External Hard Drive

Gemmzie

Further to my previous thread, it died. So I have £100 refund to buy a new one. I don't want another WD My Book but unsure of other decent brands.

It's not transported very often so a 3.5 is fine (think that's what it's called )

500GB minimum, I like my computer as empty as possible, so everything is stored elsewhere.

USB 2.0 is fine as I don't have Firewire, and it's for a PC.

Any suggestions?

flashy

i have lots of mybooks, they are all fine, luck of the draw really.

I am a great fan of seagate hard disks, never had one fail on me, i would personally avoid maxtor, lacie, freecom.

You could pick one up from ebuyer or somewhere pretty cheap. Seagate do their freeagent series drives for good prices.

bingo_bango

Makro have a 1TB drive for £89.99 + VAT atm. Saw it in there tonight if there is one near you.

Didn't spend time looking at make though, as I was only browsing.

Airwolf1

In PC Answers yesterday, the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 1TB came out at 95%, it was the highest rank of those on test. Price around £105. It also had a 5 year warranty, one of the highest being offered.

Airwolf1

PS I have a different Maxtor one, and had no problems with it thus far.

Leopard

flashy wrote: »

i have lots of mybooks, they are all fine, luck of the draw really.

I am a great fan of seagate hard disks, never had one fail on me, i would personally avoid maxtor, lacie, freecom.

You could pick one up from ebuyer or somewhere pretty cheap. Seagate do their freeagent series drives for good prices.

When I opened up three LaCie external hard drives I had purchased new on eBay last year they had..........Seagate drives inside. :cool:

LaCie doesn't manufacture hard drives - only enclosures.

They've all been faultless.

flashy

Leopard: ive had a few lacies with maxtors inside, but bonus if you get a seagate inside them! nice one

Gemmzie

Thanks

Do any of these have a separate off switch? I had problems with the My Book stopping the computer booting.

Airwolf1

I'm pretty sure the Maxtor one did that was reviewed, but I'm at work at the moment so can't double check.

moonrakerz

If you want to really widen your choice, buy an internal drive and one of these.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/136250

PS: It does have an on/off sw.

Leopard

I bought one of these particular type of enclosures, on eBay, last year for about £12 - although mine actually has a pale blue front panel, is silver in colour and sports a Firewire 400 port as well as USB2 (and an on/off switch) - which is why I bought it.

The fan is bloody noisy, though.

And since I'm wary about just what Firewire chipset it may have in it, anyway, I use it only as an occasional archival backup device - so I disconnected the fan.

It's probably safe to run it that way with an IDE drive of up to 250 GB.

I put the original 80 GB, 7,200 rpm from a G4 Power Mac into mine, when I upgraded the Mac, and I keep a full backup of my system volume on it. (On a "just-in-case-all-else-fails" principle.)

It would be good for storing an extra backup of documents and photographs, too - perhaps at another location.

As moonrakerz points out, it has an on/off switch, which is essential if you are going to run it occasionally and without the fan.

Believe me, you would not want to run this thing with the fan going for any length of time unless you're deaf!