External Hard Drive

[kristof007]

So I am looking to buy an external hard drive to back up my music .... and other stuff I've downloaded (I needn't go into details). I am looking to spend around 200 bucks. Anyone have any suggestions? What are things I should be looking out for? Anyone has an external HD they really like .. or REALLY hate?

Thanks for the help in advance!

 

[Ryan42]

www.lacie.com
Notable drives:
160 GB/USB 2.0/$129 - http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10387
250 GB/Ethernet(yes)/$299 - http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10034
250 GB/USB 2.0/$198 - http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=1041
250 GB/FW400/$199 - http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10384

I've heard nothing bad about LaCie drives and I know numerous people who own them and their great monitors. I can't make any personal claims to the quality but I've heard they're pretty friggen awesome. LaCie is my suggestion

 

[kristof007]

Yea looks good but the Western Digitals on Newegg are kinda the same. These are also pretty expensive. Also I don't see any autosync options. But they look slick as hell!

 

[NokiaDude]

My A8N-SLI Deluxe came with an adapter that turned a spare PCI slot into an external SATA port. It has a molex lport an two SATA ports. All I have to so is plug in an SATA drive and hook up the power and load my drive copying software. Don't even need to open the case and it's cheaper for a retail internal drive!

 

[dodgybob]

Get a separate pata drive and enclosure. That way you can choose the best hard drive and the best enclosure rather than be stuck with what the hard drive maufacturer lumbers you with.

One of my house mates has one of these, they're about £20-25 in the UK:

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/re...JsX3Jldmlld19JRD04MDgmdXJsX3BhZ2U9Mg==

They don't have any fans as the entire enclosure is made of aluminium and designed to radiate the heat which it does very effectively.

We stuck a 200GB Seagate 7200.7 pata drive in it and the results were great. The hard drive is very quiet in itself and stays pretty cool in the enclosure. No need for those small annoying fans that are often in enclosures supplied by maunfacturers.

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: dodgybob
Get a separate pata drive and enclosure. That way you can choose the best hard drive and the best enclosure rather than be stuck with what the hard drive maufacturer lumbers you with.

Agree! That also lets you use some of your excess hard drives resulting from system upgrades.

 

[kristof007]

Originally posted by: dodgybob
Get a separate pata drive and enclosure. That way you can choose the best hard drive and the best enclosure rather than be stuck with what the hard drive maufacturer lumbers you with.

One of my house mates has one of these, they're about £20-25 in the UK:

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/re...JsX3Jldmlld19JRD04MDgmdXJsX3BhZ2U9Mg==

They don't have any fans as the entire enclosure is made of aluminium and designed to radiate the heat which it does very effectively.

We stuck a 200GB Seagate 7200.7 pata drive in it and the results were great. The hard drive is very quiet in itself and stays pretty cool in the enclosure. No need for those small annoying fans that are often in enclosures supplied by maunfacturers.

Ok that sounds awesome and stuff but I am wondering where I could get some of this enclosure thingy. Would NewEgg have it or any other trustworthy online retailers?

 

[airfoil]

Yes!!!

 

[kristof007]

Newegg doesn't have the IceBox you guys suggested. Any specific brands u guys recommened from newegg ?

 

[superkdogg]

My external drive is a $25 enclosure and an internal drive. I'm all about cost effectiveness.

 

[SilentZero]

I use a 120gb WD external for additional backup storage and it works great.

 

[deathwalker]

Dont buy those pricy all in one external drive packages...they charge you way more than they are worth...get you a nice little $35 3.5" external bay on Newegg and drop about $75 or so into a 160 gig hd (larger if needed}. Its all you need and you wont get ripped off.

 

[powerMarkymark]

The one sugestion I would make would be to get a 5.25 enclosure with a your choice of regular 3.5 HD.

This way if you need (for whatever reason) to swap in a CD/DVD or whatever Rom, you would be able to.

Any particular reason you want to go external?

I have swapped all my external HDs to internal and put the CD/DVD-R roms to external.

