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Buying an external hard drive

meer53
Posts: 10,217 Forumite

in Techie Stuff
Hi, we have been advised to buy an external hard drive for my daughters laptop to improve storage and performance, she's off to Uni in September and don't really want to buy a brand new laptop. Can anyone recommend which one to buy ? I have no idea but have looked at some 1tb Seagate ones which have mixed reviews. We need one that is idiot proof ! Recommendations welcomed
I don't want to go to Currys or somewhere and be sold the one that they have most of !

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Hmm... laptops are good for portability - hanging a disk off the side is going to seriously impair that. Excellent for backup, but ...
Plus if you're going for a mechanical drive, I'd be wary of it getting banged about while on the move.
What model of laptop is it, what performance problems are you trying to solve, and who advised you to get an external drive ? The usual advice for increasing performance is to replace mechanical drive with solid-state drive (but those tend to be smaller than mechanical drives - but if you are upgrading an old laptop, I guess a new SSD disk might be of comparable size).
I have a couple of samsung M3 devices and have had no problem with them. One is attached to an rpi media centre and has been in constant use for - gosh, almost 4 years now.0 -
psychic_teabag wrote: »Hmm... laptops are good for portability - hanging a disk off the side is going to seriously impair that. Excellent for backup, but ...
Plus if you're going for a mechanical drive, I'd be wary of it getting banged about while on the move.
What model of laptop is it, what performance problems are you trying to solve, and who advised you to get an external drive ? The usual advice for increasing performance is to replace mechanical drive with solid-state drive (but those tend to be smaller than mechanical drives - but if you are upgrading an old laptop, I guess a new SSD disk might be of comparable size).
I have a couple of samsung M3 devices and have had no problem with them. One is attached to an rpi media centre and has been in constant use for - gosh, almost 4 years now.
It's an HP Pavilion2, it's about 2 years old, it's running quite slow and an independant repairer advised her to install Malwarebytes but she doesnt have enough space to do this, she has 2 years worth of college work stored on it. I don't think the size of the drive will bother her, it can go in the bag she uses. We had an issue this week where the laptop told her she was logged on as a temporary user and that her files may be deleted, i think it was from a Windows 10 update reminder. After shutting down and restarting her files reappeared but she would feel more confident if they were backed up somewhere else and the repairman said an external drive would help it run faster ?0 -
I have had a Seagate 500GB external hard drive powered by the USB connection to the computer (no external power supply) for several years and never had any problems with it.0
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If your budget runs to an SSD then that's the best option, but won't be cheap. For external hard drives the last 3 that I have bough have been Transcend Storejet ones because they have some additional shock protection that might save the data if it's dropped or jarred - I did this after losing everything on another less-protected drive.0
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It's an HP Pavilion2, it's about 2 years old, it's running quite slow0
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grumpycrab wrote: »Your options are limited; how much "disk" space has the HP? I'm guessing 64GB - it may be worth clean installing (backups docs and software licenses first!). As far as using an external hard drive, this won't make the HP any quicker unless it currently is full up. If you type "pc" in Cortana/search tell us what it says for Local Disk(C:) e.g. 2GB free of 64GB
I'm not very good with stuff like this but on C drive it shows 28.8 gb used out of 29.1 gb so i assume it's pretty full !0 -
I'm not very good with stuff like this but on C drive it shows 28.8 gb used out of 29.1 gb so i assume it's pretty full !
e.g.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2017/jan/05/what-is-the-best-way-to-deal-with-windows-10-updates-on-a-32gb-netbook0 -
grumpycrab wrote: »Oh dear, only 32GB. The technical phrase is "you're stuffed". Buy her a decent bit of kit, don't spend any more money on the HP. Somebody may know tricks to get around this limit.
e.g.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2017/jan/05/what-is-the-best-way-to-deal-with-windows-10-updates-on-a-32gb-netbook
Thank you x can't afford a new laptop at the moment so might buy an external hard drive for now.0 -
Yep its full and at only a 32GB its already like to be a SSD so a mechanical external disk is not likely to help speed things up.
That type of laptop\netbook is always going to be relatively slow so perhaps think about an upgrade.
However if you are sticking with that laptop then think about how much space it needs going forward. She has lived with 32GB for a duration how much do you need? What is the course is it more about essays etc. which take up little space or does it require editing\storage of videos which require lots of space (and probably a laptop upgrade).
Depending on the answer to the question I would probably go for something like a flash drive that is only just bigger than the port. You leave it permanently in the machine and less risk of damage etc and much more convenient than a 2.5" hard drive.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ultra-Fit-Flash-Drive/dp/B01BGTG3JA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1523964319&sr=8-3&keywords=small+usb+drive
This would give you twice the current storage and in reality with Windows taking a lot of space anyway, more than that.
I am surprised that the independent did not offer something like and to move some of the data off on to this. Having the main drive full on a PC is a bad idea because it can cause slow down. However just adding external storage does not solve you need to then move stuff to free up space.
This still does not present a proper backup solution in my opinion. If you daughters bag was to get stolen it may well have laptop and external drive (of whatever sort) in it. All work gone ...
Look at a cloud based backup (the uni might have one) that you can sync the important docs to and recover should the laptop ever be nicked\damaged\virus attacked.0 -
ChuckMountain wrote: »Yep its full and at only a 32GB its already like to be a SSD so a mechanical external disk is not likely to help speed things up.
That type of laptop\netbook is always going to be relatively slow so perhaps think about an upgrade.
However if you are sticking with that laptop then think about how much space it needs going forward. She has lived with 32GB for a duration how much do you need? What is the course is it more about essays etc. which take up little space or does it require editing\storage of videos which require lots of space (and probably a laptop upgrade).
Depending on the answer to the question I would probably go for something like a flash drive that is only just bigger than the port. You leave it permanently in the machine and less risk of damage etc and much more convenient than a 2.5" hard drive.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ultra-Fit-Flash-Drive/dp/B01BGTG3JA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1523964319&sr=8-3&keywords=small+usb+drive
This would give you twice the current storage and in reality with Windows taking a lot of space anyway, more than that.
I am surprised that the independent did not offer something like and to move some of the data off on to this. Having the main drive full on a PC is a bad idea because it can cause slow down. However just adding external storage does not solve you need to then move stuff to free up space.
This still does not present a proper backup solution in my opinion. If you daughters bag was to get stolen it may well have laptop and external drive (of whatever sort) in it. All work gone ...
Look at a cloud based backup (the uni might have one) that you can sync the important docs to and recover should the laptop ever be nicked\damaged\virus attacked.
Thanks x
She has now started to store work on OneDrive and her Uni work will all be text, no videos etc, maybe presentations occasionally (she's doing a teaching degree) I think i'll go for the external hard drive but get a professional to clean it up for now.
I really appreciate everyones help xx0
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