External hard drive

TomsMom

Any recommendations for a good make external hard drive? Preferably small in size and flexible on how many gigs.

Also, someone told me that external hard drives can be affected by electrical equipment. Any comments?

Thanks.

simate

This one is a very good price and a good make too, you can also get £10 off that price by using Google Checkout which you'll have to sign up for first if you haven't already done so.

I've never come across any references to them being affected by electrical equipment though, I've never had any problems myself either.

If the above drive is too bulky for you, then this one would probably suit your needs, it's only 120gb though.

TomsMom

Thanks very much Simate, the small one would suit but I think I might check up on the dimensions of the bigger one as portability isn't necessarily required.

Can I ask what might be a couple of daft questions, I'm not techie and hubby knows even less! It is required for use on our home computer only.

I wish to store pictures on it and hubby wants to store accounts on it. Can you just plug in and unplug whenever you want, as in putting a floppy in, saving your work, then removing it, rather than having it permanently plugged in?

Also, one of the reviews mentioned "that there is no kind of security software so if you have got important work documents and accounts you will need to buy some software". What type of software is that then?

Last one - how do you format them?

Please excuse my ignorance.

Thanks.

purple_spider

I've got an external hard drive, if I want to turn it off I have to click on a little icon on the toolbar so that the computer disconnects it (stops sending data or whatever) and then its got a little on/off switch on the back, so you don't have to unplug it.

I use mine for photos, and word documents, so its always plugged in but I only switch it on when i need to use something.

I don't know what they mean by needing security software, I've got Norton on my PC and if you want to you can scan the external hard drive for viruses.

Theres quite a few about at the moment, and if you can i'd get plenty of memory as pictures/photos soon mount up and you might want the extra space later.

TomsMom

Thanks very much purple spider, that's very helpful. I've got one on order (160gb) so that will help me understand it a bit more when it arrives.