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Joe Tonich
06-24-2007, 10:54 PM
Looking for an external hard drive for my pics and things, was wondering if anyone has this. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148233 Dunno much about these, so any advice is appreciated. I'd even consider an internal if I could figure out how to install one. I have a compaq Presario S4000NX if it makes a difference.

Ken Fitzgerald
06-24-2007, 11:07 PM
Joe....an external hard drive is an excellent way to store files that you want for long term use. Example....my home computer crashed recently. My wife had around 9000 photographs she wanted me to not lose it getting it operational. That limited the manner I could restore operation. If those 9,000 photos had been stored on an external hard drive I could have just done a total flush of the system hardrive and reformatted and reloaded software. As it was I had to becareful.......to keep from losing the photos. I'd also keep files like tax records etc. on the external hard drive.

Ken Garlock
06-25-2007, 12:35 AM
Go for it Joe. I use an USB attached 250 GB drive for my full disk backups. The other week I was glad I did.:eek:

Seagate drives are the standard of comparison. Before I retired from TI, we had about 60 Sun Micro Systems servers in one data center and the hard disks were Seagate in raid 5 configuration.

Warning, make sure your computer is capable of USB Version 2. Otherwise, there is an excellent chance the device you linked to will not work on your computer.

Chuck Wintle
06-25-2007, 6:30 AM
I have several Seagate drives in my computer and so far they are running well. And the five year warranty is the best in the industry.:D

Matt Meiser
06-25-2007, 7:29 AM
Joe, if you have a Staples by you, they have had Western Digital or Maxtor 500GB drives on sale for about $130-$140 for the last couple weeks. I've seen Western Digital, Maxtor, and Seagate drives all fail and am of the opinion that they are all about the same as far as the desktop/small server class drives. Not much experience on the big hot swap arrays.

Chris Rolke
06-25-2007, 8:06 AM
2 sites to check out for possible deals ( they go directly the vendor )

www.slickdeals.net
www.fatwallet.com go to forums then hot deals

basically the sites are like smc just related to looking for good deals on items

hope that helps

Phil Thien
06-25-2007, 9:10 AM
Joe, if you have a Staples by you, they have had Western Digital or Maxtor 500GB drives on sale for about $130-$140 for the last couple weeks. I've seen Western Digital, Maxtor, and Seagate drives all fail and am of the opinion that they are all about the same as far as the desktop/small server class drives. Not much experience on the big hot swap arrays.

Quick rundown of drives from a data recovery guy:

Hitachi (was IBM): Typical failure mode is heads.

Maxtor: Typical failure mode is firmware. (Not an easy fix, requires specialized hardware/software that costs thousands of dollars and requires quite a bit of experience.)

Western Digital & Seagate: A little more reliable than the other two. With the exception of Seagate notebook drives, which I see a lot of with what appears to be field failure.

Again, remember that heat is the enemy of any hard drive. A substantial # of the data recoveries I do are on drives that were just recently defragged (which pushes them hard and heats 'em up).

David G Baker
06-25-2007, 9:40 AM
Looking for an external hard drive for my pics and things, was wondering if anyone has this. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148233 Dunno much about these, so any advice is appreciated. I'd even consider an internal if I could figure out how to install one. I have a compaq Presario S4000NX if it makes a difference.
Joe,
One thing you may want to keep in mind, when you add your back up hard drive, it is still a hard drive. If you have a few items that you absolutely can not loose you may want to store them on some sort of removable media as well as the back up hard drive.

Jeffrey Makiel
06-25-2007, 10:30 AM
I have a 250GB external USB hard drive by Cavalry. It uses a Westell Digital hard drive mechanism inside of it that is a fairly common brand used by major computer manufacturers. It also got good reviews. I got it from Buy.com for less that $100. Works well. Simple to use and very convenient as a backup.

-Jeff :)

David G Baker
06-25-2007, 4:03 PM
Looking for an external hard drive for my pics and things, was wondering if anyone has this. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148233 Dunno much about these, so any advice is appreciated. I'd even consider an internal if I could figure out how to install one. I have a compaq Presario S4000NX if it makes a difference.
Joe,
I just purchased the same drive from Staples using their 15% off coupon and free shipping. Total cost including tax was $109.98.
Wish I had paid closer attention to your post, I could have saved myself a few bucks.
UPDATE: I e-mailed Staples and let them know about the NewEgg price difference and they credited my credit card with $12.73. The lower amount is because Staples claims that they give next day delivery that NewEgg would charge around $25.00 for. I am waiting to see if I get the hard drive today.

Chuck Wintle
06-26-2007, 8:09 AM
Or you could buy an external enclosure and a hard drive and put them together.

