View Full Version : External Hard drives
Bruce Page
11-19-2004, 6:22 PM
I stopped by Best Buy today to pick up an external hard drive when I quickly realized that I don’t know jack about them.:o Best Buy had 4 different brands to choose from. Who makes the quality drives and who should I stay away from? Is the USB connection fast or at least adequate? I want to move my MP3 and photo files and free up my main drive.
Thanks for any info
Rich Konopka
11-19-2004, 6:33 PM
Bruce,
I would recommend that you make SEVERAL backups. I had a Maxtor 1 touch 120GB drive fail after 6 months. Today, I was on the phone with Ximeta on a drive failure. I just don't trust them enough after a couple of failures.
My advice would be to purchase a Western Digital External (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?type=product&skuId=6237468&id=1069300858793&cmp=++)drive and if you have a DVD burner make backups to some DVD's and store them somewhere safe.
If you have a newer computer it most likely has a USB 2.0 port and is quick as firewire. If you get a USB 2.0 drive it will work with a older USB 1.1 port. It will run slower but it will work.
HTH
Bruce Page
11-19-2004, 6:40 PM
Rich, Maxtor was one of the brands that Best Buy had. The others were Seagate, Western Digital & Plextor. My PC is a couple of years old but it does have the USB 2.0 ports.
Chuck Wintle
11-19-2004, 6:44 PM
I think the Seagate drives are covered by a 5 year warranty. They have been pretty good(reliability wise) lately.
Rich Konopka
11-19-2004, 6:56 PM
Bruce,
I don't think you will go wrong with the WD, Seagate or Plextor. Based on my experience with the Maxtor 120GB 1 Touch failing within 6 months I would stay away from it.
You want 7200 RPM -- Nothing lower
You want seek time ~8ms lower is even better but I doubt you will find that in an external drive.
You want at least 2MB cache Buffer. Some of the Seagate have 8mb which is good.
The WD has a nice shutdown feature which guarantees the cache is written before being shut down.
Do you have a DVD burner? If so make extra backups !!
Dan McLaughlin
11-19-2004, 8:05 PM
Bruce:
What Rich said :D I swear by Western Digital and Seagate. I swear @ Maxtor, both internal and external. Most of the Western Digital externals have a seek time ~8.9ms. This isn't bad. Don't know if Best Buy is the "best price" or whether you can find better "non grey market" price on-line . Good Luck
Bruce Page
11-19-2004, 8:09 PM
Thanks for the info guys. Rich, no DVD burner but I can burn CD's. I'll take a closer look at the Seagate, I think they were the most expensive. :(
Boyd Gathwright
11-19-2004, 9:56 PM
Hi Bruce,<O:p</O:p
…. I engineer, refurbish and/or build my own computers and/or help the neighbors with there’s. Usually, of late, I decide on the size drive I am considering then I read the latest reviews and pay special attention to the editors reviews, on (cnet.com) or (zdnet.com) or on one of the other no nonsense impartial tech web pages. I get a pretty good idea about what I am looking for from these reviews. It’s nice to go with a SCSI drive, but there is a price to pay, yet the performance is definitely there and you can daisy chain them together. Most likely you will want an IDE or an External USB drive. I would attempt to get one that is highly rated with at lease a three-year warranty and a pretty good seek time, which in your case will most likely be between seven and nine milliseconds. It’s nice to have at least a two MB buffer up to eight MBs, but a lot of that depends on the engineering of the drive, usually the larger the drive the larger the buffer. My last choice a couple of months ago was an IBM internal drive and it had, as I remember, a two MB buffer with eight (something) seek time with a three-year warranty . If you should change your mind about an external drive and decide to go with a CD and/or DVD drive (burner) I would go with a PLEXTOR PX-708A. They’re very reasonably priced and pretty much top of the line. Although, I do not care for the software package that comes with it, which is ROXIO, I much prefer NERO, in my opinion, a far better software package and a lot less bugs.
…. Tried to give you a quick snapshot, hope this helps and is not too over whelming ;) .
Boyd
.
Bruce Page
11-19-2004, 11:46 PM
Thanks Boyd, what's your opinion on the IOGEAR or LaCie drives? They have a 160GB external for ~ $140.
Charles McKinley
11-20-2004, 9:33 PM
Hi Bruce,
Do you have a walmart nearby? I got my Seagate 120 GB external hard drive there and it was almost $50 cheaper than Staples.
Keith Christopher
11-21-2004, 1:37 AM
I would check out the external firewire drives if you have a firewire port on your PC, the throughput is outstanding.
Boyd Gathwright
11-21-2004, 5:11 PM
…. Hello Bruce, Not familiar with either of those two drives. I would have to check them out like I suggested in my earlier post.
…. Good luck and would be interested in what you settle on.
Boyd ;)
.
Thanks Boyd, what's your opinion on the IOGEAR or LaCie drives? They have a 160GB external for ~ $140.
Rich Konopka
11-22-2004, 3:51 PM
Bruce,
What did you end up getting??
Bruce Page
11-24-2004, 8:58 PM
Bruce,
What did you end up getting??Rich,
I just picked up my PC from the repair shop today. I had a vicious worm called “sms.exe” that required more pc skill that I could muster to remove. I also had them install a 120GB/8meg cache internal HD and do a general tune-up.
The ol’ computer has never run better!I was without PC for almost 5 days (gasp) so I have a lot of catching up to do – 195 new messages when I logged on!
Chuck Wintle
11-24-2004, 10:23 PM
Rich,
I just picked up my PC from the repair shop today. I had a vicious worm called “sms.exe” that required more pc skill that I could muster to remove. I also had them install a 120GB/8meg cache internal HD and do a general tune-up.
The ol’ computer has never run better!I was without PC for almost 5 days (gasp) so I have a lot of catching up to do – 195 new messages when I logged on!
Just wondering what brand of drive you ended up installing?
Bruce Page
11-25-2004, 12:03 PM
Just wondering what brand of drive you ended up installing?Charles, The HD they installed is a Western Digital EIDE, High Performance - that just happend to be what they had in stock. It seems much faster that my old drive but it also makes more of the HD crunching sound...
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