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

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