David G Baker
06-26-2007, 9:45 AM
Charles,
Have you used the external enclosure setup? Do they come with the USB hook up? I have used them in the past when they used the serial port hook up, they were slower than an internal hard drive but they did work.

Steven Wilson
06-26-2007, 10:12 AM
The Seagate will work just fine. Depending on your requirements you may also consider a NAS. I use a 250GB Western Digitial NetCenter and have a Segate 250GB external USB drive attached to it. That gives me 500GB of storage available on my home network to share out to my PC, my kids PC's, and the TV (my HDTV can read images off of a network share - looks cool). I mainly use the storage for weekly system backups and daily key file backups. If you have some critical files (financial records, etc) it's best to take somewhat frequent snapshots of those on to CD/DVD and store them offsite if possible.

Chuck Wintle
06-26-2007, 10:38 AM
Charles,
Have you used the external enclosure setup? Do they come with the USB hook up? I have used them in the past when they used the serial port hook up, they were slower than an internal hard drive but they did work.

David,
I bought a Vantec eSata with USB 2. I had a spare 250gig drive at home to use.
The exact model is a Nexstar 3 with USB and eSATA. I have used it and it works well. The transfer is pretty fast, USB2.9, amd it takes up to a 750gig drive.:D

Joe Tonich
06-26-2007, 12:11 PM
Thanks for the info, guys. Gonna go see if BestBuy will give the same price as newegg.

Matt Meiser
06-26-2007, 1:41 PM
Make sure you take a printout and don't let Best Buy look it up on the web :rolleyes:

Chuck Wintle
06-26-2007, 1:43 PM
Make sure you take a printout and don't let Best Buy look it up on the web :rolleyes:

Why?:confused:

Randal Stevenson
06-26-2007, 3:03 PM
Why?:confused:

One of the current Best Buy lawsuits. When someone came in and claimed it was cheaper on the web, they pulled up the intranet site, that showed the higher price.

The other two lawsuits involve MSN sign ups (and evidence destroying law firm), and a Geek Squad member taking pictures of a clients daughter in the shower.

There is at least one USB/1394 case that has built in networking (found it online). But the one he spec'd seems decent (already has the five year warranty, which many of the usb enclosures didn't/don't, and his pc is of a generation which may have a problem with 500gb drives).

David G Baker
06-26-2007, 8:33 PM
Looking for an external hard drive for my pics and things, was wondering if anyone has this. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148233 Dunno much about these, so any advice is appreciated. I'd even consider an internal if I could figure out how to install one. I have a compaq Presario S4000NX if it makes a difference.
Joe,
I got my Seagate FreeAgent delivered today and have backed up my settings and data files. All I had to do was plug it in and it worked. The simplest accessory hook up I have dealt with. I did a little research and it seems to rate pretty good as well.

Joe Tonich
06-26-2007, 10:14 PM
Thanks........just picked it up tonight at BestBuy......

Took the newegg page in and they said they do pricematch, but only for real store prices not internet stores. They DID give me a 15% discount tho instead so I ended up paying $85 + tax. Hooked it up and already transfered 13GB to it. Tomorrow hopefully I can reformat my comp. to original and get rid of all the unnessessary stuff I packratted away in there. Trying to speed it up a bit, already upped my RAM to 632MB. Any more advice on speeding it up would be appreciated (Hopefully without spending any more $$$).

Chuck Wintle
06-26-2007, 10:20 PM
Thanks........just picked it up tonight at BestBuy......

Took the newegg page in and they said they do pricematch, but only for real store prices not internet stores. They DID give me a 15% discount tho instead so I ended up paying $85 + tax. Hooked it up and already transfered 13GB to it. Tomorrow hopefully I can reformat my comp. to original and get rid of all the unnessessary stuff I packratted away in there. Trying to speed it up a bit, already upped my RAM to 632MB. Any more advice on speeding it up would be appreciated (Hopefully without spending any more $$$).

Before you reformat have you removed unnecessary programs? In the run box, press start at the lower left, type in "msconfig" to see what is starting when you boot the computer. Chances are you have a lot of "junk" that is slowing things down. Defrag the hard drive and run sytem cleaner to clean out old files. Chances are you will see an improvement.:D

David G Baker
06-26-2007, 11:23 PM
David,
I bought a Vantec eSata with USB 2. I had a spare 250gig drive at home to use.
The exact model is a Nexstar 3 with USB and eSATA. I have used it and it works well. The transfer is pretty fast, USB2.9, amd it takes up to a 750gig drive.:D
Thanks Charles I will file your information for a future purchase.

Pete Simmons
06-29-2007, 8:27 PM
Staples has a 160 G Maxtor External HD on sale for $59.

It is marked $100+ on shelf but take it to a register and ask for the price it is $59.

Seems it is on sale on the web but not marked in the store.