Cheap external hard drives?

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=201684296&loc=101&hdwt=0&sp=1

Make sure to cancel it before you do. Number of total open credit lines impacts your credit rating.

And that's an awesome price for 320GB of external storage. Hence the "temporarily sold out" flag I guess. Which sucks, b/c I was totally ready to take advantage!

Actually, having existing credit cards that are paid off is GOOD for your credit rating. This is a common (Western?) misconception.

[FWIW: Open credit line with zero balance is okay by me! I have a bunch.]

This is only true to a point - then the curve slopes down again. But Fair Isaac algorithms are a whole other conversation, and standards/calculation methods may certainly vary globally.

Fair Isaac pretty much runs the show in the US, so it's not a misconception here.

rolling your own external HDs

get an enclosure for maybe $30 more

IOGear 320GB USB/FireWire exty for $169.95 with the rebate you'll never remember to fill out or send in, $199.95 without. I'm more of a LaCie guy, but that's pretty nice...

Ha, ha! So sad and so, so true...

so i'm thinking about another HD, to replace. i'm looking at bus powered ones this time, i don't want to have to bother with separate power. i'll probably be looking at 80gb ones.

what bus powered drives do you all have? i have an ibook g4. for those with ibooks, is its power sufficient for your hard drive?

it seems lacie are not so good for these drives, as for the bigger ones? what do you reccommend?

ps anyone want to buy a usb 2 120 gb hard drive with about 50 gig of mainly house, techno and hip hop lemme know!

i was under the impression that for macs at least firewire is far preferable to usb 2. my current machine is 120gb maxtor.

opinion?

http://www1.linksys.com/products/product.asp?prid=640&scid=43

what say you????

300GB is kind of the sweet spot right now; I just bought one last week for $89 after rebate. That's probably as good as you can get.

Check Outpost.com, TigerDirect, NewEgg. Buy an internal drive and put it in an external enclosure (firewire/USB2.0)

http://newertech.com/images/ministackv2ra_396.jpg

my advice is that you will do better to avoid going 1TB and instead building up an armada of 250Gig or 300 gig external drives.. It's actually a little safer inasmuch as if you lose your 1TB drive, you don't lose everything. It's more of a pain in the ass to back up multiple drives, but you'll save money.

I've been doing this very process for the better part of three years now and it has served me well with my Mac and my music.

Friend of mine works for a firm that handles refurbished HDs and might be able to get me a pretty nice deal, so I'm checking with him too.

Also, you don't need a 10,000RPM high-end hard drive to do the trick. 7200 works fine.

While use of P-ATA (and FWIW, it's not typically referred to PATA in retail stores, it's just usually referred to generically as an internal IDE hard drive) is declining, it's also typically less expensive than SATA, as are the hard drive enclosures that you will need to buy. From a performance perspective, there's no advantage in your situation to go with SATA in an external HD. Be patient and watch for sales because hard drives are on sale A LOT. At Xmas time, there are always major deals to be found. Even after Black Friday. The forums over at fatwallet.com typically will have postings when red-hot deals for HDs are going on.

(be careful though because, if it's anything like hammersmith, the 160G drives are on the same shelf and the same price)

SEAGATE ST3320620U2-RK External Hard Drives:
http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/store/cur_page.jsp?page=Product&fm=1&sm=9&tm=1&sku=240892&category_oid=-27479

http://store.theonion.com/product_info.php?products_id=214

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-FREEAGENT-160GB-5400RPM-USB2-0/dp/B000O156YK/ref=sr_1_1/203-8006767-2233530?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1180808704&sr=1-1

so what do people think of this seagate 160gb usb powered lad?

they make a 500gb one that only costs $180, i'm interested in purchasing, as well.

i bought that toaster one for C$120. it is HUGE.

