Buying an external hard drive

Qingu

Hellow! I have a 2-year-old Macbook and I want an external hard drive due to paranoia. I'm not looking for anything fancy or even portable. Any recommendations? Or things to avoid?

Much obliged!

Willeth

Be aware that most require a separate power source to function. This is usually either one that plugs into a wall socket or a second USB cable for dedicated power - so you'll be tethered to a wall socket or you'll have to use two ports.

wunderbar

honestly, what usually ends up being cheaper is buying a regular drive and a drive enclosure seperately, then marrying them. I'd look at doing that.

matt has a problem

I'm going to plug the LaCie drives again.

1TB, $129, USB 2.0, Firewire, eSATA hookups
500GB, $99, USB 2.0, Firewire, eSATA hookups
1TB, $99, USB 2.0 hookups only

I have the $129 1TB, it's a thing of beauty, both technologically and aesthetically.

EggyToast

I had two external drives that were "buy the enclosure, buy the drive," and while they worked fine, they were loud. I think manufacturers of enclosures tend to put crappy, high volume fans in their enclosures because they don't know what kind of drive you're going to put in there.

I now have a 1TB "silent" drive that is truly silent -- it's fanless -- and I love it.

Orogogus

Regarding external enclosures, does anyone have any opinions on hard drive docks, like this one? Is there any advantage to a full enclosure over a dock?

tterb

Qingu wrote: »

I want an external hard drive due to paranoia.

Well, in that case, you'll probably be worried about the possibility of a fire or flood killing both your computer and your external ... so a disaster-proof ioSafe would probably be your best buy (it's what I use!).

But really, it doesn't make too much difference which brand you choose. How long the drive will last has less to do with the brand than it has to do with good luck.

s_86

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tterb

s_86 wrote: »

I remember doing a lot of research on external hard drives a few months ago. After browsing many reviews and comments, i found out... Do not buy Comstar. I'm not sure if it was just one model that was giving everyone problems, or all their models, but man, people were bashing Comstar all over the place.

Seagte had a similar problem with a TB model recently. Most manufacturers do at some point.

KalTorak

I have a 500GB Western Digital MyBook (i think that's what they're called) - I got it for around $100, I'm sure they're much cheaper than that now. It does need to be plugged in, but with that much space I was able to split it more or less in half, use one partition for Time Machine backup and the other to hold stuff I didn't need taking up my laptop's space (downloaded movies and porn, mostly).

My gf uses a WD Passport - they're smaller, more portable, and don't need to plug into the wall. They're powered through USB. She only uses it for backup, doesn't need as much space as I do. Both have worked great with no problems whatsoever so far.

Captain Tragedy

I've had a Western Digital MyBook (160 GB) for a few years now for backup/storage, and have had no problems with it. If you keep an eye out on sales from places like Best Buy, you can get a 1TB drive for about $100-$130, I believe.