Recommendations For External 100 Gb Hdd

[meadish_sweetball]

I am in the process of getting an external hard drive for my laptop, I assume one with a USB cable is the way to go here, but any advice from you who are in the know is appreciated.

Roughly, what price level are we looking at, and what specs are vital and relevant for me to ask about when going shopping?

Cheers for all your input!

Meadish

[billd766]

I am in the process of getting an external hard drive for my laptop, I assume one with a USB cable is the way to go here, but any advice from you who are in the know is appreciated.

Roughly, what price level are we looking at, and what specs are vital and relevant for me to ask about when going shopping?

Cheers for all your input!

Meadish

Hi Meadish

I went to a small place in the IT section of Seacon Square and I paid about 7,000 baht as far as I can remember for a 120Gb external hard drive.

Ideally you will get one with USB speeds though my PC is only USB 1.0 standard, but this does not matter.

I also used Partition Magic 7.0 to split the 120 Gb into 3 drives of 40 Gb each and got them to format it in NTFS.

Took them about 1/2 hour. First I backed up the entire hard drive and now all I do is back up the main folders that I use on a frequent basis (ie when I remember) or every week or two.

This way if your hard drive does crash then you haven't lost everything like I did TWICE.

Highly reccommended for anyone with a PC.

It is about 9in x 6in x 2 in and is easy and light enough to carry around if you need to.

You don't need to go to Seacon Square, though I did as I used to live near there.

Pantip Plaza or most Malls should have a place somewhere.

Good luck

Billd766

[Firefoxx]

An external harddrive is just a normal harddrive inna box. You can usually buy the two things separately for less total cost.

If your notebook has an I-Link/Firewire/IEEE1394 connection, then you should get a 3.5" enclosure with that connection, since it's more suited for sustained high-speed data transfer than USB2.0. If not, then get one with USB2.0.

The harddisk will cost around 3,600-3,900, and the enclosure will be around 800-1,500, depending on where you buy it and the interface. I recommend getting a 160GB or 200GB drive, since the cost per GB is considerably cheaper than the 120GB, i.e. more bang for the buck. You can get both at any major IT place (Pantip, IT Mall, Seacon, Seri, etc. etc.).

If size matters, then get a notebook harddrive and put it in a 2.5" enclosure. Notebook harddrives are smaller and less susceptable to shock. However, they're considerably more expensive, have less capacity, and are much slower than 3.5" drives. The enclosures are typically around 300-800 baht.

[RDN]

An external harddrive is just a normal harddrive inna box.  You can usually buy the two things separately for less total cost.

If your notebook has an I-Link/Firewire/IEEE1394 connection, then you should get a 3.5" enclosure with that connection, since it's more suited for sustained high-speed data transfer than USB2.0.  If not, then get one with USB2.0.

The harddisk will cost around 3,600-3,900, and the enclosure will be around 800-1,500, depending on where you buy it and the interface.  I recommend getting a 160GB or 200GB drive, since the cost per GB is considerably cheaper than the 120GB, i.e. more bang for the buck.  You can get both at any major IT place (Pantip, IT Mall, Seacon, Seri, etc. etc.).

If size matters, then get a notebook harddrive and put it in a 2.5" enclosure.  Notebook harddrives are smaller and less susceptable to shock.  However, they're considerably more expensive, have less capacity, and are much slower than 3.5" drives.  The enclosures are typically around 300-800 baht.

I wish I'd posted here before I got my external drive!

Here's my details: "IOGear" 3.5" Hi-Speed Portable External Hard Drive enclosure 3,055 baht

Seagate 80 GB Hard Drive 3,540 baht

Both from BIC C Phuket (forget name of shop - but at the far end of C Zone, on the left: maybe "Bus Computer Shop").

Da.mn site more expensive than Firefoxx's examples

Connected via USB cable and used as a "Data Disk" only - I don't install programs on it.

But my PC (lap top) only has USB 1.1 port, so runs at slow speed. Not a problem now, as in normal use you don't copy too much data to the second drive. But when I was copying a mate's hard drive (30 GB of mp3 music files) it took more than two days because I had to copy 3 GB at a time from my mate's drive to my C drive, disconnect my mate's drive, connect my new drive and copy back from C drive to my new D drive.

(The problem here is that the new external drive needs exclusive use of the USB port, or it doesn't work )

I use it for backups of important directories on my C drive (Firefox profiles, for example), backups of "Master Copies" of downloaded utilities, and for my music files and Nikon camera files.

Edited October 9, 2004 by RDN

[mouse]

I got a Maxtor 120GB External with USB connection and it is so fast that I do not even notice that it is not inside my computer. I use it to store music, videos and daily, weekly and monthly backups, in addition to backups for the local school, and the Buddhist Wat and their computers. For less than 8,000 Baht it is the best piece of addon equipment that I bought.

[Flummoxed]

I have a Maxtor 160 Gb external drive for my laptop. Get the model with a 7200 rpm if you can... improves performance noticeably. Also, firewire is really fast if you can use it. I transferred 40 gigs in about 15 minutes!!!

[grrr]

I bought an external HDD a few months ago and got screwed on the price...but it was the only decent one I could find in Chiang Mai. I went to all of the computer plazas and shops I knew looking for the enclosure as drives are easy to come by. I found a few, but they were super cheap and crappy. I wanted USB 2.0 and ieee1394 (FireWire) as well, so that narrowed my choices even more. As I needed this right away, I ended up getting the Iomega 7200RPM 120GB HDD for (gasp!) 11,500B. It works very well and the enclosure is high quality and solid.

[Firefoxx]

Saw a 3.5" external enclosure today. Looked good enough and had both firewire and USB ports. Was around 1,600 baht, at IT Mall. Add a 160GB 7,200rpm harddisk for around 4,300 baht.

A Seagate 5,400 rpm (faster than the usual 4,200rpm) 2.5" notebook harddisk was selling for around 4,600 baht. I forget whether it was 40GB or 80GB. The enclosure (USB only, usb powered) was 500 baht.