External Hard Disk & best prices

eeetee

I'm after an EHD for backup.
Must admit am a bit out of touch, and surprised to see the sizes that are now available :eek:

Anyway, a 160gig or smaller would be enough, but what other specs should i bare in mind?
I think I'll go with a desktop/ mains powered as opposed to USB, but am not sure of the differences apart from this.

Also, if anyone knows of any retailers currently with any discounts, please post

btw is c. £40-50 what you would expect to pay? Any cheaper?

dot111

My local Aldi have 250g reduced to £35.

eeetee

Cheers Dot, I will have a look next time I'm passing, I think thats as cheap as you'd get a 250gig for

If someone could explain the difference between 5400rpm and faster, and the importence of cache i should be able to make an informed decision

shadowdragon

the 5400rpm is how fast the platters spin in the HDD, the faster they spin the faster the data is read from it. (so its a good thing)

the Cache is like a buffer where things read from the HDD are stored prior to being used by the RAM CPU ect, this again the bigger the better as it reduces seek time on the HDD. Its also good for writing to the HDD too.

Basic explanation but thats the gist of it, the faster the rmp and the bigger the cache the better IMO. Although thinking about it there would be a point that it wouldnt make any difference if your using an external USB one as the transfer speed of the USB would be a limiting factor.

Found this on another site...

effective rate reaches at 40MBps or 320Mbps for bulk transfer on a USB 2.0 hard drive with no one else is sharing the bus.

eeetee

Hi, thanks for explaining that shadowdragon, some of these tech terms are a bit confusing :rolleyes: . I have since got a 120 gig off ebay that should do fine