Is this one ok? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Freecom-Mobile-Drive-USB-2-silver/dp/B000GTQ91E/ref=dp_return_1/202-6474582-3223810?ie=UTF8&n=560798&s=electronics&qid=1181175920&sr=1-6

I've only got about £50 spare and don't need masses of space, just somewhere to shift my itunes library to as i've only got 3gbs free on the laptop's hard disk.

Firewire for HDs, dude. USB is whack.

Also, cannot boot from USB from macs, double whack.

"whack" is wack

whack is a whole lot more onomatopoeic.

Sadly I don't have a mac. If I got a firewire one would I not need a separate power supply? I though with this one I'd be able to power it from the usb port.

Hahaha, just as I turn on my external hard-drive I find a thread about them top of New Answers! Mine's a Maxtor, and it's very good.

my dad's external hard drive fell. he's been trying to get it repaired but EVERY fucking store here in Japan - includ. Apple store which fucking sold the fucking EHD - refuses to repair it. so we're talking the drive back home and hopefully they can fix it over (t)here. it's probably just a plastic *thingie* that got stuck in it. i hope anyway. i fucking hate external hard drives. had it once, it broke after a couple of weeks or months (can't remember) and decided against having another one.

i keep backing up stuff to mine and then deleting the original (making the backup the ONLY copy). this is dumb. but's it's 90% ripped cds so all i'd lose is time.

isn't firewire rapidly becoming a dead protocol? not that it isn't good (I have problems with it on my windows machine though)

It's been ~6 years since I last bought an HDD (and internal at that), so what are the good brands for external? Seagate and Maxtor? Is WD still unreliable? (I had an old WD internal that pooped out on me.)

I also want to ask this question

but most importantly what brands to AVOID. I just want to know if whatever random backup shit they have at Costco is acceptable

LaCie has fallen out of favor. I now use glyphs. some dudes I know use g-raids. the shot answer is to be able to RAID EVERYTHING

I've got a 250 gig Maxtor for $140. Took a bit of fiddling to get it to automate backup w/Linux, but runnin w/o a hitch for about 2 months now.

i have a maxtor and a pair of seagates. the maxtor 200GB has been with me a bit over a year now with no problems, the seagates (500 & 750) are both pretty new

the 750 seagate was A$270 or thereabouts, which i think is marginally less than i paid for the 200GB at the time

I got one of those WD MyBook thingers 18 months or so ago and it works fine. I've also put 3 internal drives in various cheapo $30 external housings from Fry's and I lug them around in satchels sometimes and in carryons on planes and whatnot and haven't had any problems with any of them, knock on wood.

I go for Seagate of late, because of the extra warranty period (5 years versus the 3 years of most other manufacturers). I think that most mainstream consumer HDDs will be much of a muchness really, so this small difference is enough to swing the decision for me.

i just paid 140 for a 500 gig maxtor

is it better to go for one with an AC connector? id prefer not, but are there any known problems with usb-powered hard drives?

am looking at this one http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0012IOHVM/ref=amb_link_58209865_1?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=special-product-offers-1&pf_rd_r=1D5410BPPQ3HCJDB36TE&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_p=179949691&pf_rd_i=B000RG11E6

Most computers do not provide enough power through one usb port for the drive so you need to connect with two cables, but otherwise not problems. (it is a right pain if you have a laptop with only one USB port on either side, I'm looking at you first generation MacBookPro)

Not to get all Slickdeals, but I think Dell is having a sale on select storage devices. I bought this Seagate 500 GB drive for $107 (after tax). Coupon code while it lasts: 2KHCKL$FJGB9F3

I have a 250GB USB-powered Seagate that I've been taking EVERYWHERE for the past year. So far, so good.

My recent purchase of two Seagate 7200.11 SATA-II 750GB drives and two Antec MX-1 actively cooled external enclosures to house them in (all for the princely sum of ~£260 not including shipping) has so far worked out very smoothly. It's early days, but recommended thus far.

pixmania.com

They're now offering 1000GB (1TB) external drive, think it's a western digital, for £115 (US$225??)

