External Hard Drive

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Crusader

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Hey
Looking at getting an external hard drive to free up space on laptop. Will be used as a permanant storage location for photos and music (both of which I cant afford to lose :)).
I am after advice and recommendations on which brands/models to avoid and those which I should consider.

I am looking in the 120-250gb range, and I would prefer get one that does not require a power cord, i.e it only has a usb cord.

Cheers
 
Hi Crusader.

Last year alone I went through 4 External Hard Drives and this year have already bought another one, so I have a little experience in choosing which brands to go for.

I started off with a Western Digital Passport (320GB, $80). This hard drive is extremely fast and very light. However, it is very easy to break and if you use it often and travel with it it tends to not last. This type is cheap though, and although larger than the space you want, is well worth the money if you don't plan to travel excessively with it.

When it broke I purchased a Western Digital MyBook, which is much larger and requires a power cord, so probably not what you want. However, I would most certainly recommend one if you do plan in the future to invest in long-term data storage.

I also purchased a 300GB Seagate hard drive for the family to use as a backup source. This had 2 USB cords however, so it is very inconvenient to use. However, it was quite cheap but isn't as fast as the Western Digitals.

This year I bought a Samsung 2TB Hard Drive (which of course has a power cord). The thing to keep in mind with this though is that the Samsung Hard Drive is quite light for its size and is also quite fast (it only cost $100!). I would definitely recommend a Samsung Hard Drive!

In summary, I would suggest looking at the Western Digital or Samsung range of External Hard Drives. They usually have the cheapest prices and run very fast. :)
 
You are safer with one with a power brick. The ones powered by only USB can easily break because of inadequate power.

Western Digital, Seagate and Samsung are my top 3, in that order.
 
Never ever ever ever ever have only ONE copy of your data!!!

Make sure that you have your data on multiple places, if you plan on moving it off of your computer I would make sure to put it on two different sources, especially if you cannot lose it.

Yes it may cost more to get two drives, but is it worth the 80-100 bucks to lose your data/memories?

Have everything in two places, ALWAYS have a backup, and NEVER have a single point of failure.

Data recovery services can range in the thousands for one well done!

My current setup: My own laptop has a 500GB hard drive which has the original copy of everything on it, my external 1TB HDD has all my downloaded movies/music (could care less if I lose it), and a backup of all my photos, videos (family), work documents, etc, and then I have an 8 GB flash drive that has a backup of my documents and pictures.

I have 3 backups so that if anything happens to any of them I am 100% safe and secure and only lose wasted data.

So yeah, ALWAYS HAVE MORE THAN ONE BACKUP!!!
 
Hi all, I got two 500GB western digital hard drives, one is powered by only USB and the second is Western Digital MyBook with a power cord. The one powered by USB I am using to store work in progress and data needed day by day, the one with a power cord is used to backup all the important information. Ideally the information will be kept on both hard drives. The mobile hard drive is very easy to drop and damage but I think is a common problem. I don't like Seagate and Maxtor because I heard many complain about them.
 
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