640GB External USB Hard Drive £60 delivered, 750GB for £65

hvaghela

cheesy.mike wrote: »

In my opinion, backed up by experience as an IT professional, buying cheap WD drives is a false economy. The drives are unreliable.

Thanks for the professional advice Cheesy Mike. What usb drives would be a better investment?

mentm

ne1 know if this needs to be plugged into the mains or will it run off usb power?

Many Thanks

am3n3

Amazon.co.uk are selling the 640GB drive for £59.99, but I've heard advice similar to cheesy.mike's before.

Rabiddog_2

640gb drives are a bit of a kludge, they are likely to be 4 platters of 160gb each rather than a newer 750gb drive being only three platters of 250gb each. It doesn't really make a big difference, but the three platter is likely to be both a tad faster, a tad quieter, and also generate less heat. Also only buy AV rated drives for replacing hard drives in PVR's DVR's etc.

screddajames

mentm wrote: »

ne1 know if this needs to be plugged into the mains or will it run off usb power?

Many Thanks

It looks like a 3.5inch drive so will almost certainly need to be plugged into the mains. As a general rule, 2.5inch drives (which are designed for laptops and these days have a max capacity of around 160GB but that's always rising) can run off usb power. They are much more expensive GB for GB (roughly twice as much) than the 3.5inch versions.

deanos

screddajames wrote: »

. As a general rule, 2.5inch drives (which are designed for laptops and these days have a max capacity of around 160GB but that's always rising) can run off usb power.

You can get 250gb,300gb, 320gb & 500gb 2.5" portables now

irrelevant

Plenty of USB drives at the same price or less than OP at aria and micro direct(both on Quidco too). Also, it's worth getting ones with firewire interface if you are going to use them on a machine with the right interface, as it's a lot faster.

I second the comments re WD drives. Also I used to get a lot of Maxtor drives fail on me, a few years back - I'm not sure how they are now, as I always go for Seagate drives now, and pick the models with the long warranty periods!

BritSwedeGuy

I'm an IT consultant and I build my own PCs, people in my IT Department come to me when they have problems so it's fair to say I'm a bit of a 'guru' :cool:
Not a bad price if that's what you want, but personally, if you just want it for backup rather than portable data storage, I would recommend getting a USB SATA drive dock and one or more SATA drives.
This baby is amazing value for under £30 delivered:
http://usb.brando.com.hk/prod_detail.php?prod_id=00549&dept_id=015&cat_id=039
Reads USB drives and SD cards too.
Then either just drop a spare SATA drive in or pick up a cheap one:
http://www.advancetec.co.uk/acatalog/SAT_500GB.html
(That's a 500GB Seagate Barracuda for £45)
Cycle a couple of those round for backup and bung them somewhere secure - a terrabyte of storage for £130.
It's also an ideal method for storing AVIs etc that you don't need on your PC all the time, saves a packet on electricty too!

bensgranddad

I'm not a professional, so I'll bow to the advice of others on professional use, but for home and small office stuff I have not personally had any problems with WD, although I have had failures with Freecom and one branded Toshiba (but may be OEM).

I have just bought a 1TB external drive from Amazon for under £90 delivered. There is a link on http://www.besthighstreet.com/computing.html

Miss_Dynamitee

BritSwedeGuy wrote: »

I'm an IT consultant and I build my own PCs, people in my IT Department come to me when they have problems so it's fair to say I'm a bit of a 'guru' :cool:
Not a bad price if that's what you want, but personally, if you just want it for backup rather than portable data storage, I would recommend getting a USB SATA drive dock and one or more SATA drives.
This baby is amazing value for under £30 delivered:
http://usb.brando.com.hk/prod_detail.php?prod_id=00549&dept_id=015&cat_id=039
Reads USB drives and SD cards too.
Then either just drop a spare SATA drive in or pick up a cheap one:
http://www.advancetec.co.uk/acatalog/SAT_500GB.html
(That's a 500GB Seagate Barracuda for £45)
Cycle a couple of those round for backup and bung them somewhere secure - a terrabyte of storage for £130.
It's also an ideal method for storing AVIs etc that you don't need on your PC all the time, saves a packet on electricty too!

Do your comments also apply to those drives that are also Network drives?