External Hard-drive

[sorensen]

I am looking for an external hard-drive (500 GB), but no sure what model to get.

What is best, most reliable and easy to use?

Are all external hard-drives "plug & play" or does some models require a driver installed to run?

[paulfr]

In general they are all easy to install and use.

Your biggest decision is whether to get a 2.5 inch or 3.5 inch.

The former is what is in a laptop; much lighter and smaller.

I believe the reliability and expected life are the same, but not sure about that.

Others will add info here soon I trust.

[up-country_sinclair]

I bought a LaCie external hard drive several years ago, and it has served me well. Very easy to install and use.

[BWPattaya]

I recently bought a one terabyte Western Digital (WD Elements) for 3,200 Bt. Stores loads of movies and music, plus data that I don't want to risk losing in the event of a hard drive failure.

Not sure how much cheaper the 500 Mb version is, if there is one. I didn't go fo the 1.5 terabyte as it takes longer to load. (So I am told)

[sorensen]

I had a look at 1 TB Western Digital (made in Thailand) external hard-drive. It looked good, but will check again on the disk size.

[madmitch]

I'm using a Buffalo mini-station, which seems fine, but I am also using the Windows 7 backup software.

The one that came with the Buffalo seemed to take up too much resource.

Can anyone recommend a good one (open source, please)?

[lopburi3]

Is it for home or portable use? Power can be mains or USB depending on requirements. For home use (3.5") the 1tb units seem to be cost effective - I have four Acer units. For USB (2.5") believe 320-500 to be the norm price wise currently.

[olivier2553]

Like every time when it comes to hard disk I would go for Seagate: years of experience has shown less problems with Seagate.

If it is not to move around on a regular basis, I'd choose a 3"5 with fan in the enclosure, remember Thailand is a hot country.

I know 2"5 enclosure are small and look so nice, but the bigger the most robust.

If you attach your disk to the computer with USB, you should not need a driver (unless you use some operating system that is 10 years old).

If you have it available on your computer, you could get much faster results with an eSATA attachment.

[steve187]

Hard drives come mainly in two sizes

2.5inch as used in laptops, with a maximum size of 1tb or 1000gb, when used as an external they do not require any external power source, they are smalll light and very portable a good make is maxtor or western digital.

The other size is 3.5inch as used in desktop computers, they range in size from 80gb to 2tb (2000gb) when used as an external they require a power supply, a good brand is samsung story which have a build in adjustable fan, or again western digital.

Hard drives are fairly unreliable over a period of time and do fail, i would recommend to buy from a good shop even if a little more and get as long a warranty as you can 3 or even 5 years.

Another option is to buy an internal 3.5inch hard drive with a 5 year warranty such as seagate, and buy a docking station, by using this the hard drive is open to the air and will run cooler, also you could buy more than one hard drive if required and swop in the docking station. see here ( http://www.thinkcomputers.org/old/index.ph...ews&id=710)

Another point to look for would be the type of connection required, FIRWIRE- not used a lot - USB - avaiulable on all computers or ESATA, faster than usb (at the moment) but not available on all computers

[astral]

I wouldn't touch WD with a barge pole, too many failures.

I recommend Seagate.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/...ansion_portable

I have the 500Gb version of this drive.

[BEENTHEREDONETHAT]

I have two 500GB buffalos that are easy to use no problems so far. I plan to get another soon, they have out a new 6ooGB model that loads faster and thinking about one of those. I use them to store movies and Tv mini series.

[sorensen]

Gents,

Thanks for sharing your experience and all the good advices. Will head over to Pantip today and see what I can get.

[konfuzed]

if money is no object and reliability is the main thing you're after. There is only one choice. La Cie

[d0ndela]

if money is no object and reliability is the main thing you're after. There is only one choice. La Cie

Indeed, LaCie is far superior in quality and reliability than the cheaper brands (WD, Buffalo, Seagate), but they cost more as well, so as usual most people go for the cheaper options.

[sorensen]

if money is no object and reliability is the main thing you're after. There is only one choice. La Cie

Indeed, LaCie is far superior in quality and reliability than the cheaper brands (WD, Buffalo, Seagate), but they cost more as well, so as usual most people go for the cheaper options.

Interesting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaCie), will have a look at it for sure. Thanks.

[robblok]

if money is no object and reliability is the main thing you're after. There is only one choice. La Cie

Indeed, LaCie is far superior in quality and reliability than the cheaper brands (WD, Buffalo, Seagate), but they cost more as well, so as usual most people go for the cheaper options.

Interesting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaCie), will have a look at it for sure. Thanks.

Lacie fanatics.. tell me is lacy a hard disk manufacturer or does it use an others hard disks.. if so then it cant be more reliable because it just uses an other ones hard disks

[sorensen]

Got a 1 TB Western Digital for 6,050 baht at Pantip today. Yeah......time to download..

[welo]

Lacie fanatics.. tell me is lacy a hard disk manufacturer or does it use an others hard disks.. if so then it cant be more reliable because it just uses an other ones hard disks

LaCie benefits from the Apple cult.

[LaCie focused their businesses on IT storage solutions, based around the SCSI interface standard for connecting external devices to computers. SCSI was adopted by Apple Computer as its main peripheral interface standard and the market for both LaCie and d2 became closely, but not exclusively, associated with the Macintosh platform.

source:wikipedia

That doesn't necessarily contradict what others said. To me it just means that LaCie used to target the Apple market with well-designed, higher-priced and above budget-level products.

Not sure what the situation is nowadays... But I, too, wonder whether LaCie might benefit from the same phenomenon like Apple products.

welo