External hard drive recommendations

andy2004

m5rcc I could have done with that link last week, I just bought last week a samsung 2tb from novatech and an enclosure, costing £108 as i couldnt find anywhere for less.

pledge the price of the 1tb drive is almost the same as the 2tb drives. example novatech are selling both the 1tb and 2tb samsung internal drives for exactly the same price.

robmar0se

Its all opinions, but if you currently have 60gb to save then 2 x 2tb is a little over the top - please remember these drives do fail eventually, so don't look too far into the future! (they all come with a spec "mean time to fail").

As a previous poster said the price differential between 500gb & 1tb is relatively small so I would think that 2 x 1tb would be fine.

These apear good value too at under £65 WD drives (IMHO) are better than Hitachi!!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Elements-Desktop-External/dp/B002E7HEVU/ref=tag_stp_s2_edpp_url

Also I always like to have a separate power source as some older PCs can be a little short on power output to USB sockets = plus the non-powered ones usually take two USB sockets which could be an issue?

m5rcc

robmar0se wrote: »

These apear good value too at under £65 WD drives (IMHO) are better than Hitachi!!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Elements-Desktop-External/dp/B002E7HEVU/ref=tag_stp_s2_edpp_url

Hitachi GST is owned by Western Digital

robmar0se

m5rcc wrote: »

Hitachi GST is owned by Western Digital

A little premature!!

In March 2011, Western Digital announced it would acquire HGST, for $4.3 billion. The transaction is not expected to close until March 2012, due to the need to comply with remedy conditions set by the European Union.

Repost on Thursday!!

lonestarfan

Not sure which one to buy now!
The other issue was about saving to DVD. Do I need special software. Do I need to change to saving on DVD when I usually do it to cd? The problem I've been having with cd is that what I want to save was too large & I ended up taking hrs 2 break it down. I'm thinking maybe I could move to telling Grandma & the grandsons to copy once a month onto cd or dvd now I'm going to buy an xtra hard drive aswell as internet storage. As that would mean the files are larger would it be better to buy DVDs? My pc is away for fixing since after lunch so doing this on Iphone on a small screen so excuse any typos!

closed

http://www.filehippo.com/download_imgburn/

split up into 4.7GB folders, and buy a tub of 50 dvd's (<£10), then burn

if you are using nero instead, you may need to switch modes from cd to dvd

500GB portable drives (which as their name suggests are small, portable, and don't need external power supplies), can be had for around £60, 320 GB are cheaper, either should be sufficient for countless photo's. If you are also saving hours and hours of video's, then a largish drive may be more useful

smos585

Its a advantage and disadvantage of this website, you will get different opinions, which from your point of view could be confusing.

Think about this from a pragmatic point of view, which is just as important as the expense involved.

You're doing this for grandma, kids as well as yourself. DVDs are fine for specific backups, however trying to use them for incremental backup has its problems especially for Granny. How does she know whats new or changed? DVDs are slow, and get lost. But are cheap.

So assuming that your original questions should be answered, what or rather which external hdds should you use? Looking at these posts, you need to answer 3 questions.

1) What storage size?
2) Desktop or portable?
3) Which make?

The answers to these 3 questions has to be yours, you will only get opinions here based on posters' own experiences,

You don't need large storage devices with only 20gb per machine, even if it doubles each year for the next 5 years. 500mb or 1tb devices are more than adequate.

Desktop are more reliable with an external power source, plus don't take up 2 usb slots each - in my experience the smaller devices are more frequently dropped.

Which make? Not much difference between them, WD/Samsung have good reputations, the better ones will have a 2 year warranty. The WD 1tb from Amazon posted above looks a good compromise @ £64.

Hope this makes it easier to see the wood for the trees.

PS: You also need to think about how you backup your data, most of these external hdds come with a packaged/bespoke backup program - some are awful, pays your money take your choice.

lonestarfan

Ha ha lol now I remember why this has been on the to do list for over 2 yrs!!
Thnx for the post/detail.
Is there a back up software you'd recommend?
Thnx everyone for all the input. U all certainly found better prices than my searching produced!

debitcardmayhem

lonestarfan wrote: »

Ha ha lol now I remember why this has been on the to do list for over 2 yrs!!
Thnx for the post/detail.
Is there a back up software you'd recommend?
Thnx everyone for all the input. U all certainly found better prices than my searching produced!

IF you are only copying the photos no need to use backup software, if you want to backup your system then there is Acronis True Image (paid for) or EASEUS Todo is free
There are of course others, that others may prefer. If you wish to keep all the 3 locations up to date then microsoft synctoy is free too

andy2004

I've used both acronis true image and EaseUS todo, they look identical, but acronis has a better compression over todo, smaller backup image creation using default settings.
acronis also has a easier creation of a cd to boot from.

on a personal note of hdd manufacturers. i have owned a maxtor, samsung, fujitsu, hitatchi and Western digital, of various sizes, but most of the ones i'm currently using now are samsungs and for 1 reason. i had a 27gb fujitsu which lasted a whopping 9 years before dying on me it was my oldest drive. so good make, the maxtor is now the oldest and due to my system being upgraded can only be connected via a 3in1 adapter to usb but it still being used after 7years.
The worst drive i have bought is a western digital 1.5tb for the simple reason it died after 8month SMART failure, and the replacement failed after 14months BAD SECTORS as in 2 many, just RMA'd it yesterday.
the best drives at the moment seem to be Samsung, which i currently have 5 of. the 1 i'm referring to i bought 3months before the WD , also a 1.5gb, and is working perfectly, and is in use everyday from the day it was bought.

When i mentioned my WD to NOVATECH just a normal conversation, the bloke i was talking to mentioned they have been having a lot of WD being returned to them for failing. note: i bought mine from ebuyer. seems to be just the 1.5tb and bigger at the moment.

Seagate did have a bios problem a year ago when people where loosing their data from brand new 1.5tb drives due to a bug in the bios, infact some drives died a couple of days after being used, and whilst being used. there was a whole 180 pages of people complaining about on seagate forum. 180x30-40posts per page. but that should have been fixed by now.

Seagate also own Maxtor and are currently working with samsung. just my 2 cents, or whatever the british saying is. doesnt translate well into my 2 pence. what is the british saying meaning the same thing? even though i'm british i cant remember.