External harddrive

[labgnat]

My laptop is getting close to having a full harddrive. I'm looking to get anywhere from a 100 to 200 GB of external hard drive. I would use it as a back up. i'm scared of the external hard drive some way or another failing, and losing a lot of stuff that i'd probably delete off my laptop as soon as i back it up.

so i'm wondering what are the best brands for hard drive, and least likely to f up?

 

[Dave Grossman]

My laptop is getting close to having a full harddrive. I'm looking to get anywhere from a 100 to 200 GB of external hard drive. I would use it as a back up. i'm scared of the external hard drive some way or another failing, and losing a lot of stuff that i'd probably delete off my laptop as soon as i back it up.

so i'm wondering what are the best brands for hard drive, and least likely to f up?

I've had good luck with the Maxtor OneTouch series. YMMV

I have a few Western Digital and Seagate too and haven't had any problems. The Maxtors go back a few years and AFAIK, they're still fine.

- Dave

 

[bigfatbass]

If you are that nervous about back-up, just burn to DVD every few weeks.

I'm not that paranoid, and have had great luck with 2 different 100 gig Fantom Drives, especially at only $90-$100 delivered.

 

[Dave]

Ive got the 250 gig Western Digital, and its been great. Picked it up from Best Buy for about 120. It has both Firewire and USB interfaces, which is pretty sweet.

 

[Trevorus]

I bought an external off of a friend for 20 bucks. It's an 80 gig western digital.

 

[Minger]

You could also get a HDD and Enclosure, although these days the price difference isn't too much between DIY and just the external.

 

[Dave]

You could also get a HDD and Enclosure, although these days the price difference isn't too much between DIY and just the external.

This works well if you happen to have a extra harddrive layin around, that what my friend did and has had no problems with it.

 

[Geoff St. Germaine]

I have two external hard drives, a 120 GB backup drive for my laptop and a 250 GB backup drive for my iMac. I pretty much use them only for backing up data so that it exists in two places. I don't understand why you'd be concerned about having the data on an external drive as opposed to the internal laptop drive. Right now you only have the data in one place anyway, so if you put some of the data onto the external and then delete it off of the laptop hard drive then you'll still only have it in one place, so you're pretty much in the same situation (though I guess if one drive crashes you'd still have some of your files). That's why I having full images of my hard drives on my backups so that if something does happen (again) then I'll be able to be back up and running as quickly as possible. I had my laptops hard drive crash about a year ago and since I had everything on the external it didn't take very long after purchasing a new drive to get the laptop up and running.

 

[Dave]

Yeah, having all of your stuff on a different drive than the OS really helps alot. I recently reformatted my HD, and had very little to do to get it back to normal.

 

[spudmaster34]

I've had good luck with the Maxtor OneTouch series. YMMV

I have one of those right next next to my monitor right now, it has several hundred g's of music

 

[Spector_Ray]

My two choices were going to be Western Digital and Seagate. I found the WD on sale at Best Buy and it's worked great. While doing research, I found a lot of negative comments about Maxtor drives, so I personally stayed away. Do some research and see what best suits your needs.

 

[BassyBill]

I have one of those right next next to my monitor right now, it has several hundred g's of music

That's a LOT of music.

 

[beaglesandbass]

its going to sound stupid. but buy two.

one as your main external for all the time use.

one as your back up.

you'll be glad you did, in the case your main one breaks.

 

[narud]

everyone i know who has had a western digital has had it fail. none of us has had a problem with seagate or maxtor so thats what were sticking to now. i just bought a 500 gig maxtor and an enclosore at frys for around 200 bucks.