External Hard Drives

Can someone recommend me a good and good for its price external hard drive? ^_^

~100 GB should be enough space
< $100 would be nice

But I'm flexible :choc:

P.S. I heard Western Digital was the best brand. Confirm? :o

Actually, are external and portable hard drives different things? o_O

I pretty much want it for storage and back-ups. It'd be nice if I could play music and etc straight off of it too.

For a maximum of 100 dollars, you can probably get over 500 GB. I doubt you will be able to play anything right off it, though. That's not really common, and you'd need a lot more electronics in it than what's normal.

Also, you should know that no matter what brand, there is still a chance that the hard disk may break down. While it might still be under warranty when this happen, the manufacturers warranty will only cover the actual piece of hardware, and you will have no guarantee that the data that was on it can be saved. Also remember that a hard disk can't take much abuse at all. It hates strong vibrations, shock, and other kinds of mechanical stress. Treat it as you would treat a box full of eggs. And please don't keep important files stored in just one location. Copy them to two, maybe three different devices.

Actually, I think that hard drives should be kept in one place as much as possible, and the person who came up with putting them in an external case (which promotes moving it around a lot) should be shot between the eyes :p.

When it comes to external hard drives, many manufacturers of external HDDs don't actually make the HDDs themselves. Many just buy hard disks from one of the major HDD manufacturers, and make a nice-looking, trendy casing for it.

That being said, Western Digital is actually one of those who does manufacture hard disks, so the disks inside their external casings would most likely be their own. WD is also a fairly reputable brand, but that is of course no guarantee that it will never fail.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

Actually, I think that hard drives should be kept in one place as much as possible, and the person who came up with putting them in an external case (which promotes moving it around a lot) should be shot between the eyes :p.

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External drives are very good for upgrading laptop capacities though :p But yes, moving HDs around whilst they're on is bad :p Unless they're solid state (essentially giant memory stick), but those are still expensive :p

I personally mostly use Maxtor drives, WD have been kind of hit-and-miss with either very good or very bad brands in my experience in the past :p Lacee are also pretty good too :p

What's interesting is which brand of disks are inside Lacees :p. For instance, I've found three different brands of hard drives inside various Packard Bell external drives. Sometimes even the exact same model of external drive. :p

But in truth Clout, neither of us have used a statistically significant number of disks over a prolonged time, and anecdotal evidence is pretty useless :p.

And for laptop storage space upgrades, just make sure you buy a good laptop. By that I mean a laptop that has a free HDD slot. 2.5" drives aren't really that expensive, and you'd get far more than 100 GB for 1000 dollars with those too. Although, laptops suffer the same problem as external hard disks; lots of being throwed around and tilted and moved and put in backpacks. So a hard drive in a maltreated laptop would be just as bad off.

I've found HDs in recent IBM (Lenovo really) and HP laptops have shock/freefall sensors now so moving them around will cause the head to park (with help from software anyway) to minimise damage :p Dunno if other manufacturers do that too :p

Although that's still not really an excuse to be moving them about more than necessary, it's nice being able to roam around the office floor at work with a laptop in hand and connected over wireless :p

I do that even without fancy damage mitigation technologies. Gotta live on the edge you know!

And such technologies would totally lower performance. Have a backup instead, and complain to the shop if it breaks.

:o Thanks.

So we're all in agreement that I won't be able to play anything straight off of it and have to transfer it to the computer first? ;-;

Get a 320GB Western Digital My Passport. I just got one and it's brilliant.

It connects through USB, doesn't need a power supply like 500GB+ ones do, and I can play music, movies and some games straight from the device with no slow down. (I've got around 10,000 songs I can skip through and it responds as if it's on my computer). Anyone who tells you that you can't play anything straight from the device has either never had an external HDD or just have no idea what they are on about.

It's all very quick in transfers and playback. It's also very cheap.

I was looking on settling for a Passport too, except the 160 GB one. ^_^ Did you get the Elite or the Essential?

Oh, yeah, now I get it. Any external hard drive will let you play back the stuff that's on it, without having to copy it to the computer first. I thought you meant that you wanted to play back what was on it without connecting it to a PC first.
As far as the programs on your PC are concerned, the external hard drive is the exact same as the internal hard drive inside your PC. They can't really tell the difference. Just be sure not to disconnect it while you are writing files to the it. You could get corrupted data if you do.

Any games that you install to the external hard drive will work fine too, as long as you make sure the drive always gets the same drive letter.


Also, what is the difference between elite an essential? Does the elite have an option for Firewire connectivity in addition to USB? If so, you'll want to check if your PC has got a Firewire port. Also note that the small firewire connectors can't supply power to the disk, you need the large firewire ports for that, and those are rarely found on laptops (on this case, you need to connect the hard drive to an external power source, such as from the wall socket). With USB, you could probably get the power you need just from the USB port. If you have an old laptop, you might need two USB ports to get enough power, but that's probably ok.

My Passport Overview

Elite has "Backup software, remote access software, soft touch finish, capacity gauge" while Essential doesn't. xD I don't know what any of that means so I probably don't need it, right?

Essentials has a back up option as well, it also has syncing options, and the Elite has stuff you'll never need really. I ended up deleting the programs already on the drive, seeing as I organize it my own way.

Seriously, if you want to gauge the capacity, then just go to My Computer and it'll tell you. XD

Pick the colour you love, and get one. They have a glossy finish and are just so sexy.

For $US100, you should be able to get at least a couple of hundred gigs. Maybe up to half a terabyte if you shop around.

Anyway... as long as there's a good warranty period, the brand hopefully shouldn't make too much of a difference. Absolute bottom-of-the-line should be avoided, though.

Thanks everyone :3 I think I'll get this one:

My Passport Essential 160 GB USB 2.0 Hard Drives ( WDMEY1600 )

in yellow. I really wanted the super pretty blue one, but they're out of stock. And pink is really nice, but the yellow one is $10 cheaper and well, it's just a color. ^^