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External Hard Drive

Hi there, was wondering if anyone can help me, I need an external hard drive which can connect to a laptop (usb??) prices seem a little random, 1tb seem to be similar in price to much smaller ones. Looking for a good website for a cheap drive, I'm only looking for a 160gig or similar. Thanks
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Comments

  • cit_k
    cit_k Posts: 24,812 Forumite
    May as well get a larger one if the price is the same.. Hard drives reduce in price/gain capacity regularily, hence older small drives are often similar in price to newer larger ones.
    [greenhighlight]but it matters when the most senior politician in the land is happy to use language and examples that are simply not true.
    [/greenhighlight][redtitle]
    The impact of this is to stigmatise people on benefits,
    and we should be deeply worried about that
    [/redtitle](house of lords debate, talking about Cameron)
  • Would help if you indicated what kind of price you are looking at
  • Well the cheaper the better really, Hoping sub £40 if possible.
  • £40 should easily get you 160Gb. To be honest, I would hope you could get a little more storage for that
  • It depends on your intended use also.

    Consider whether you want a portable external (powered by USB & will fit in a coat pocket) or a desktop external (powered by mains adaptor).

    Obviously the desktop ones tend to be bigger physically (about the size of a video tape) but they have much bigger storage. You can buy 1TB for under £70.

    You may not need that much space now but circumstances may change. Better to have it & not need it, rather that need it & not have it
  • kwikbreaks
    kwikbreaks Posts: 9,187 Forumite
    One of the biggest causes of price variation is what type of external drive you want.

    The ones using 3.5inch drives need a separate power supply and are higher capacity and cheaper than those based on 2.5inch laptop drives which are powered directly from the USB ports (typicaly they need 2 ports)

    ===
    SNAP :)
  • Inactive
    Inactive Posts: 14,509 Forumite
    kwikbreaks wrote: »
    One of the biggest causes of price variation is what type of external drive you want.

    The ones using 3.5inch drives need a separate power supply and are higher capacity and cheaper than those based on 2.5inch laptop drives which are powered directly from the USB ports (typicaly they need 2 ports)

    ===
    SNAP :)

    I always thought that but I purchased a Samsung 2.5" one a few weeks back and it has a single USB cable, it works fine.
  • kwikbreaks
    kwikbreaks Posts: 9,187 Forumite
    The extra port is for the power drawn - USB spec only allows 500ma and the drives take very close to that.. I had one that only came with a single port cable and it worked fine on one PC but another one just powered itself down whenever I plugged it in.
  • PZH
    PZH Posts: 1,599 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker
    I've been looking into getting a 1Tb external drive ( with power supply ) for a few months now. They seem to be around the £60+ mark.

    However, my main concerns are the lack of on/off switches ( is this really a problem though ? ) and the alarmingly high number of reported failures after a few months - most seem to be related to the drives getting very hot ( and the infamous Seagate "Click" of death ) ?

    Why is this ? I have never had an internal hard drive fail on me - I know the PC unit has fans - but surely they don't generate that much heat ??
    :think:
    “That old law about 'an eye for an eye' leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.”
  • John_Gray
    John_Gray Posts: 5,845 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    edited 25 February 2010 at 2:40PM
    Has anyone come across a device/cable in the UK that can be used to actually measure the current drawn from a USB port? All I can find is something from Hong Kong...
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