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 )

[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. 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

[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 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.