cheap reliable external HD recommendations?

lauzjp · 18-12-2006, 01:12

hello wise ones, as my other half has been working hard, he has some spare pennies and would like to store our music and documents on an external hard drive. We don't want to spend much - ideally less than ÃƒÆ’Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â£100.

We are fond of shopping at savastore, if anyone can particularly spot a barginous hard drive /portable storage device on here, please let me know! (They all look the same to me)

Thanking you's....

---------- Post added at 02:12 ---------- Previous post was at 02:07 ----------

where's my signature gone?!

**Matt D** · 18-12-2006, 01:16

I recently bought a 320GB Seagate USB2 external HDD for just under ÃƒÆ’Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â£80 from PC World - it was on offer, & was 20 quid cheaper than the 250GB Seagates they had.

No problems with it, & seems fast & quiet.

18-12-2006, 07:06

Ive never seen a reliable external hard drive every single one ive seen or used has failed and lost data within a few months

For small amount of data transfer I use a 2 gig kingston memory stick. For larger amounts of data I use internal drives. What will it be used for

LSainsbury · 18-12-2006, 08:11

I really want one of these.

Ideal for home networks and great for sharing data and external backups.

Aragorn · 18-12-2006, 08:33

I'm with Zing - the words 'cheap', 'reliable' and 'external' rarely go together, esp when talking about HDD's.
One fairly cheap and flexible method would be to make your own! One of these and whatever IDE drive you fancy from savastore.
But make sure that isn't the only copy of that important data!

LSainsbury · 18-12-2006, 08:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aragorn

I'm with Zing - the words 'cheap', 'reliable' and 'external' rarely go together, esp when talking about HDD's.
One fairly cheap and flexible method would be to make your own! One of these and whatever IDE drive you fancy from savastore.
But make sure that isn't the only copy of that important data!

I've got a 40GB External HDD (Laptop drive in a ally case).

Recently it has begun to give me bad sectors etc - read / write errors.

This was the reason for me buying a larger USB drive (4GB U3 SanDisk Cruzer Micro - thaks Aragorn!

)

If I need some larger capacity drive on the move, then I use some DVD-RW's or my webspace.

I'd go for something that's external but where portabiity is not really a factor - like the NAS box in my first post. That will quite happily sit connected to my wireless router!

lauzjp · 18-12-2006, 09:20

thanks guys, I'm more confused than ever, but I shall let Anton read the thread later! if I haven't spent all his spare pennies by then, lol...

j/k

Delta Whiskey · 18-12-2006, 10:22

Sort of agree with Zingle, I've a self built external drive using a Q-Tec 750H USB 2 case which is unstable in use (keeps disconnecting from the computer). On the other hand a Seagate 400Gb external hard drive has been as solid as a rock, as has a HDD Media player I bought from Maplins. It's down to the quality of the USB interface I believe.

DW

Salu · 18-12-2006, 11:04

Why are external drives less reliable? Isn't it the same hard drive that would be in a PC but is in a box with a USB interface? Or are you saying that the USB interface is unreliable?

18-12-2006, 11:09

Well in my experience yes,ive not tried a firewire example so may well have to one day

Aragorn · 18-12-2006, 11:13

Probably a combination of movement and repeated powering on/off.
The most common time for a disk to fail is during powerup as it puts strain on the components. A portable disk is going to get powered up far more often than a disk in a PC. I'm sure modern drives are better at parking heads than of old, but I don't think the original design of HDD's had 'portable' in mind!

LSainsbury · 18-12-2006, 11:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Salu

Why are external drives less reliable? Isn't it the same hard drive that would be in a PC but is in a box with a USB interface? Or are you saying that the USB interface is unreliable?

Perhaps it's becuase the are more portable and suffer from more knocks...

18-12-2006, 11:16

The ones I have had go down are purely from powering on and off.I hate them I dont use them in my work and I never trust them as a back up. Anything really important is backed up onto dvd/cd multiple times and spread across my network

SOSAGES · 18-12-2006, 11:56

ive used a lot of external hard drives (i use them at sites for extra backups of servers) cant say ive noticed a lot of difference between them all - have used many makes no issues yet.
have also made my own up but its probably not worth it.
i suggest u look for the biggest disk you can get for the money.
if u dont need firewire then save some money and go for the usb2 only option.
dont get anything flash with ethernet ports or a wireless option etc.

the ones that look like books are good i have had a few of them cant remmeber who makes them but as there are only about 4 people that make hard drives it wont be hard to find.

SMHarman · 18-12-2006, 16:15

I bought one of these
http://www.aitrend.com/HD-307A.html
and added a maxtor drive to it.

I generally use it as a firewire drive though it works fine as a USB drive.

I also have one of these but it is over your price point

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Buffalo-Link.../dp/B0007R6CF8

This is on 24/7, though the fan is getting noisey. Bought a new fan - need to get a soldering iron - transplant planned for next week.

Microsoft Sync Toy is good for moving stuff back and forth between drives and getting backups of music etc.