Hard Drive Recommendation

Hard Drives, Optical Drives, USB keys, Flash memory. Need help with or have experiences with a storage device? Share it in here!
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twosheds
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Hard Drive Recommendation

Post by twosheds »

Hello,

I am looking for an external hard drive to serve as a backup for my and my wife's laptops (I will still back up our files on CDs as well), and also as a storage place for some music. I am looking for something at least 80 gigs, if possible. Do you have and recommendations?

Best,
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BEan
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Post by BEan »

You could get an external enclosure, mobile rack, and put an internal harddrive in it. With this setup you can use any size hard drive you want, and even use more than one. I have this setup on my machine it comes in handy when you have to fix other people's computers.
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Post by LVCapo »

Another alternative is an external setup like those from Maxtor or WD, they have some nice units thathave card readers and auto back up programs.
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Post by Ozy666 »

The best bang for your buck is an external enclosure and a large harddrive.

Ozy
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Post by NAiLs »

I got my 80GB WD External drive from Officemax for $50 after rebate about a month back. Keep checking local advertisements for external HDD's on rebate. It's pretty nice, but the software sucks royally!
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Post by nightblood »

I use external buslink hard drives and I never have a problem with them
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Post by Joalaielna »

I got a 250giger for 92 bucks refurbed and an external inclosure for 28.99 from Newegg. Threw then together, Awesome.
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Post by gvblake22 »

The firewire 400 extrernal enclosures are pretty nice because I have seen/heard that they use a smaller CPU % than USB does (even though the transfer rates my not be QUITE the same)(firewire400 = 400Mb/s and USB2.0 = 460Mb/s).
Either would be a good choice though. If you can find firewire800 (firewireB or 1394B) and have a firewire 800 card then that would definately be the way to go. But the 800 doesn't seem as widespread yet. The Firewire800 is also backwards compatable with firewire400 so you can just get an adapter cable and still use it but it will be limited to firewire400 speeds instead of the firewire800 speeds.

But yeah, if you can find an external enclosure you like, just buy the HDD of your choice and plop it in the enclosure and you're all set. That would be the easiest/best way for and external/portable HDD setup.
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Post by Zelig »

Actually, from what I've seen, firewire (400 MB/s) drives offer significantly better performance than USB 2.0 external hard drives.
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Post by zepper »

Yup, a good external enclosure (lots of the folks at AT seem to like the Bytecc) with both FW and USB2 connections with a cheap drive from the Sunday circulars (big box stores with absurdly low after-rebate prices). should do it.

.bh.

Here, have a :drinkers: !
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Post by -mogwai »

i'm getting ready to sell my wd 160gb sata caviar drive.... if you're interested, let me know
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