So, i'm looking at buying a 1tb external HDD for my laptop, can be USB2.0, Firewire 400/800, don't really care. Just want to know what the best brands are, what I should look for, what I should avoid and so on.

I know jack shit about Hard Drives, so yeah. Keep that in mind.

 

I've got a 1tb Western Digital for my laptop which works very well and I would recommend that. Other than WD you've got Iomega, HP, Seagate, Toshiba, Hitachi, Lacie, Cavalry, and a bunch more.

Iomega, HP, Lacie, and Cavalry are good, Seagate's not bad and I would keep away from the others.

You should be able to pick up any of the above between 100 and 150 dollars.

 

I have a WD 2TB MyBook that I've had since October that has worked great, so I can attest that WD atleast is a good buy.

 

I use Seagate, but I hear Lacie is supposed to be really good.

WD === Son, I am disappoint. They have failed me so many times, it isn't funny. Same with Hitachi.

 

Just get a USB HDD caddy and plug regular hard drives in to it.

 

I've been quite pleased with the 1.5TB Seagate FreeAgent Desk I bought a while back. I got it at a big box store for $139.99+tax, which at the time seemed like a good deal but now seems like just a little high compared to what's available online, etc.

Anyway, the Seagate Manager software was at first a bitch, since what came with the HDD was only for 32-bit operating systems. I downloaded the 64-bit version from Seagate and since then it's been a pleasure to use. I set the software to backup everything on my laptop M-W-F, and there's a Sync function that you can use to keep files and folders up-to-date between several computers, which I don't currently use but seems like a very good idea.

I used to have a portable Western Digital 80GB HDD, and ended up dropping it in a parking lot. The drive fell about a foot and a half and never made a peep again. I was devastated; I had so much personal stuff backed up on that thing, but that's a HDD with moving parts for you. Conversely, I once left a USB thumb drive in a pants pocket and it ended up going through the wash and one cycle in the dryer. I pulled the thing out, it burned my fingers, I popped it into the computer and off I went. That's solid-state electronics for you. I wish it were affordable at this time to have backup drives using solid-state technology, but alas...

Good luck. Check out Amazon and Newegg.com

 

Eh, thats just the currency exchange. It works out like that for everything. I'm expecting to spend $200~ or so. Right now i have it narrowed down to these possibilities:

http://ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=368857 - Seems pretty standard.

http://ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=375184 - Seems the best option, price wise.

http://ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=382496 - Has lots of extra stuff I don't need for an extra $18.

http://ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=385263 - Costs about $100 more, but has firewire 800, which my Macbook Pro has, so could be a good idea.

Anything in particular that I should avoid in these? Or just pick what I want and get it?

I've heard a lot of stuff about Hard Drives failing and shit ,but I presume thats individual cases as opposed to brands in particular?

I also have absolutely no intention to use anything but a drag and drop interface. Just putting that out there.

 

hmm, You make some interesting points there Sesc.

Thanks for the analysis, size doens't matter to me, this is simply to keep all my large media files and so on on. Maybe backup some music etc.

You make a good case with the warranty, so yeah, I'll probably go for that.

As for transfer speed? yeah, it probably actually doesn't matter that much to me. I won't be transferring that much stuff, so USB2 should do fine.

Cheers for the opinions guys.

 

I myself have purchased 2 Western Digital Externals to date. My first one was a few years back, was not too big something around 360GB. I have had no problems with it and its been at least a few years. I recently purchased a 1TB My Book Edition from WD and its awesome. I can connect through USB, Fiber wire and eSATA as well so its useful on any computer. WD has pretty good warranty, 3 years If I remember correctly and you get good support staff to help you out.

Just my thoughts.

Regards

Edit: Only thing that's slightly annoying is having to convert Hard drives to NTFS because they all come in FAT 32 so you can't move files larger than 4GB.

 

This is pro

It's what I plan on doing for my next hard drive cause I just filled the 500g WD I got from my dad for xmas