Worth a look if you're looking for something that you'll not fill up until they offer proper internet-tv that you can download.

I have a couple of Western Digital 500GB drives in RAID 1 and they seem fine.

Is it agreed that SATA is the way to go these days?

btw I'm suspicious of the 1TB drives out there for some reason, but I don't know why.

One of my collegues bought a 1Tb drive recently and brought it to work to show off. Some of us immediately saw it: "why is it so wide?" - after prying open the case: two 500 Gb drives inside.

lol. buying 2x 500gb drives is also vastly cheaper...

Can anyone find any portable 2.5" drives that run at 7200rpm and USB power?

btw I'm suspicious of the 1TB drives out there for some reason, but I don't know why.

A drive that big, it feels like you're putting all your neweggs in one basket.

Any thoughts on this?

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=205001869

Positive reviews, but I'm unsure as to whether being 2 500GB drives instead of 1TB is a good or a bad thing...

2x500gb drives is a bad thing... doubles the chances of you losing your data - if one drive screws up, you lose everything.

Go for single drive option... even if it costs a little more..

Or get multiple drives with data redundancy. Costs a lot initially but you can just swap drives out when they fail/get full and lose no data. Oooh, sweet Drobo.

yeah, that looks good but is about 5 times my budget! half wondering about 2x750gb though if I could get them cheap them enough.

canadians, here's a one day deal:
http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?langid=EN&sku_id=0665000FS10106081&CMP=BAC-FS_hbad_t1_s1-EN

500GB, $100

hmm. a few q's:

(1) is firewire necessarily better than usb? (i have a 2-year-old iBook G4)

(a) what's recommended backup software for mac osx? (note that i don't have osx leopard that has the built-in backup software?)

(b) what's a recommended external HD brand for macs? i'm in the market for a 500 GB or possibly a 750 GB (which i wouldn't really need now, but you never know about the future).

(1) Firewire was designed to share lots of bandwidth with many devices. However, with one device, USB2 will likely perform OK. This doesn't mean that USB2 hardware is a damned bit of good, however.

(a) Drag-n-drop. If you are capable with cron, then rsync.

(b) LaCie hasn't been too bad for me.

or (a) Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper.

drag and drop usually works, although as far as i know you can't back up, say, photoshop that way.

i might go with lacie. i've had big problems with their DVD burners, but no problems (yet) with their HDs.

it does seem like a "six one, 1/2 dozen the other" choice on most makes and models, unless you want to go waaay high end and spend upward of $800 on a HD.

1) for that generation of powerbook (all G4 and earlier I think) firewire is preferable as you cannot boot from USB. One of the good features of Carbon Copy Cloner is that it backs up to a bootable volume so that if your main disk ever goes kaput you can still boot your system.

b) carbon copy cloner

c) I have 3 LaCie of varying ages and no problems with any of them, however for Work I have just bought a formac because it was a better deal. Avoid Western Digital.

Yeah but wouldn't firewire be problematic as newer macs no longer have a firewire port? Aren't you gonna have a hard drive you can't access when you get a new computer?

Newer macs do have firewire ports.

Besides most of the firewire ones also have USB.

oic my bad

OK the Air doesn't.

I connect my LaCie drive by Firewire, but it has a USB lead too if I ever need it.

Firewire is generally considered better than USB 2 performance-wise, and probably worth the price difference if you're going to be actively using it more than just the occasional backup. Also your firewire port probably isn't being used vs your USB ports.

I wonder, is it worth it for me to get one of those schmancy enclosures with Firewire 800 (1394b) for the extra performance? (or a normal ext. drive with quad output - USB 2/1394a/b/eSATA) I feel like I'm heading towards an OWC Mercury quad enclosure + .5 or 1TB SATA drive, but it costs more to go that route vs prebuilt. But is it worth all this wankery...

