Need External HDD for Backup Drive

[Monica]

I haven't purchased a hdd in nearly 4 years. The last one I bought was a
Seagate Barracuda, SATA, 7200rpm. What kind of specs should I be looking
for in a fast and reliable drive? It's been suggested to me to buy an
internal drive and an external housing. Drive warranty is longer. Is this
a good idea? Would there tend to be more of a conflict with the drive and
housing than if I bought a dedicated external drive? I'm thinking in the
range of a 500GB drive.
Thanks,
Monica

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I haven't purchased a hdd in nearly 4 years. The last one I bought was a
Seagate Barracuda, SATA, 7200rpm. What kind of specs should I be looking
for in a fast and reliable drive? It's been suggested to me to buy an
internal drive and an external housing. Drive warranty is longer. Is
this
a good idea? Would there tend to be more of a conflict with the drive and
housing than if I bought a dedicated external drive? I'm thinking in the
range of a 500GB drive.
Thanks,
Monica

I assume you're talking about external disks installed in a USB case.
External disks are the same as internal disks. There are no conflicts. The
major difference is physical size and cost:
- A 500 GB 3.5" disk costs less than a 500 GB 2.5" disk.
- The 3.5" disk is much larger than the 2.5" disk.
- The 3.5" disk requires an external power pack. The 2.5" disk is powered
from your USB port(s).

 

[dadiOH]

I haven't purchased a hdd in nearly 4 years. The last one I bought
was a Seagate Barracuda, SATA, 7200rpm. What kind of specs should I
be looking for in a fast and reliable drive? It's been suggested to
me to buy an internal drive and an external housing. Drive warranty
is longer.

Keep in mind the fact that at least some credit cards will double the
warranty on an item when purchased with a card. I've had two WD drives fail
just after the one year warranty; in both cases, I collected the full retail
price from MasterCard's warranty insurance company.


--

dadiOH
____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico

 

[Lil' Dave]

If assembling your own box, is to be absolutely sure the external case will
support the capacity of drive you intend to use.

--
Dave

Similarities between Enron originated money crisis
and todays current economical crisis.
Same big banks that invested in Enron then and bad mortgages of today.
The mindset of Enron keeping its false books, and the mindset of todays' bad
mortgage balance sheets before all was exposed.
Lack of conscience then and now.
President G. W. Bush

 

[Guest]

I haven't purchased a hdd in nearly 4 years. The last one I bought was a
Seagate Barracuda, SATA, 7200rpm. What kind of specs should I be looking
for in a fast and reliable drive? It's been suggested to me to buy an
internal drive and an external housing. Drive warranty is longer. Is
this
a good idea? Would there tend to be more of a conflict with the drive and
housing than if I bought a dedicated external drive? I'm thinking in the
range of a 500GB drive.
Thanks,
Monica

Also look at buying two: then it doesn't matter if one does break down. If
you are storing a lifetime of pictures you don't want to be worrying about
reliability: you want to be sure.

You might keep one of the drives on a router away from your pc - or get a
purpose made 'network storage' device.
One thing I failed to look for when buying my back up (2x 500gig 'Mybooks')
was to look into the connections offered. These turned out to have just the
usb option so I could not use them on my router which only has ethernet
ports: I should have gone for the 'World' edition I think. (But I am no
expert here!).

If you do buy Mybooks, you might like to note that I found they vibrated my
wooden desk quite loudly. I put them on a small piece of wood with a bubble
wrap envelope underneath, and this cured the problem.

S

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I haven't purchased a hdd in nearly 4 years. The last one I bought was a
Seagate Barracuda, SATA, 7200rpm. What kind of specs should I be looking
for in a fast and reliable drive? It's been suggested to me to buy an
internal drive and an external housing. Drive warranty is longer. Is this
a good idea? Would there tend to be more of a conflict with the drive and
housing than if I bought a dedicated external drive? I'm thinking in the
range of a 500GB drive.

An external case and an internal drive are exactly the same as an
external drive. The only difference is whether you have to assemble
the two or it comes already assembled. If you have to do the
assembling, it's extremely easy, taking under five minutes even if
you're all thumbs.

In my view you should make the choice between the two based on what
prices you can find. Get the cheaper of the alternatives.

 

[Monica]

Thanks for all the replies. I bought, but haven't opened yet, a Seagate
Free Agent 3.5" external drive (500gb). 7200rpm. I noticed all the small
portable drives topped out at 5400rpms so I decided to mark those off my
list. There is a Free Agent Extreme but what makes it "extreme" is the
eSATA connection. 99.9% sure my 3.5 year old Dell Dimension doesn't have an
eSATA connection.
Monica