External Hard Drive help - which is best?

purple_spider

Hiya, I'm looking at buying a 1TB external hard drive from amazon (where i can use my survey vouchers), there are two deals with only £2 between them price wise. I'm kinda hopeless with these things & wondered if anyone could help me out - is one brand better/faster than the other and how easy are they to install/use?

Western Digital
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Elements-External-Drive/dp/B001GO9ERE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1253037915&sr=8-1

Seagate
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Expansions-External-Desktop-Drive/dp/B00238KZPM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1253037915&sr=8-2

My laptop's kinda full, so I was wanting something stable to store most of my files on with plenty of space for more photos/music in the future, so if neither seem very good does anyone have any recommendations?

Thanks

superscaper

I've always been happy with Western Digital hard drives, internal and external. But that's just my personal preference and I guess there's a bit of brand loyalty in there somewhere which isn't actually a good thing so shame on me for that.

student_84

I have the western digital and have found it to be very quiet and very reliable, I use it to back up my laptop and have had no issues with it whatsoever.

Hope this helps.

[Deleted User]

Western Digital all the way. A few weeks ago I went for this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Essential-External-Drive/dp/B000W9RNOA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1253048552&sr=8-1

Feature list here: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/index.asp?cat=8 The main difference is the The My Book turns on and off with your computer. The Elements does not.

purple_spider

Deleted_User wrote: »

Western Digital all the way. A few weeks ago I went for this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Essential-External-Drive/dp/B000W9RNOA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1253048552&sr=8-1

Feature list here: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/index.asp?cat=8 The main difference is the The My Book turns on and off with your computer. The Elements does not.

Thanks for all the help. It seems like Western Digital is the fav

I just wondered whats the My Book like to use? Only it looks nicer than the elements and stands up, so it'll take up less space, I like the idea of it powering down with my laptop too.

[Deleted User]

purple_spider wrote: »

Thanks for all the help. It seems like Western Digital is the fav

I just wondered whats the My Book like to use? Only it looks nicer than the elements and stands up, so it'll take up less space, I like the idea of it powering down with my laptop too.

To be honest it's like any other hard disk drive really. I've read some people think it's a little slow on the data transfer but unless you shifting 10GB+ around daily I don't think you'll care. What I'd expect you care about more is how reliable it is. On that front I've only praise. Of course some units will fail. That's the nature of manufacturing. But on the whole I've only heard praise.

It's my second WD HDD and other colleagues who work in I.T rate it as the best. The standard by which other HDDs are measured against.

What I would say is when you get it don't bother to install the software supplied on the HDD itself. Simply plug it in, wait 1-3ish minutes then you're away. I've reformatted mine to NTFS (overall better than FAT32), but you don't have too. Just delete the cr ap that's on it then you're good to go.