Everything depends on what you want to do with it, which kinda goes without saying, I s'pose. My two USB2.0 external drives are plenty fast for storage, backups, and even serving as ftp shares. (It's not as if the 60MB/sec top speed is going to be outstripped by my bandwidth anytime soon.) BUT! I also use an external as my main iTunes library, and I've tried both USB2.0 and Firewire, and Firewire is noticeably faster and smoother. And I have a DVD writer that's Firewire, and I don't even want to think about trying to run such a thing with USB.

I don't think that FW800 is quite at must-have level for anyone but maybe video editing pros -- FW800 certainly isn't a must-have for Pro Tools, at least.

To really get the benefit out of FW800 you ought to be connecting to drives in a RAID-0 stripe.

8-month update, now that I actually have to get one - any good recommendations today?

http://dealnews.com/search.html?filter=k:external+hard+drive;&o=hotness

maybe one of these?

i have one of these and it pretty much rules

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Passport-Essential-WDME5000TN/dp/B001F9LY14/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1238379358&sr=8-1

Sorry, should've mentioned I'm looking for specific recommendations of Firewire 400/800 drives, 1 TB-ish.

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11156

i hav 3 1tb my book drives - cant really attest to their durability as i just got them - i had a couple 500gb models before that one of which was fine and the other that crapped out after a while - but i was downloading stuff on it all day so it sort of not surprising - i have the usb 2 versions but heres the firewire 800 option

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-FireWire-External-WDH1Q10000N/dp/B000VZCEU8/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1238420562&sr=8-2

I'm definitely thinking about that one. On one hand the price is really good for FW 800 and that size, but on the other, the customer reviews aren't that great, and it is kind of low-priced when most in that range run from $180-220 (like the above-mentioned LaCie).

I just picked up one of these: http://freeagent.seagate.com/en-us/hard-drive/external-hard-drive/Free-Agent.html

It's been great for the 5 days that I've had it.

fyi theres some weird bug in leopard w/reformatting drives where disc utility throws up an error when u try to reformat a pc drive to mac - was driving me nuts until i found the work around which is to partition it - u can make it w/just one partition so theres really no diff its just some funky disc utility bullshit

hi dere: definitely a good looking option

ice cr?m: Really? That doesn't sound good - I was planning to make a few partitions (one for Time Machine, one for a bootable clone, and one NTFS). So you're saying I should partition the whole thing as one HFS+ before splitting it up?

doing multiple partitions will work just as well as one

its just the erase pane in disc utility is fucked

http://i42.tinypic.com/w177n7.jpg

but u can use the partition pane to do the same thing

if u never used the erase pane and just went straight to partition youd never encounter the problem

this might only be a problem on usb external drives tho

Ah I see. Good tip.

yah just wanted share in hopes that no other mac usr would ever have to suffer like i did

Maxtor OneTouch 4 (250GB)

vs.

LaCie Rugged 250

???

I have a LaCie rugged, its great.

I've have three Lacie drives and I've never had a problem with any of them.

done and done

Oh no!

(j/k)

haha you guys

is there a particular place to keep an eye out for good deals on external HDs?

B3st Buy circulars on Sundays, also posted online that same day. I've seen some pretty good deals, most recently a 1 TB drive for just barely over a hundred bucks.

slickdeals and bensbargains and good at watching for that kind of stuff, though you generally have to be patient - wait for the right deal to come

where's the cheapest place in the uk to get one?

I got an iomega 1tb right after xmas for $99 at J&R music world (shipped).

