External HDD recommendations?

[Kenny]

There are so many, Freecom, WD, Lacie etc. and looking for recommendations
as to which is best.
Apart from WD they don't say what brand of HDD is in them, I've had bad
experiences with Maxtor and Seagate and want to be sure I don't get one of
these inside.
Also what's the advantage of getting one which is described as network
storage, I have only a 3 PC wireless home network.

 

[David B.]

I buy nothing but Seagate, great drives and the best warranty in the
business. Network storage means you can plug it into your router and all
PC's on the network will have access to it.

 

[Paul]

There are so many, Freecom, WD, Lacie etc. and looking for recommendations
as to which is best.
Apart from WD they don't say what brand of HDD is in them, I've had bad
experiences with Maxtor and Seagate and want to be sure I don't get one of
these inside.
Also what's the advantage of getting one which is described as network
storage, I have only a 3 PC wireless home network.

Some of them will be seen on the Newegg.com site. You can check
how many people have had failures of the USB based external hard
drives.

The reviews on this one aren't bad:

Western Digital Passport Portable WDXMS2500TN 250GB 5400 RPM USB 2.0 External Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16822136139

What is funny, is some of the smaller capacity Passport ones made
by the same company, did not fare quite as well (failures reported).
You really should look for a particular size or version.

I would examine the entries here carefully, to see how many of these
have failed on people. There are scattered reports in the newsgroups,
of people having early failures (losing their backup after not much
usage of the product), so shop carefully.

(You can search by form factor - the reports on the 2.5" ones might be
better than the 3.5" ones. I have theories as to why that might be,
like cooling, but you're free to develop your own impression.)

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=414&name=External-Hard-Drives

Once you find the product you want, you can shop for it locally.

A network drive implies the use of an Ethernet interface, and a
different set of protocols to access them. It means the device
could be plugged into your home router, and be accessed by
all the computers. Network drives might be a bit more expensive,
as the hardware is a bit more involved.

Paul

 

[Ian D]

There are so many, Freecom, WD, Lacie etc. and looking for recommendations
as to which is best.
Apart from WD they don't say what brand of HDD is in them, I've had bad
experiences with Maxtor and Seagate and want to be sure I don't get one of
these inside.
Also what's the advantage of getting one which is described as network
storage, I have only a 3 PC wireless home network.

Another route is to build your own. I built my own external 500GB HD
using a WD5000AAKS SATA drive in a Vantec Nextar3 NST- 360SU-BK
enclosure. This enclosure connects via both USB2 and eSATA 3.0 GB/s,
with all cables included.

 

[Lil' Dave]

There are so many, Freecom, WD, Lacie etc. and looking for recommendations
as to which is best.
Apart from WD they don't say what brand of HDD is in them, I've had bad
experiences with Maxtor and Seagate and want to be sure I don't get one of
these inside.
Also what's the advantage of getting one which is described as network
storage, I have only a 3 PC wireless home network.

After observing all 3 versions of the Maxtor onetouch problems on the
internet, and, liking the freedom of using my preferred enclosure and my
preferred hard drive; I purchased the enclosure and hard drive separately.

Startech.com Infosafe model ("sees" up to 500GB). Firewire/USB 2.0. Don't
buy an enclosure unless the maximum capacity of hard drive it can "see" is
disclosed.

 

[Ed Metcalfe]

I buy nothing but Seagate, great drives and the best warranty in the
business. Network storage means you can plug it into your router and all
PC's on the network will have access to it.

I'll second the Seagate recommendation. Both my internal and external drives
are Seagate and I've never had *any* problems. The internal drive has been
worked extremely hard over the past six years (often being left on 24 hours
a day for days if not weeks at a time).

Ed Metcalfe.