External HD advice please?

papoosue

I would like to get an external hard drive to use between my desktop (family) pc and my laptop (for my studies). I am not techie really and am a bit bamboozled by all the jargon. What I need the drive for is general backing up, storing photos safely, storing my study work safely and what I need to know is

what size of drive do I need to get?
do I need one that is usb powered or with another mains plug?
what is a reliable make?

I am also concerned about storage of all my photos - is it a good idea to have yet another form of backup for my photos as well? (At the moment I have them copied onto dvds.) but I realise this is possibly a separate issue.

If anyone has any advice I would be extremely grateful as I'm getting more confused the more I look at these things :-)

aliEnRIK

Good makes are ~ western digital, Seagate, hitachi, toshiba.....
make sure its mains powered and has a USB connector to plug into your pc
Id suggest 120 Gig or bigger
Id the pics (or indeed anything) are backed up onto discs, theres no need to back up to a hard drive also

f1charlie

papoosue wrote: »

what size of drive do I need to get?

How much data do you want to store? Take a look at how much space you are taking up at the moment on your disk.

papoosue wrote: »

do I need one that is usb powered or with another mains plug?

A USB one will be a 2.5" disk, so more portable, but smaller capacity for the same price as a 3.5" one, which will be mains powered.

papoosue wrote: »

what is a reliable make?

Depends who you listen to - most makes have tales of woe.

papoosue wrote: »

I am also concerned about storage of all my photos - is it a good idea to have yet another form of backup for my photos as well? (At the moment I have them copied onto dvds.) but I realise this is possibly a separate issue.

Yes, no backup medium is failsafe, especially external disks.

CLLC

can anyone give me a link to ebay where i may find a reliable external hard drive similar to what the op wants please??

A pertable usb one that is simply plug and play like and doesn't need to be mains plugged in.

I only need about 20 gig, preferbly the cheapest one

Thank you

danechip

You would struggle to find 20 Gig external drives. I sent my brother to Comet. He paid £50 for 500 GB. Since it's mechanical, it can just pack up, especially if it gets dropped. For the sake of only 20 Gig, i would back up your files to DVD, and just get yourself a USB stick. I paid £20 for 4 gig from PC world a year ago. They are much cheaper nowadays, and perfect for swapping files from 1 machine to another.

Dan.

Reggie_Rebel

Here you go.

http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=26818&category_id=366&manufacturer_id=0&tid=bak2793

I've never had any problems with anything ordered from this company

aliEnRIK

Reggie_Rebel wrote: »

Here you go.

http://www.cclonline.com/product-info.asp?product_id=26818&category_id=366&manufacturer_id=0&tid=bak2793

I've never had any problems with anything ordered from this company

Think id rather order the toshiba for £36.99