Just checked and they're still selling for the same price. It's a good drive, too. http://www.jr.com/iomega/pe/BER_34269/

hello ilx, some advice please! i need a new external hard drive (for my macbook). i've been recommended an iomega (was also recommended an owc mercury but you can only get them from the US).

amazon search brings up lots of iomegas

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dcomputers&field-keywords=iomega&x=0&y=0

basically - what are the difference between those models and why are some of them so much more expensive than others despite being the same size?

these

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Iomega-Prestige-Portable-Hard-Drive/dp/B004LX7WGC/ref=sr_1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1327825405&sr=1-2
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Iomega-Home-Media-Network-Drive/dp/B004R23XMY/ref=sr_1_6?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1327825405&sr=1-6
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Iomega-Prestige-Desktop-Hard-Drive/dp/B003IHH79E/ref=sr_1_17?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1327825405&sr=1-17
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Iomega-BlackBelt-Portable-Drive-Firewire/dp/B003V1YHIQ/ref=sr_1_16?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1327825405&sr=1-16

are all 1TB but i don't really understand the differences between them and i have no idea which i should go for. i just want something to store lots of music on (and i'd use it to play that music off), that works with a macbook, is durable and not horribly fragile, and is reasonably quiet...

1st one should be fine for you, it's also portable so it'll be small

2nd one is a network hard drive, which means it connects all the computers on a network, ie all the computers in your household. You don't need that.

3rd one is grey. And it's desktop. Get that if you want a bigger bulkier hd that just sits on your desk.

4th one has 2 firewire ports in addition to a usb port. So it just depends how you intend to connect your computer to it. It's also a speacial 'Mac' Edition. Don't know what that means really. If you're intending to connect via usb you should still go for the 1st one.

brilliant, thanks!

might get the third, portability is useful but in practice i rarely need it in an external HD, and i'm a little concerned about one of the user comments re: fragility in the first one

actually the customer reviews aren't encoyraging for the desktop one either :/

*encouraging

Yeah they're not great. I don't know much about iomega. Most people, including me, seem to go for Western Digital. I can attest that they as good as you an expect from these things. Try this
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Elements-Desktop-External/dp/B002E7HEVU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327830590&sr=8-1

"they're as good"

ooh, cheaper and the reviews look much more positive. i was also recommended western digital y'day. thanks! cross fingers i can cope with reformatting it for a mac.

Recently I've bought WDs and Seagates, and all the Seagates make a ridiculous amount of noise. Bad noise, like clunking.

a seagate was the one that died. i'd had it since 2008, does that count as a decent innings? it actually worked fine in that time, albeit with a fault that meant i had to use a "hd awake" workaround to get it to work properly on a mac.

i guess it didn't even die without warning - y'day morning while playing an mp3 it kept stopping and starting. i just didn't think that meant it was DYING. stupid stupid stupid me.

xp if you used it a lot it's not bad.

I have four copies of my most important stuff (photos) and three copies of the next level down. Redundancy up the goona, basically. Then brand doesn't matter quite so much.

update for recs pls

probably looking for a 1tb drive

mate says get WD, mains powered. why would he say that? i'll ask him now. if your answers don't tally i'm calling him out.

I've been very happy with everything I ordered off of this page: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

tks will check out

lol 4tb, what would store on that, like the whole internet lol

You can get up to a 2tb one that's USB powdered. More conceived than a mains keen

wha

lol 4tb, what would store on that, like the whole internet lol

Well, uh... *reviews music collection*

USB lens are better than a mains ones kno xp

my irl contact sez he's found usb to be flaky, to not last as long and are tougher to troubleshoot. ur move.

lol 4tb, what would store on that, like the whole internet lol

I have two of them (one is a backup)

tbf you are a telecom

Big uncompressed multi-track studio recordings take up a lot of space too.

USB ones more portable, less cable clutter. But mains ones are cheaper for sure

yeah i'd have gone for portable usb myself for sure but he's p insistent

lyfe ???

i just can't trust USB power for huge drives

http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/11990270/art/verbatim/store-n-go-portable-exter.html?delcookchezmoi=1

just gone with this in the end.

