external hard drive brands?!

[Dumbass17]

so i'm thinking of buying a hard drive and a sepereate enclosure but i'm not sure what brand is best/good?
i want probably 750gb but i don't want to spend a shit load of money either
my last 500gb comstar external crapped out on me and i lost 450gb of data!!!

(i'd like to use memoryexpress for the components..thanks!)

[black13]

i've been using FreeAgent model as I had heard great things about it. Its been good for the past six months and it looks classy.

[eblend]

Brand don't matter really, its what is inside. Any external enclosure with a seagate should be good to go .

[saiyajin]

i got this one
plus it looks snazzy :thumbsup:

http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/PID-MX7415(ME).aspx


and :werd: seagate drive inside

[megavolt]

Make sure whatever enclosure you get has E-SATA. Once you try esata there's no going back to usb. :P

[HyperZell]

Why get a HD and a seperate enclosure? Why not just get an external HD?

FYI, hard drives are relatively prone to failure. No one has anything close to a perfect relaibility record, so don't put too much weight on the brand name of the drive, as long as it's decent (Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, etc.) You wil lalways be able to find peopel that say "I've had 3 Seagates and they all died!" or "I've never had a WD drive go bad!", but all that is is chance. Just get one that's decently priced and does what you want.

[eur0]

I would rather have a casing and a removable drive for the expandability. I have a 500GB which I have maxed out within a year, so I can easily upgrade it.

It really depends on how much space you need over time.

[Dumbass17]

what's your thoughts on this set up?!

http://www.costco.ca/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=10317181&whse=BCCA&Ne=4000000&eCat=BCCA|84&N=4008634&Mo=13&No=5&Nr=P_CatalogName:BCCA&cat=4298&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&lang=en-CA&Sp=C&topnav=

[r0g3r]

a bigger bang for ur buck is the 1TB HD @ futureshop or bestbuy. I think its around 150$

[megavolt]

Originally posted by r0g3r
a bigger bang for ur buck is the 1TB HD @ futureshop or bestbuy. I think its around 150$

Usually with a 1 year warranty and no esata.

[Dumbass17]

what's esata?

[megavolt]

Google is your friend.

But the quick rundown is esata is a way to hook your external drives up the the sata ports on your motherboard (or if newer your computer might actually have esata ports on the back). What that translates to is much faster transfer rates than with USB.

[Impreza]

Originally posted by Dumbass17
what's esata?

It's like a "new" connection type to connect your HDD to your computer. You need to make sure you have this available on your motherboard before you get an eSata drive. It's like the new standard.

Edit: Megavolt beat me to the punch.

[ExtraSlow]

I have that NexStar3 enclosure, and it works fine. I had a spare internal drive kicking around, so that's the cheap way to go.
However, USB is pretty slow. I haven't tried esata yet, but Moving a couple hundred GB on USB is pretty painful.

[Xtrema]

Originally posted by HyperZell
Why get a HD and a seperate enclosure? Why not just get an external HD?

FYI, hard drives are relatively prone to failure. No one has anything close to a perfect relaibility record, so don't put too much weight on the brand name of the drive, as long as it's decent (Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, etc.) You wil lalways be able to find peopel that say "I've had 3 Seagates and they all died!" or "I've never had a WD drive go bad!", but all that is is chance. Just get one that's decently priced and does what you want.

Seagate got 5 year warranty and a very hassle free RMA procedure. The rest only have 3.

If you don't build it yourself, most external HD carry only 1 year warranty.

[dragonone]

i was just gonna say
i think twice even when the externals go on sale because they often only have 1 yr warranty

and if u select the enclosure urself u have lots of choices in terms of connectors like firewire or even ethernet if u buy a NAS

externals are packages and are usually overprice if you want some additional features

[Bimma]

try one of the 1TB Samsung Spinpoint ones?? i had a 200gb from 5 years ago and still works like a charm

[Proboscis]

Who's need a 1TB when you got vinyl?. Hard drive may fail, but a record is still tangible. Only 2%