Help please - best 500GB external Hard drive

Firstwatch

Hi all,

I'm looking to buy a portable external hard drive of about 500GB. This is for my music collection and for when I eventually get a new laptop to transfer everything over easily. A colleague also advised my to get one on USB 3.0, backward compatible with 2.0, to make it somewhat future proof - I don't know if this is important or not.

I have been looking on Amazon and there is too much choice, most are about £70 - is this a good price? Are any brands better than the other and are there any to avoid? would really appreciate some good advice, thanks in advance FW

aliEnRIK

Personally I would keep a look out on ebay. I bought a brand new 2TB (500Gb*4) Western Digital for 50 quid (Which I consider an absolute bargain) a few months back.
Problem is that due to what happened in the main factories, the price has gone up. I would recommend waiting a few months (if you can) to see if they come down a bit
You can probably get a 1TB for 70 quid now though (guessing)
Makes I would look for are Western Digital, Hitachi and Samsung (Probably others, cant think off the top of my head right now)

aliEnRIK

This ones 75 for 1TB
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Western-Digital-WD-Elements-Desktop-External-Hard-Drive-1TB-USB-2-0-HDD-/330674108885?pt=UK_Computing_HardDrives_RL&hash=item4cfdb679d5
This ones 69 but graded (for the sake of 6 quid, I would go for the 75 one, but if it wasnt there I would happily buy this for 69)
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Western-Digital-WDBAAU0010HBK-1TB-Elements-USB-2-0-Portable-External-Hard-Drive-/220940146440?pt=UK_Computing_HardDrives_RL&hash=item33710f1708
I bet 500Gb would only be slighly cheaper

robmar0se

I like the samsung Sata II drives best, they quiet and reliable - plus if you buy the drive and caddy seperately, you get a 3 yr warranty on the drive - the drive from Amazon is around £62,

Lots of caddies around, personally something reliable such as the Akasa Integral P2SATA (has a usb2 and esata connection - if you have a USB3 socket on yr PC then a different model).

This caddy is avalanle here:

http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?region=GB&ID_NUM=B567951&origin=gbase16.5&Submit=Check+Stock

robmar0se

aliEnRIK wrote: »

This ones 75 for 1TB
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Western-Digital-WD-Elements-Desktop-External-Hard-Drive-1TB-USB-2-0-HDD-/330674108885?pt=UK_Computing_HardDrives_RL&hash=item4cfdb679d5
This ones 69 but graded (for the sake of 6 quid, I would go for the 75 one, but if it wasnt there I would happily buy this for 69)
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Western-Digital-WDBAAU0010HBK-1TB-Elements-USB-2-0-Portable-External-Hard-Drive-/220940146440?pt=UK_Computing_HardDrives_RL&hash=item33710f1708
I bet 500Gb would only be slighly cheaper

Agree with the sentiment, however I have had more trouble with WD external drives than any other - - having taken them apart, I have seen PCB faults, hdd faults, as well as some that have proprietary PCB's which make them a bu**er to work on - ie non standard pins). The other point about buying plain hdd's (I appreciate this is not on topic), but buying hdd's on ebay often is not new stock, and therefore the warranty might be less than would hope for - ie 3 years.

andy2004

well as the posted didnt say whether he want a 2.5in external or 3.5in i'm just going to put this here.

on sunday i went to novatech and bought a 2tb hard drive £99.98 and a 3.5in enclosure for £7.98, making it a 3.5in portable. not that its going anywhere.
the drive is a samsung. currently my 4th samsung and my WD 1.5tb replacement has to be sent back RMA due to failing itself. even the bloke at novatech said they've been having a lot of WD drives back usually the same 1.5tb i got.

The enclosure i bought is dead simple to take apart and put the drive in shouldnt take more than 5minutes.
and no tools required. and it looks nice.

hdd i bought http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/harddrives-internal/sataover1tb/hd204ui.html

enclosure i bought. http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/harddrives-external/harddriveenclosures/usb2.0external3.5enclosure.html