.5 drive the same size in capacity

Have you consider flash memory (pen drives)? Data storrage on a key chain http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory....