Recommendations for external hard drive

[Mousebaby]

If this helps at all Seagate is the highest rated external Hard Drive out there. That is the main reason I bought it and I am glad I did.

 

[CalvertNewbie]

If this helps at all Seagate is the highest rated external Hard Drive out there. That is the main reason I bought it and I am glad I did.

Yes thank you, it definitely helps. I see quite a few recommendations for Seagate. I'm looking at them now.

Looks like newegg.com (thanks JustinB) has some good prices but of course I'll shop around and hopefully get the best price.

 

[Jigglepuff]

If this helps at all Seagate is the highest rated external Hard Drive out there. That is the main reason I bought it and I am glad I did.

Seagates are the best (all of them, IDE, SATA, SAS, SCSI, USB, Firewire). Higher quality, better support (even free hard drive analysis/utility software).

 

[GopherM]

We bought a bunch of Maxtor One Touch drives where I work and almost evryone of them has failed. The storage surface seems to be fine, but the controller board gives up the ghost.

We now have several SimpleTech drives and I also use one at home. They seem good so far and if you get the mini it will easily fit in a shirt pocket. Also it does not need an external power supply...only need o plug it into the USB port and it works great.

 

[CAE]

We bought a bunch of Maxtor One Touch drives where I work and almost evryone of them has failed.

In 25 years of getting paid to pay with computers, I've only had 2 disk drive failures (not counting big iron)... both of 'em were Maxtor drives. I'll never buy another again. That being said, I do have a 300 GB Maxtor drive in the basement as part of a RAID-0 array that's been running fine 24/7 for almost 4 years. But no more. Seagate isn't that much more expensive.

Sometimes at work, for backups we buy these cheapie 1 TB USB drives (Cavalry, I think is the brand name). Don't know who's disk is in there and don't really care. At $189 they're disposable!

But for home use, you want something that'll last.. don't skimp.

The key is to use it. Windows has a backup tool built in, and you can get others for free. I like SyncBack, which isn't free, but at $30 or so, it's a nice bit of software. I schedule it to do backups every morning at 03:00 and sleep better knowing I've got two copies of the data (three actually, since I'm backing up to the RAID-0 mirror in the basement).

 

[Mousebaby]

In 25 years of getting paid to pay with computers, I've only had 2 disk drive failures (not counting big iron)... both of 'em were Maxtor drives. I'll never buy another again. That being said, I do have a 300 GB Maxtor drive in the basement as part of a RAID-0 array that's been running fine 24/7 for almost 4 years. But no more. Seagate isn't that much more expensive.

Sometimes at work, for backups we buy these cheapie 1 TB USB drives (Cavalry, I think is the brand name). Don't know who's disk is in there and don't really care. At $189 they're disposable!

But for home use, you want something that'll last.. don't skimp.

The key is to use it. Windows has a backup tool built in, and you can get others for free. I like SyncBack, which isn't free, but at $30 or so, it's a nice bit of software. I schedule it to do backups every morning at 03:00 and sleep better knowing I've got two copies of the data (three actually, since I'm backing up to the RAID-0 mirror in the basement).

Oh my God I LOVE nerdspeak!!! You're killing me here!

Seriously though, I love to read the computer forums as I learn from them and I am a computer geek.

 

[CalvertNewbie]

Seagates are the best (all of them, IDE, SATA, SAS, SCSI, USB, Firewire). Higher quality, better support (even free hard drive analysis/utility software).

We wound up buying a Seagate, based on everyone's input here. After that and reading all the reviews on various sites, Seagate seemed to be the best option for us.

Thanks to everyone who responded, for all of your recommendations and info provided.

 

[penguin6]

I am seriously considering the Drobo as my attached storage, but am holding out until they get a Version 3 released (which I think will be in a few months). I want gigabit ethernet on the device and I would like it to stand alone in my garage which is separate from my house (I had ethernet put out to the garage last Summer). I actually want to put in some fireproof safe or something, but haven't figured out the ventilation issues.

I have TBs of data, mainly a ton of HD video from my camcorder of my kids and about 30,000 pictures or so. My backups are somewhat haphazard at the moment so I'm hoping to get some NAS and make a bit more sense of the whole process.

I really think external NAS devices will be a hot seller in the next year, especially as 1TB drives can now be found around $100 or so at places like Microcenter in Rockville/Fairfax.

 

[RadioPatrol]

I really think external NAS devices will be a hot seller in the next year, especially as 1TB drives can now be found around $100 or so at places like Microcenter in Rockville/Fairfax.

clevally posted a nice one last month ... it is a Linksys NAS can fit 1.5Tb drives .... and you can strip or mirror the drives for redundancy ...the drives are non proprietary format aka NTFS I believe ... so in the unit fails you can pull the drive connect it to your PC and away you go ...