External Hard Drive

HUFCsteve

Is anyone able to recommend a half decent (but not too expensive) External Hard Drive. I'll be using it for photos and music files.

Thanks!

lee634

USB or Firewire?????

iviv

Depends how much storage you want, really. I'd recommend any of the Elements range from Western Digital. WD have always been good quality with their hard drives, and I have one of these, been going great for almost a year, and its been knocked about a fair bit as well (Though not while running). However, there's a fair number of 1 star reviews with people saying theirs died on them.

keith1950

Hi HUFCsteve, its depends on your budget and whether you want a desktop external or a portable. One of the best portables is the (as recommended by iviv) western digital passport range which you should be able to find from about £45. If you find any at a particulary low price check first that they are compatible with Vista as a lot of the preVista models are now being sold off at a discount. You might not need vista compatible at the moment but if your computer packs up any new one will probably run vista ,so be prepared !

iviv

I don't see how it wouldn't support vista, though. I think the larger drives like the elements one are basically a 3.5" hard drive in an enclosure, then prettied up. So I'm not sure what drivers would be needed, besides a simple one to see it as a storage device.

Oblivion

I've got 4 of the LaCie usb d2 'big disk' external drives here which I use in rotation for backups, Ghost images etc. A couple of them must be over 3 years old now and I've never (touch wood) had any problems.

Dave.

money_savy

Try this link Western digital. It is 1TB one. Wish I had bought this. I recently bought a 500gb Western Digital and it really serves the purpose. Copies fast and quite good.

keith1950

Hi Iiviv- sorry that I did not make myself clear, as a hard drive there would probably be no compatability issues, it only concerns the software such as sync and automatic back up utilities that would have issues-some people just wipe this software anyway.

unrich

Sainsbury had a 250GB maxtor USB 2 pocket drive for £80(ish) the other day.
Tesco had a 120GB for £45 ish.

[Deleted User]

keith1950 wrote: »

Hi Iiviv- sorry that I did not make myself clear, as a hard drive there would probably be no compatability issues, it only concerns the software such as sync and automatic back up utilities that would have issues-some people just wipe this software anyway.

If you go for a good, reputable brand like Western Digital you won't find that their software is incompatible with Vista

jyonda

Buffalo 160gb £28 / 320gb £40 at Ebuyer plus delivery but spend over £50 and get free delivery.

If you have a wireless router for your home network then consider Network Attached Storage (NAS) which would make all of your files available to whatever devices you have in the home without your PC needing to be on. It is however more expensive.