Which external hard drive for laptop?

emeraldbugle

Hi,

I have a HP laptop, with 100GB memory. I just want to use the drive as back up, mainly for photos.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

BeerBelly

You mean 100GB Hard Drive?

Does your laptop have 100GB or the external Hard Disk?

Are you asking what model to look at?

BeerBelly

If you have a look on Amazon you will find External Hard Drives between 200GB-500GB in size ranging from £79.99 to about £200 depending on make and speed ..etc.

ebuyer also do some reasonable prices.

emeraldbugle

Hi BeerBelly, the laptop has 100GB memory, so I probably don't need an external hard drive with a memory bigger than that.

Yes which model to buy, any recommendations.....lacie, western digital, freecom, maxtor etc

Thanks

BeerBelly

Your really confusing me!!

The laptop memory is lilely to be between 512MB - 4GB. Memory = RAM.

Storage/Hard Disk would likely be around 100GB.

So you have 100GB Hard Drive on your lappie and you want another 100GB external?

I would personally go for around 200-300GB one as:

1) it is hard to find a 100GB now
2) Price has come down a lot!
3) You will easily fill it up over the years - better to have more than to have to buy another

Millionaire

emeraldbugle wrote: »

Hi BeerBelly, the laptop has 100GB memory, so I probably don't need an external hard drive with a memory bigger than that.

Yes which model to buy, any recommendations.....lacie, western digital, freecom, maxtor etc

Thanks

this is a good external hardirve. cheap as well, read the reviews. 250gb space aswell.

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/109356

emeraldbugle

sorry for confusing you BeerBelly!

MickMack

I have a couple of 2.5" 80GB Hitachi/IBM travelstar disks in external enclosures which i use for hard-disk backups. Worth saying that periodic DVD backups are always a good idea as hardware always fails eventually. The 2.5" hard disks are the range used in IBMs Thinkpad range of laptops so they are pretty robust little disks and great if you want something that portable. The enclosures are Usb2 and the come with two USB connections which mean you can power the disk from the USB directly rather than needing another separate power supply which is also handy for portability.

Also just thought this freeware utility might be useful for people using hard-disk backups, its called SyncBack and there is a freeware version which you can download and use for doing backups and synchronising backups to handle changes.

SyncBack Freeware V3.2.14

you can download it from here:

http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html#freeware

and its dead easy to set up and get running, just thought it might be of interest.

BeerBelly

As Mick said, you can always buy a laptop hardisk and buy a sperate case - although as its powered by the USB and not mains as well as slower disk speed it would be a bit slower. Also no firewire. But on the plus side, small and cheap and can easily fit into a coat or bag (handy size).

The choice is yours.

MickMack

Actually if you consider the data interface,
USB2 supports data transfer at up to 480Mbps.
The more common standard for firewire is the 400Mbps standard althought there is a newer 800Mbps standard but what they don't tell you is that WindowsXP by default will only support a 100Mbps data rate from firewire unless you install a special update so there is a very good chance that a USB2 connected device will actually perform faster that a firewire connected device.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewire

Another very good reason for multiple hard-disk devices is not putting all your eggs in one basket.