External hard drives -good deals / good makes

fudgem

Can anyone tell me whether these usb hard drives work the same way as a memory stick thingie? just plug them in, drag and drop to them and then unplug?

asharon

fudgem wrote: »

Can anyone tell me whether these usb hard drives work the same way as a memory stick thingie? just plug them in, drag and drop to them and then unplug?

yes that's right. although i once had a problem getting one seen by windows, but it was a driver issue.

icefall

I have a Buffalo sata 300gb drive.

Works great for me.

traderonline

I'm using:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Maxtor-Touch-External-Drive-7200rpm/dp/B0002CQE10

IvanOpinion

mercurius wrote: »

Any advice on good makes / makes to avoid.

That is a very subjective question and will depend on each persons personal experiences. I don't think there are any 'bad' makes out there but any piece of electronics can fail (so just make sure you have backups of any important data) ... my personal preference (at the minute) is Toshiba drives and the Samsung SpinPoint are very good ... there only are a handful of actual drive manufacturers out there, all the other brands (e.g. Lacie) just fit drives in enclosures

The USB powered ones work fine as long as the USB port can deliver enough power (some laptops fail to do this).

Ivan

ShimSham

jv_patel wrote: »

I'd give the My Book another vote.

I have 3 external USB HD's, 2 generic boxes from ebay in which I plugged in off-the-shelf drives, and a 320GB My Book.

My Book wins hands down for one-killer feature - it powers down when not in use, either when the host pc is off, or when no files have been accessed for a while.

Hope this helps!

Buffalo Drivestations can also do this if you install the supplied software. Plus they have an on/off switch. I had a Buffalo for 2/3 years and it hasn't let me down yet.

Jonce

http://amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Essential-USB2-0-External/dp/B000EXZB0M

Does anybody know if 'Western Digital My Book 500GB Essential USB2.0 External Hard Drive' would work with Vista. It doesn't say on that page.

Thank You

Millionare

Jonce wrote: »

http://amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Essential-USB2-0-External/dp/B000EXZB0M

Does anybody know if 'Western Digital My Book 500GB Essential USB2.0 External Hard Drive' would work with Vista. It doesn't say on that page.

Thank You

Another vote for WD MY BOOK. Excellent Drive.

I have the MyBook 500GB Pro Version and also the Maxtor Onetouch II USB/firewire.

The My Book wins hands down.

Im running it on Vista with no problems.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=232&language=en

On the page look at the right side by prduct features and it shows it works with vista

rdpro

Avoid Maxtor and Seagate SATA drives for now - these have a depressingly-short life and are NOT what you want as a backup for irreplaceable files.

Western Digital have definitely gone up in my estimation over the last two years.

Mine'sAPintPlease

I have a seagate external drive, which so far has been trouble free. Very quiet and doesn't get hot. However, reading the reviews on amazon.com is rather odd, as it seems to be a 50/50 mix of 5 stars and 1 star scores.

I will say that the bounceback software that came with it is utter tosh though! Caused me several hours of grief. Reading the comments here, I'll try a WD drive next time.