Externall HDD

Jaymo

Hi,

I've a little bit of a dilema. I'm in need of 2 external HDD for xmas pressie's but its been around 4 years since I have bought some so I am a little bit outdated.

The 1st I need is just for backup of photos so I am thinking an 80gb hdd.

The 2nd is 320gb hdd to be used for storing films on and connecting to a sony tv and running the videos from the hdd (this is my main dilema as i have no idea what format i need (fat32 or ntfs) and which ones will work for this use on a sony tv).

Could anyone help me as i am looking to get the cheapest possible but decent quality.

Thank you!!

closed

you will need to check the tv manual to find the supported formats, they can be formatted as fat32 or ntfs using any pc, any brand should work.

you've picked a bad time to buy, prices have gone up recently due to floods, but they are still a few cheap ones around - 320GB may run out quickly if you have a lot of films.

photo's can also be backed up to dvd, which in most cases is a cheaper solution

neilwoods

Not the best time to be buying hard drives at the moment, pretty expensive down to the floods in Thailand.

For the cost of an 80gb starting from £30 - £40 , may as well get a 320gb or more for about £50 upwards. And format to FAT 32

fwor

You don't need to worry at all about what the drives are formatted as when supplied. If you need a different filesystem it should be a trivial matter to reformat them - for example from NTFS to FAT32 or vice versa.

If your recipients can afford to wait, I'd give them empty boxes with a "IOU an external hard drive next month" card inside.

There are plenty of other places than Thailand where they are made, so it won't be far into the new year before prices start to drop...

Redvee

I'd format to NTFS, there is a filesize limit of 4Gb with FAT32. Re-formatting to NTFS can be done with data on the HDD without worrying about data loss.

Jaymo

Ok thanks for the advice guys. I heard about the floods which is a pain but then again not as much of a pain as actually living in thailand right now.

From what I can see though, it hasn't affected the prices that much as I have even found some seagate 1TB hdds for £60 but i'm only looking for around £30-£40 tops.

i8change

....but i'm only looking for around £30-£40 tops.

Just under £40:-

http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.212-1835.aspx

They stick Hitachi in Apple Macbooks so they should be reasonable and the reviews are good.

free4440273

the Iomega Prestige and Pro and very nice too imo /.

JamesK10

neilwoods wrote: »

Not the best time to be buying hard drives at the moment, pretty expensive down to the floods in Thailand.

For the cost of an 80gb starting from £30 - £40 , may as well get a 320gb or more for about £50 upwards. And format to FAT 32

At the moment, stock on externals seems to have been ramped up for Christmas and they already cost a bit more for the shell etc, so buyers won't be too badly hit before the end of the year compared to the bare internals which were 3-4 times the price the instant the floods hit.

I second the Tesco linked drive from i8change because they also put a different line of Hitachi drive into some Panasonic Blu Ray Recorder/PVR Combo boxes, and it's been Western Digital's subsidiary for at least a year now. I paid that price for an internal drive of the same size, a year ago, so it's the one I would buy if I needed one now.