External(Portable Hard Drives)

[HappySmiles]

I want to buy a portable hard drive but I really don't know much about them. Are they a good idea? Do they even last ?

Any brands that you guys recommend. I don't want to spend a lot of money on it and I want it to have at least 300GB

 

[star-warrior]

I've had a Western Digital 250GB one for about 2 years now. Good for backing up stuff. It has a USB cable and decent in terms of speed.

I don't know about other models though, or how long they last. I guess it prolly depends on how much you use it...

 

[BiMike]

How long would it last I think would certainly be related to its use and since presumably it will be mainly used as a back-up will see nothing like the use that a HD receives when in a PC or laptop.
It seems with HDs its a matter of luck how long they last! Go for one of the big names and find a good buy on the Net.

 

[trawler69]

320 Gig W/D 2.5 inch drives are about £50 in the uk. I use a 250 Gig one as time machine backup on my Mac Book. No complaints. Have a 500 gig Hitachi as backup for imac and another 500 gig segate as an archive for films etc. Also 160 gig one which has stuff from older computers on it and an archive of installation files.

I certainly wouldn't be without them as have lost too much in the past.

 

[GamerBear]

I was thinking of getting an External hard drive and I've heard bad things about the Western Digital external hard drives.

 

[pmich25]

i would stick to seagate or iomega...avoid western digital. I recently purchased a seagate go 320gig and works like a charm so far.

 

[CumAlong]

I want to buy a portable hard drive but I really don't know much about them. Are they a good idea? Do they even last ?

Any brands that you guys recommend. I don't want to spend a lot of money on it and I want it to have at least 300GB

They are a fantastic idea! My 1 terabyte is filled with movies, tv shows, and...porn, amoung other things such as ISO files which i dont want to keep on my main computer when not using.

External HDs should last as long as you get a good brand, and they have gotten a lot cheaper lately. I wouldn't get any bigger than 1TB though, much bigger than that tends to get a little faulty as far as technology goes. Defectiveness and bugs increase dramatically after the 1TB mark.

You can buy either an external HD, or even a regular HD (same kind of one that would go into your computer) and then purchase a special mount for it to go onto so it can sit outside your computer and be connected and used like an external. Though I would recommend just buying a normal external HD from any name brand already mentioned.

 

[zunkian]

To GamerBear....what bad things about WD external hard drives? Please detail. I have two of them.

 

[justsimon]

I've had good experiences with Lacie drives.

 

[seven2go]

Take a look at the Seagate FreeAgent Go drives.

Seagate still warrants THEIR drives for 5 years.......

 

[GamerBear]

To GamerBear....what bad things about WD external hard drives? Please detail. I have two of them.

Most of the WD drives have so many bad reviews that I can't believe that they continue to make bad drives. It might be the old drives that work better but from what I hear about the new drives they install a virtual drive on their Externals now. Plus when I mention it to people they always tell me its a bad company.