Need external hard drive recomendation...

[RockGuitarDude]

I plan on getting an external hard drive for my laptop. I want to know the best / most cost effective option for a ~300GB external. I wouldnt mind getting an internal + enclosure. Any recomendations?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: RockGuitarDude
I plan on getting an external hard drive for my laptop. I want to know the best / most cost effective option for a ~300GB external. I wouldnt mind getting an internal + enclosure. Any recomendations?

Thanks in advance.

I personally like Seagate hard drives. Quiet, reliable, and long warranty. Inexpensive, too. Also, I like Firewire external drives. Newegg has a 300gb Seagate drive for $135 plus $4.99 shipping. I have this enclosure, which has both Firewire and USB, plus a fan for cooling. It's kind of on the noisy side though, so I disabled the fan. It costs $53.99 plus $5.99 shipping. So, for a 300gb external hard drive with Firewire & USB 2.0, you're looking at roughly $200 shipped. I like to back up my files to the external drive and also do periodic Ghost images to it. Norton Ghost will let you clone your internal hard drive to an image file which can be restored later if you get a virus, a hard drive crash, etc. Here's my article on how to use it:

http://restore.wiredby.com

It takes an hour or so to copy everything to the external drive, so you can do it on your lunchbreak or at night once a week or once a month.

 

[Operandi]

I've used a few of these Mapower enclosures before and have been pretty impressed. They use one of the better chipsets out there so performance and compatibility is top notch. They are also bay far the best looking enclosure I've seen.

For the hard drive just stick to the major players, Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor, and Samsung.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: Operandi
I've used a few of these Mapower enclosures before and have been pretty impressed. They use one of the better chipsets out there so performance and compatibility is top notch. They are also bay far the best looking enclosure I've seen.

For the hard drive just stick to the major players, Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor, and Samsung.

Ooh, I think I may have just found a second enclosure, thanks! OP, make sure you look for the good quality chipsets when you buy an enclosure. For Firewire, the Oxford 911 chipset is the one to get. For USB, I believe the Cypress is the ticket (not sure, can anyone verify that?).

 

[Operandi]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: Operandi
I've used a few of these Mapower enclosures before and have been pretty impressed. They use one of the better chipsets out there so performance and compatibility is top notch. They are also bay far the best looking enclosure I've seen.

For the hard drive just stick to the major players, Seagate, Western Digital, Maxtor, and Samsung.

Ooh, I think I may have just found a second enclosure, thanks! OP, make sure you look for the good quality chipsets when you buy an enclosure. For Firewire, the Oxford 911 chipset is the one to get. For USB, I believe the Cypress is the ticket (not sure, can anyone verify that?).

NP, :thumbsup:

 

[RockGuitarDude]

is it possible to use a 4pin firewire port on my laptop?

 

[ribbon13]

does it have a 4-pin IEEE1394 port?

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: RockGuitarDude
is it possible to use a 4pin firewire port on my laptop?

You can get adapters from eBay. You can also get 6-pin to 4-pin cable from eBay. My laptop has a 4-pin Firewire port and I use a 4-pin to 6-pin cable to hook up my external 120gb Firewire hard drive to it for backup. I also have an adapter, which is handy when using other people's stuff, like camcorders, when they only have a 6-pin to 6-pin cable.

 

[jdkick]

I'm running a Maxtor 80GB in a Vantec NexStar 2 enclosure - both USB and FireWire. I use the FireWire connection tho. No complaints so far.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: jdkick
I'm running a Maxtor 80GB in a Vantec NexStar 2 enclosure - both USB and FireWire. I use the FireWire connection tho. No complaints so far.

I prefer Firewire, but I've found for hard drives, it doesn't make a huge difference (aside from using Norton Ghost). The problem I've run into with USB enclosures is using optical drives. I've had terrible performance on USB with DVD burners, but Firewire is just dandy for it.