a good 500g external hard drive

[dynamota]

Hi All,

I am looking for good 500g external hard drive. Can you suggest some good ones that are robust and does not have any of the typical usb/firewire issues.

Tx in advance

 

[Throckmorton]

I liked my Western Digital... before I dropped it and it died. You can't go wrong with an enclosure from the big names IMO, vs building your own with some crap enclosure with Engrish silkscreened on it and an S-Video cable for DC power.

 

[Ika]

I picked up a Fantom 500gb HDD from NewEgg (buy.com also has them) on Black Friday. Usually they go for around $100-120 AR. Most reports have shown they use Western Digital WD5000AAKS, which is a pretty nice drive. They seem to be pretty reliable, too, judging from the NewEgg reviews.

 

[NoelS]

Originally posted by: dynamota
Hi All,

I am looking for good 500g external hard drive. Can you suggest some good ones that are robust and does not have any of the typical usb/firewire issues.

Tx in advance

dynamota,

Consider buying an eSATA external enclosure, then put whatever brand and capacity 3.5" SATA HDD you want in it. It will backup about 3-4 times faster than USB/firewire backups. If your mobo doesn't have eSATA on the backplane, you can buy an eSATA bracket for around $5-10. Then just hook the bracket's cable up to a SATA mobo connector and you're in business. I use one on each machine and just turn it on when I want to do a backup.

My enclosures were inexpensive (Kingwin KH-350SE-BK, from Egghead for about $27 each shipped) and have worked reliably for 6 months now, with a Seagate 300GB HDD in each.

Noel

 

[Ordskii]

I got a Seagate Free Agent pro at BestBuy for 139. Its USB2 and e-sata and comes with very good software for backups (pro model only).

It does have an on off switch, but its on the base and many people miss it. Big yellow lights OK but don't appeal to me. Nice product.

Someone on the Forum here mentions Allway synch - a freebee - that has been great for folder synching across several pcs. It was a fine tip.