I just started shopping around in the past couple days, and...when did USB 3.0 happen, you guys?

lol USB 3.0 is backwards compatible on one end, but you will end up spending more for it. if you don't have USB 3 I'm not sure it's worth the bother right now, since that stuff will only get cheaper IMO

Well, uh... *reviews music pr0n collection*

not sure if that reads that you're more ashamed of your music or your pr0n

He mistyped pr0n for prog.

so i fuckin bought one of these fuckin things and i connected via usb and i started to transfer all my movies boxsets etc and i picked the laptop off my lap and forgot the fuckin thing was connected and it hit the ground and now it's fucked the fuckin thing.

out of the box ~ 5 mins ffs

any thoughts on the following?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Slimline-Portable-Hard-Drive/dp/B008PABFX8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393432355&sr=8-1&keywords=external+hard+drive

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Transcend-Military-Grade-Resistance-Portable-External/dp/B005MNGQ6C/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1393432355&sr=8-2&keywords=external+hard+drive

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-STBV2000200-Expansion-Desktop-Drive/dp/B0084LZI5Y/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1393432355&sr=8-5&keywords=external+hard+drive

looking for a back-up drive, these are all on offer, which makes them roughly half the price of the model i currently have. user reviews on amazon are so varied as to be no use whatsoever. i need it to be mac-compatible...

I had no problems with a Seagate drive on my Mac, I know Elvis Telecom prefers WD to Seagate for some reason though. Not familiar with the other brands, at least as far as HDs.

ah yeah - last time i asked this i got a western digital on lots of people's recommendations (had previously had a seagate which died after 4 years) (am two years into using the WD and it's not dead yet)

the exact same model isn't on offer but i just found this so i might get it http://www.amazon.co.uk/Passport-1TB-Portable-Hard-Drive/dp/B007UOW818/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1393441712&sr=8-5&keywords=western+digital+external+hard+drive

I had no problems with a Seagate drive on my Mac, I know Elvis Telecom prefers WD to Seagate for some reason though.

Other way around. It's WD that I had the issues with and Seagate has been fine for me.

Backblaze has a interesting study: http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/01/21/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/

my WD hard drive's light is constantly flashing. it's still working normally, but does this mean it's dying?

(it may have always done this, but in my old room it lived behind the computer and i never had cause to look at the light)

put a bit of tape over it

i've turned it round. as long as this doesn't mean it's dying tho???

No, it's an activity light - iirc if it's blinking quickly, disk is doing stuff; if blinking every now and again, it's on standby.

I have a WD that has this unnerving pulsating light when it's in one of its standby modes; I just turn it off to not see it.

phew, thanks woof

is it almost full? if so there'd be alot of swapping on/off the hard drive which would make it blink alot.

also do a malware scan and be sure nothing nefarious has found its way to your computer, which it would process in the background and leach off your HD and memory

When I got my iMac and took my Mac Pro out of service, I pulled the two extra 1TB drives in the Pro (neither were the boot drive) and stuck them in a Rosewill 2-drive enclosure. Both drives started failing after a few weeks -- couldn't write to them, couldn't erase them, couldn't eject them. The timing makes me think the enclosure is the culprit somehow. Both drives were reliable in the Pro. Is there any reason to think they'd behave better in new enclosures or should I just treat them as paperweights now?

I had a complete failure of a 1TB drive after I moved house. Was resigned to losing everything but while scouting for a replacement the guy in the electronics store suggested it might just be an enclosure and suggested a caddy for the bare drive would at least let me see if I could rescue the data - which it booted up fine in and I'm still using (albeit backed up 100% now).

So yes, enclosures can be the problem in my experience.

yup, enclosures go bad a lot more often than HDs, definitely worth paying a few extra bucks to get another cheap one just to test your HD

This is the sort of thing I used. Mine is a bit more permanent looking and therefore a bit more expensive, but as a drive tester this should be more than adequate.

http://www.startech.com/HDD/Docking/USB-to-SATA-External-Hard-Drive-Docking-Station-for-25in-SATA-HDD~SATDOCK25U