What sort of external hard drive?

starfish10

My son wants an external/portable hard drive for the computer for christmas, he wants to use it to store games he makes on gamemaker and I think to download games to it as our computer is full. Would any type do or would I need to look for a certain type our computer runs XP.

Backbiter

Any type should be fine. The 1TB ones start around £55. They are about the size of a videocassette and normally need external power. Smaller, lighter prtable ones - not much bigger than a music cassette start around £40 for 250Gb and get power from the USB.

I'd go for a good brand like Western Digital, Seagate,Verbatim or Lacie.

andy2004

Lacie you pay for the name not whats in the box.
Western Digital my book try to stay clear off. people have been having problems with those in the past.
Seagate, had problems with their 1tb drive earlier this year. one minute working next dead, and over 60000 complaints on their site, due to a flash problem.
which is why i bought a 3.5in 1tb Samsung internal sata drive.
as i said Lacie use the cheapest drives but cost more than most

1TB external should be around the £65 mark, 3.5in hard drive inside a case usually sata
the smaller portable hard disk drives, using laptop hdd's, are almost the same price for half the capacity.

busenbust

IIRC, Lacie merely make enclosures, and attach a hard-drive (I think Maxtor and/or WD).

Have a look here also. :cool:

Marty_J

andy2004 wrote: »

Lacie you pay for the name not whats in the box.
Western Digital my book try to stay clear off. people have been having problems with those in the past.
Seagate, had problems with their 1tb drive earlier this year. one minute working next dead, and over 60000 complaints on their site, due to a flash problem.
which is why i bought a 3.5in 1tb Samsung internal sata drive.
as i said Lacie use the cheapest drives but cost more than most

LaCie use drives made by a number of manufacturers (including Samsung).

Matt_Nixon

IMHO Western Digital Passport, just bought a 500GB one fab & using my "old" 250GB one as my External PS3 drive

Benet

I've used Western Digital [passport] for years (have 3 or 4 external drives for backups, media storage etc) and have never had a single problem with any of them.

Maybe I'm just one of the lucky ones!

andy2004

i said western digitial MYBOOK http://www.wdc.com/en/products/index.asp?cat=8 these ones, not these ones http://www.wdc.com/en/products/index.asp?cat=9
the MYBOOK are 3.5in drives passport are 2.5in drives. and another note i was going back to 2008 so maybe in the year thats past they've fixed the bugs in the casing / drives with newer models.

BikerEd

Western Digital are a P.O.S. If you want a nice, cost effective external disk then Toshiba is worth a look.

Disclaimer: Your mileage may vary. Objects in the rear view mirror may be closer than they appear.

vaio

Backbiter wrote: »

Any type should be fine. The 1TB ones start around £55. They are about the size of a videocassette and normally need external power. Smaller, lighter prtable ones - not much bigger than a music cassette start around £40 for 250Gb and get power from the USB.

I'd go for a good brand like Western Digital, Seagate,Verbatim or Lacie.

But be aware that laptops vary in the amount of power available from their usb ports, so the usb powered ones might not work with (some?) laptops