The reason being that USB 2.0 slows down the HDs but not the CD/DVD-R roms.

Just some thoughts.

M@rc

 

[dodgybob]

Newegg does actually have the Icybox I suggested but it's under a completely different name:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=17-155-211&depa=0

Looking at the pictures of it that is definitely the same product, must be a different brand name for marketing purposes or something like that.

I was bored and decided to look through newegg even though I'm in england when i discovered it. In the uk there are several different version with combinations of usb2, firewire and even sata connections. Also there are two different models lights wise. The link i sent you has the same lights as my housemate's, i.e. bright neon blue all round. Surprisingly tasteful for all that. If that seems too gaudy you can get a model in the uk with out the neon lights so i'm guessing you can in america too. Now you know the name for it in america you might be able to find more of these variations on the standard design if you need them.

Here's the link to a place in the uk which sells several different types of icybox to give you an idea what the different versions are like:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Products...16&FilterCategories=380&Thumbnails=yes

Hope that helps

 

[kristof007]

Dodgybob u rock man! No way the blue lights are too gaudy. I am 17 and man .. that's going to be my pride and love. I am going to drag it everywhere .

PowerMarkymark ... I am basically getting this drive to back-up my regular drive. Seems like I am going to go with the Metal Gear Box. I also have lotsa stuff like movies and what not that I want to bring to friends' houses. This external inclosure is going to be really awesome since in 2 years I'll be in college. I'll jst get a small HD for my laptop and get like a 400 gig internal HD and put it in the enclosure and Ohh man !!! Can't wait!

Thanks for all the help guys .. I will probably order it in the next week or so. I'll keep u guys updated!

***edit***

OK So I've got everything down to two models and now finally one. I am going to buy the one which has only USB 2.0 on it. Everyone has it and if not, it's downward compatible so everything is cool.

I've been looking for hard drives. Now I found this really nice and it says it's ATA 133. Will the enclosure support it?

Hard Drive

Enclosure Specs

Thanks for any help. After this I think I'll be set! Also if anyone wants to recommend a 250 gig hard drive which the enclosure supports please do! I want 8mb cache cause I am greedy like that!

 

[corkyg]

I don't buy packaged externals. I buy external cases and pout the drive I want in them. It's a good way to use old drives that have been replaced.

 

[dodgybob]

Glad to help Kristof

The maxtor is meant to be a pretty good drive although I prefer seagates as they're very quiet and now come with 5 year warranties.

I think it will take a ata133 drive fine but it's rather a mute point as the theoretical maximum transfer rate of usb2 is 60MB/sec (or 480Mbit/sec). Even if the controller in the enclosure only supported ata100 the drive would revert to ata100 and it would be fine. It's still way above the bandwidth of usb2.

I really like the 200gb 7200.7 seagate drive and it's quite cheap these days. I think the 7200.8 series is out now so they might be worth a look at if you want something bigger.

 

[kristof007]

All rite so I got everything and it's hooked up and it's spinning up but it does not show up in "My Computer". I first plugged it in and everything and it did not work. I took out the drive and set the jumper to master as a review site instructed so. Now I am kind of out of ideas. Any help is welcome!

**************edit******************

I just had to format the hard drive. I was looking for this familiar looking screen of Disk Manager but couldn't find it. Almost done with formating. Will post pics for u guys!

 

[dodgybob]

Just curious, what hard drive did you get to go in the enclosure in the end?

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: deathwalker
Dont buy those pricy all in one external drive packages...they charge you way more than they are worth...get you a nice little $35 3.5" external bay on Newegg and drop about $75 or so into a 160 gig hd (larger if needed}. Its all you need and you wont get ripped off.

i got a 160 gig external package for $100 total.

:heart: fry's


i also just got a 'metal gear box' enclosure, seems pretty nice. i like that the drive is screwed into an aluminum plate, another aluminum plate forms the other side, and the whole thing is a bit breatheable. compare that to the vantec i have, where the drive is surrounded by a plastic frame and in an airtight box. now, i don't think drives particularly need cooling, but that sounds like a heat problem waiting to happen.