[Topgun]

Looking to buy a tb external hard drive
this is my first time shopping for an external hard drive and I don't know anything about them.

are there any brands I need to avoid?.
any special feature I need to look for? ect.

[JGZinv]

Can't go wrong with Western Digital.

Dual connections (firewire and USB 2) should be standard.
eSata is better, but ten to one you don't have a port on your machine unless
you've had a new comp in the last year. But it's nice to have in the future.

Most software is junk... find a free solution such as Comodo Backup, which will
do everything you need on a general level.

[Blue Lion]

I literally went out and bought a 500g one a few years ago for like 80 bucks, some off brand I think and it plugged it in. Has worked great ever since.

[Topgun]

Can't go wrong with Western Digital.

Dual connections (firewire and USB 2) should be standard.
eSata is better, but ten to one you don't have a port on your machine unless
you've had a new comp in the last year. But it's nice to have in the future.

Most software is junk... find a free solution such as Comodo Backup, which will
do everything you need on a general level.

I don't need it for backup, and I don't need it to be very fast.
I want to put all my music/movies and other documents it.
I *might* watch blu-ray movies off of it in the future, but I think when the time comes I will just buy a new drive exclusively for Hidef stuff.

[Nuke]

i had several hard drives and wanted to make one external. i bought me an external hd enclosure for like 30 bucks. it takes any sata or pata drive and has usb and esata output. was a lot cheaper than a dedicated external drive, and i could use up some of them shelfed drives of varying capacity.

[JGZinv]

USB or firewire is fine for music or movies long as you're not doing anything
else with the drive at the same time.

The whole BD thing... still... esata probably. The larger the better.


Three things at least denote "speed" in a drive - spindle speed like 7200 RPM,
the connection interface, like IDE, SATA, USB, etc.... and the cache available.

[Topgun]

i had several hard drives and wanted to make one external. i bought me an external hd enclosure for like 30 bucks. it takes any sata or pata drive and has usb and esata output. was a lot cheaper than a dedicated external drive, and i could use up some of them shelfed drives of varying capacity.

I probably\ly will go that route then.
Thanks 

[Thaeris]

...Strange...

I was warned against Western Digital.

I've got a 250GB Maxtor drive.

...You know it's good because it's made of METAL!!!

More expensive than WD, but I think it was worth it. And, make sure you check the manufacturer website for prices before you go to a retail store. Chances are it's much cheaper buying directly from the manufacturer...

[watsisname]

Also I'd suggest looking at how long the manufacturer has been around.  With electronics, I tend to shy away from the new stuff, but that's just me. <_<

Also I've had a .5TB WD external for almost a year now, just as a backup, and so far it's doing great.

[JGZinv]

I've had... roughly 7 WD drives... 1 eventually died but was easy to exchange.
I've had more problems with the Seagates dying out.

[Locutus of Borg]

I use FreeAgent, can't say how good it is though because I've only had it for a month, hahah

[Nuke]

ive never had a hard drive die at all, and ive owned a lot of hard drives over the years.

[Topgun]

Most hard drive failures are mechanical problems that can be worked-around. usually the drive can't spool up fast enough.

[Liberator]

IMO, buy a caddy and a standard internal drive, you fill it up and replace it.  Also, if the caddy packs up it's a lot easier to replace than if proprietary circuitry dies and you have to carve the drive out.

That said anything WD or Seagate would be good.  I don't have a preference on caddy's other than not spending an enormous amount.

[Mongoose]

What about those of us who want the aesthetics of a shiny dedicated external?

[Ford Prefect]

A lot of the enclosures are just as stylized as the external drives, as far as I can tell. (Mine isn't too sexy, but the amount of money it saved me certainly is.)

[Nuke]

i kinda think my thermaltake enclosure looks pretty cool. its also machined aluminum so its pretty durable.

[Mongoose]

I can't speak for Topgun (bit of irony there ), but the thing for me is, if I were to get an internal HD of that size, I'd just go ahead and stick it inside my machine, either in place of or in addition to my current HD.  When I think of an external HD, I think of a completely self-contained unit that I could hook up once every two weeks or so to dump a few more files on and cart around with me to any computer I so desired.  I just don't see hauling around both an enclosure and an internal drive that was never intended to be portable in the first place as the most ideal option, so I'd be willing to pay the extra money for a dedicated external unit.  Like I said, though, that's just me.

[Liberator]

Well, the reason we mostly seem to come down on the caddy/standard drive side is that it's ALL of the functionality of the standalone unit plus the ability to remove the drive for safe keeping/usage should the caddy pack up, the drive fill up or your needs change.

[Topgun]

I can't speak for Topgun (bit of irony there ), but the thing for me is, if I were to get an internal HD of that size, I'd just go ahead and stick it inside my machine, either in place of or in addition to my current HD.  When I think of an external HD, I think of a completely self-contained unit that I could hook up once every two weeks or so to dump a few more files on and cart around with me to any computer I so desired.  I just don't see hauling around both an enclosure and an internal drive that was never intended to be portable in the first place as the most ideal option, so I'd be willing to pay the extra money for a dedicated external unit.  Like I said, though, that's just me.

I want to be able to share it from computer to computer and I don't want it to be part of the ext3 file system.