BleepingComputer.com: Need Help Choosing An Ex Hd

Hello and thanks for your time. I'm wondering what is a reliable external hard drive for me. I'm running a windows XP laptop and don't want the million dollar top of the line model. I'm thinking in the $200 or less range and need 400 or 500gb. A for instance would be what a friend told me about seagate. He said he buys seagates second in line called a barracuda. So I something like that would be nice but he said the only seagate barracudas he could find were INTERNAL. Any input on what to buy or not what to buy would be appreciated.
THANKS
bruns37

Hi Bruns37 and welcome to BleepingComputer.

You can purchase an external hard drive in a case with its own power supply for that price, a good example is this Western Digital hard drive. This connects via a USB port and because it has its own power supply will not be a drain on your laptops resources.

Western Digital and Seagate are the two choices that I like in hard drives for what it's worth.

I have a Windows XP but I'm also looking at an external seagate hard drive. one that is about 250gb-320gb because our current free space on ours now is not even 1gb. I like playing games like the age of empire series that on my computer would be about 4+ gbs and I was wondering if the external harddrive would allow me to have those games on my computer.

If you want to keep your costs down, you can purchase an external HD case like any of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.as...rnal-Enclosures

and then add whatever internal drive you like. Just pay attention to whether the enclosure requires an IDE or SATA interface.

I got a Seagate 300GB drive and case for a total of less than $140, and that was a while ago. I am certain you could do better.

DR

Last week I bought an external enclosure for my 120gb hard drive after my motherboard died.
All I had to do was put the drive into the enclosure and copy files from there to my new computer.
This will also serve as a back up source.
This might be something you want to look into. As mentioned, just make sure the connection type will match the hard drive.

My enclosure is from Manhattan, cost me $59 plus tax. Since I already had the hard drive, there was no expense to purchase another one.

This post has been edited by Queen-Evie: 19 December 2007 - 01:10 PM

I've been using a 500GB Network Hard Drive from Freecom for about a year and its worked fine for me. It has a NIC so its basically a file server on my network, the transfer rates are somewhat better than USB.
The only two drawbacks that I found are 1) that the filesystem needs to be FAT32 in order for the interface to work properly, and 2) it runs a little hot, so I turn it on only when I need it.
Looks like the 400GB Network HD is within your price range.

There will be a tradeoff here. Drives bigger than about 250 gB will all be 3.5" drives and will require an external power supply (in addition to the USB cord for the drive to connect to the laptop). This is a huge drawback with a laptop because it's more of a PITA to lug the drive around than it is to lug the laptop around (or so I think).

If you don't plan on toting the drive around, I'd suggest the Western Digital My Book Essential Edition (the stripped down version). I've had several and one had failed on me. W-D supplied me a new drive to transfer the data before I returned the defective drive - so they earned points with me for tech support and customer service.

For the smaller, more portable drives, I like the Western Digital Passport drives. They fit in a shirt pocket, don't require an external power cord, and can store up to 250 gB. I use the 250 gB to store everything I might need on a support call - including a copy of most OS's installation CD's

Personally I don't like usb2 drives, they are often painfully slow, for a few extra dollars I would invest in a e-sata/usb2
enclosure. E-sata is so much faster.