I am looking for a good external harddrive

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goukill1120

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I am looking for a good deal on an external harddrive. Something at 250 - 500 gigs and looking to pay no more then $150, and most important of all it be reliable. Most of the reviews I have seen on the Mybook and Seagate have scared me off those products because people have complained that the drive died on them 3 months later. Thanks in advance to all who reply.
 
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[quote name='goukill1120']I am looking for a good deal on an external harddrive. Something at 250 - 500 gigs and looking to pay no more then $150, and most important of all it be reliable. Most of the reviews I have seen on the Mybook and Seagate have scared me off those products because people have complained that the drive died on them 3 months later. Thanks in advance to all who reply.[/quote]

Solution: Buy a regular IDE/SATA Drive from newegg.com (ratings are your friends), and purchase a good external case for it (from the same site).
 
I don't know what type of reviews you have read but Seagate External Drives are great.

I just bought a 500GB Seagate at amazon.com for $120

you should look into it.
 
[quote name='devildr1ver']Solution: Buy a regular IDE/SATA Drive from newegg.com (ratings are your friends), and purchase a good external case for it (from the same site).[/QUOTE]

thats retarded... don't do what he recommended as it won't be much cheaper, and traspher speeds as well as reliablility will take a major hit.

I have to also recommend seagate as their externals are very good and well priced. stay away from maxtor (from experiences of friends who's had theirs die, yours may be perfect, don't flame me). I have a seagate Freeagent 500GB one that I picked up at fry's for a little over $100.

Good luck.
 
I just want to warn I have a Seagate Free Agent 750 GB and I'had it die on me recently. While the drive is covered under warranty, your data is not. For $10 or so they sent me out a new drive before I had to return the other one to try to salvage some data, but I had to pay for software to do so. The replacement drive then crapped out too, so I'm on my third drive in a couple months.

May be bad luck, but figured a warning was in order.
 
Honestly there's going to be bad drives all around, I once had a dead western digital and after 7 replacements in 6 months I just gave up and bought a maxtor. Now I buy seagates because they seem to be quieter but I don't expect reliability from any hard drive anymore. Anyone who's had a lot of drive problems should check out a program called spin rite, it's saved my data a couple of times. It's pricey but there's nothing else like it.
 
If you have a microcenter close to you, they usually have some great deals on externals. Also, I think there is a decent deal on an external in the staples president's day sale.
 
I've had many externals over the last 3 years since they seem to drop like flies.

My original Western Digital lasted the longest (about 2 years of heavy use) but recently died. My non-branded, self made with external case lasted under a year. Maxtor one touch died within 6 months because I dropped it. Maxtor big ol' version is still ticking after a year and a half. Lacie USB powered is alive but dying after the same about of time.

Latest purchase was a fat seagate that I use only to back up the other ones I buy and move around all the time. As said, any of these can fail on you (and probably will) but my latest research showed the Seagates to be the most reliable.
 
[quote name='Milkyman']why would transfer speeds take a hit? branded external drives are the same thing.[/QUOTE]

using an internal drive with a external case usually doesn't have the same performance as a drive built as an external. I don't build harddrives for a living, this is just the pattern I have seen from externals bought and converted by myself and friends. I have experience with 3 branded externals (2 of which are seagate) and they all outperformed the converted internals (about 2 or 3 of them).

maybe we were just buying shitty cases, but I'll never invest in an internal and a case when I can just buy a seagate external.
 
Be careful with some of the newer WD Externals. Supposedly they have built in DRM that prohibits transfers of certain kinds of files.

ESPECIALLY MOST OF THE 1TBs, I believe.

Do a google search. You'll find lots of links like this one.
 
[quote name='Fire_Thief']You can get a 1TB Western Digital External for $130 at Circuit City on sale[/quote]

Where do you see a 1TB for 130? they have one in their add for 240, but I don't see 130
 
I bought my WD 250 GB for about $80 over the summer from Newegg.com. So I've had it for about 7 months now or so and I think it works just fine. I haven't had any problems with transferring files or having it die on me (but I've only had it for a small amount of time). Hope this helps a little.
 
staples.com has a 500 gig for 100.00. A western digital my book. Ive had one of these for about a year and they are great. I use it for the torrents and if has yet to fail. almost full though, All hard drives die eventually. If you want data protection you should build a raid.Cheaper in the long run if your like me and like digital media.
 
I've had about 4 WD external hard drives and they all have lasted about 3 years. Not the best, but still pretty good. Problem is external hard drives is that their transfer speeds aren't that great due to it being USB. If you have a firewire port on your pc then get one with one. There are always going to be someone that says that the product has died on them quickly. Go with the specs the most and not solely based on what others say. In the end, it's brand>specs>price>opinions, imo.
 
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