External Hard Drive
- Thread starter drmwevr08
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I like Newegg.com - Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, Digital Cameras and more! for most things PC related. You can even just buy the enclosure if you have a harddrive laying around somewhere.
Sometimes your big box stores will have some external drives on clearance for great prices though, so it can be worth a shot to look at them.
Sometimes your big box stores will have some external drives on clearance for great prices though, so it can be worth a shot to look at them.
I don't think it really matters much, there are only a few companies that make the actual drives. Segate seems to be the best consumer grade HD's right now. They also are one of the 2 best non consumer HD makers, along with Hitachi.
Also - I got ALOT of negative comments on Western Digitals equipment.
I went to Amazon and checked out a few brands and looked that the comments people left. There seemed to be a stark difference between some. A couple (ie WD) had ALOT of failures and other issues.
I went to Amazon and checked out a few brands and looked that the comments people left. There seemed to be a stark difference between some. A couple (ie WD) had ALOT of failures and other issues.
I agree that the Seagate FreeAgent's seem to be about the best for price/performance/capacity. I've always been a fan of Seagate's drives but typically they all fall into the same failure rate nowadays - Seagate used to be far ahead of the others but they've all improved to be fairly equal. The Seagate drives "usually" run quieter if you're going to have it close by.
Depending on how elaborate you want to get - you can also get NAS drives that you can hook up directly to your home network. We have a server in the basement to backup all the CF stuff and it only gets Seagate drives.
Depending on how elaborate you want to get - you can also get NAS drives that you can hook up directly to your home network. We have a server in the basement to backup all the CF stuff and it only gets Seagate drives.
- Mar 23, 2006
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I have a 350GB Maxtor and a 250GB Seagate. No problems with either. I use the Maxtor as a backup drive for the data on the Seagate and for some stuff that's on the internal drive. Better safe than sorry..I hope.
I have a Maxtor 120GB (that's a couple of years old now) that I use as my storage device for MP3s, photos, videos, etc. No problems whatsoever, and works even better than it did now that I have USB2 installed in my computer.
I don't know how deeply you are going to get into this...But I bought a SATA enclosure from newegg that had a dual connection (eSATA and USB 2.0), and a Seagate 500 GB SATA drive. I stuck a generic SATA card with the VIA chipset in my PC (and also a SATA DVD-RW drive just for the heck of it :biggrin
.
The eSATA is blazing fast. I timed some file transfers to the external drive, and eSATA blew USB 2.0 away. However the hot-plugging for eSATA drives in Windows XP is a little rough yet, but the latest driver for my VIA SATA card has improved that issue.
.The eSATA is blazing fast. I timed some file transfers to the external drive, and eSATA blew USB 2.0 away. However the hot-plugging for eSATA drives in Windows XP is a little rough yet, but the latest driver for my VIA SATA card has improved that issue.
- Mar 23, 2006
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My 350gb Maxtor was only $90. Found it via Slick Deals or one of the other deals sites.
You make your own hard drives? Like buy platters and have your own clean room and such? You are officially the alpha nerd!
The longer this thread goes on, the less likely any of us are to have sex again!
Not a problem there.
Currently we have an older Gateway PC and a newer Sony laptop. We use the laptop 99% of the time and it has 2 hard drives - all of our MP3s and photos are on the 2nd one.
I back up all of our images on DVDs every once in a while, but should probably get an external hard drive at some point and connect it to the wireless network.
The end goal is to get a server in the basement that all data is saved on, eliminate the PC and get a 2nd laptop.
I back up all of our images on DVDs every once in a while, but should probably get an external hard drive at some point and connect it to the wireless network.
The end goal is to get a server in the basement that all data is saved on, eliminate the PC and get a 2nd laptop.
