Best name for external hard drive?

I'm going to be getting an external hard drive and I just want to know if there's any brands I should be looking at.

 

I have a WD MyBook. Its very nice. I like the ability to to turn if off when you you want even when it is plugged into the laptop. Just click the button again and XP detects it again. It was formatted to FAT32 so I just reformatted it to NTFS.

 

I'd get a Seagate hard drive and an Adaptec enclosure.

 

western digital 3.5" 250GB 7200rpm 16mb buffer drive in a kingwin SATA usb/SATA enclosure.

 

I would recommend Seagate hard drive and an aluminium 3.5" HD enclosure. Putting together such external HD takes only about 10min and usually 1) is more stylish 2) is cheaper and 3) actually works better than an OEM external HD.

 

i agree with Leshii...i have a Seagate and Western Digital HDD in external aluminium casings made by Newmotion and Coolermaster...they costed a lot less than an equivalent model @ the time and looks a heck of a lot more stylish too...

 

haha when i read this i thought you meant a label for the drive. i was going to suggest soft drive

 

lol, same here. I was going to suggest Charlene (Gone In 60 Seconds)

But yeah Seagate and WD is what we use, 8 drives 4 years, no problems

Ahem. I'll be going now

 

One thing you have to watch out for when choosing an external enclosure, many of the enclosures use very poor chipsets for USB control. This can result in bad performance. Also, if you have the option, go firewire. It's better suited to storage devices.

Unfortunately, it's very rare to find the specs for chipsets used in enclosures.

 

I use WD but I use the smaller ones that don't require external power. They aren't as fast but for me always being mobile then its the best way. You can use them anywhere.

 

what are some good enclosures that have good chipsets to control the usb?

 

i like my kingwin aluminum enclosure, its the black SATA one on newegg. I actually get faster speeds copying to my external than i get copying files from the laptop's d: to c:. well, not really but it's nearly as fast, i can see if i can get an hdtune ss for you

 

I'd disagree with Firewire hard drives being unquestionably superior.

Yes, it is faster (even faster than USB2 because of greater efficiency), but there are several advantages USB has over firewire:

1. Ubiquity - every PC/laptop has USB. Not all have Firewire. Especially true if you want to transfer stuff to/from office PCs.

2. Hubs - most PCs only have 1 firewire port. Most firewire devices only have 1 port, making the daisy-chaining capability somewhat academic. Whereas USB ports tend to be plentiful and easily extensible (USB hubs are cheap and common, unlike firewire hubs).

3. Connector. Only Apple has 6-pin firewire ports on their laptops. So if you're running the drive on your laptop (this *is* notebookreview, after all), you'll need an external power supply...usually in the form of a usb cable . And you'll have to carry a set of 4-6 and 6-6/4-4 cables with you if you want to move data between computers.

4. Cost. USB is cheaper.

5. Size. Firewire 2.5" cases are thicker and heavier than usb ones.

If none of the above points matter/apply, then by all means get a firewire drive. My desktop exclosure is firewire, but I wouldn't want to use a firewire drive with my laptop, especially if it's going mobile/moving between pcs etc.

Cheers,
V.

 

never had a problem with WD...