External Harddrive

[Rostum]

Hey so I'm in the market for an external harddrive. Something I can carry in my bag and use on the university's computer. Something around the 500GB-750GB mark (hopefully around $200AUD).

I want to be able to store movies, music, uni work, working files (like large uncompressed video footage, maya files, textures, etc.), and games. I am so sick of the 4GB memory stick I have which can barely hold anything I need.

[escobert]

I love my external drive (not that I take it anywhere :p)

[Momiji]

I know that I've seen 500GB external drives before for around $100 USD...

[Rostum]

Yeah, it looks like there's some good Western Digital, Seagate, and Maxtor external hard drives. I'm not really sure what a good brand is, or what physical size they are (like, can I put it in my bag with my tablet and books).

So what's a good brand? And what kind of sizes (physically) are they?

[XxSephirothxX]

Take a look at these (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150414%20131021357&bop=And&Order=REVIEWS). It's probably worth reading multiple reviews on many of the models to see why they got the score they did. Looks like quite a few are within your price-range.

[Rostum]

Thanks, those My Books look really cool...

[crono_logical]

750 GB is fine, but I'd advise you to be careful if you're going for 1 TB or higher - most of them at the moment are actually 2 x 500 physical disks in one case, so twice the chance of disk failure, so you need to check the technical specs on those carefully :p

[Rostum]

Nah I think 750GB is the highest I'd go. Looking at My Books... there seems to be a few different versions of it, anyone know anything about them? Like what's the difference between World and Essential edition?

[crono_logical]

The main difference I see between home and essential on that site is home is more expensive but supports more types of connectors to the computer (firewire and esata) - they're better than usb 2 if you're going to be copying large amounts of data at a time in one sitting e.g. video editing, but make sure your PC/laptop has the appropriate connectors as well though :p esata is also much faster, but is currently the rarest of the three port types on computers. USB2 is sufficient for more general purpose and less heavy usage though.

[Rostum]

Looks like my motherboard has everything but eSATA. Eh, I'm not too worried about slow transfer speeds. The most I'd ever transfer at the one time is 2GB-4GB files. Even if it's larger I am never in a hurry.

I might get one, I know there's a few others that are good too but I can't find any place in Australia that sells them.

Edit: I just decided it's more practical to get a 320GB My Passport (Western Digital). Even though the transfer speeds are slightly slower (I don't even have eSATA anyway), it doesn't require a power supply and is much smaller in physical size.

[Jojee]

Oh here's another topic on it. ^_^ I was just looking at that page and comparing My Book vs My Passport!

How is that working out for you? I don't really get the difference between a My Book and a My Passport o_O

[Rostum]

My Book needs are power supply as well as connection to computer. The newer ones can connect through USB, Firewire or eSATA.

My Passport are a lot smaller (seriously, the size of a passport, just a little thicker, and you can get different colours). Only connect through USB (which is still fairly fast, btw, I can transfer around 30GB at once in under 10 minutes), and doesn't need a power supply just straight into the computer.

I was going to get a My Book but carrying around a power supply was a huge turn off, especially since at Uni it'd be hard to find a power point near the computer.

Plus, I'd gather most notebooks don't have eSATA or firewire ports.