External Hard Drive Search

I am looking for a good external hard drive to backup and store my growing collection of data, as well as backup files on mine, and my friends' computers.

The price range I'm looking at is $100. The most important thing to me is high transfer speed. I would prefer it to be 1TB or more, no less than 500 or 750gb. USB 3.0 is not a big deal since most computers I'll be connecting to don't have 3.0 ports.

I have tabs up on Newegg, Amazon, and Tigerdirect looking at what's available but I can't make a definitive decision. I'm not an expert at hard drive specifications so I can't tell if specific hard drives are faster than others, or what exactly to look for. Any direction would be appreciated. Thanks a lot.

EDIT: I was looking at these seagates on top. Are those a good choice? Anything better for the money?

 

yes there is. buy an internal drive and buy a cheap usb3.0 2.5" enclosure. it will also have much better performance.

 

Okay, I'll look into that. Should I get a desktop drive or a notebook drive?

 

That depends on whether you want the drive to be portable or not.

Desktop drive (3.5"): The enclosure will need to be connected to a power outlet, the drive is bigger, but desktop drives can offer more capacity on the other hand.

Laptop drive (2.5"): The enclosure will be USB powered, the enclosure will be portable, but max capacity is at 1TB for normal sized drives.

 

Thanks a lot. Interesting... I guess 1TB is fine. Do you sacrifice drive speed, quality over cost, or anything else by going notebook instead of desktop?

 

There is this drive on sale right now.

Hitachi 1 TB Touro Mobile MX3 USB 3.0 External Hard Disk 0S03454

 

That drive is slow. Someone reviewed that one on newegg. Plus it's only 5400 RPM. I need 7200.

And you don't prefer getting internal w/enclosure?

 

I closed the new thread you created, you should have asked in this thread, no need to crosspost.

To answer your question, i go DIY only because i can choose the drive and enclosure combination i want. Most non DIY 2.5" externals are 5400 RPM drives. On a side note there are no standard size 1TB 2.5" 7200RPM drives, the only i've seen were 12.5mm thick enterprise drives.

 

Sorry about that.

So, are drives like these what I should be looking for? It seems like notebook drives are more expensive than desktop drives. But if I want portability I need a notebook drive, correct?

EDIT: I actually have my eyes on this one now. Is there anything you would suggest for cheaper with similar speeds/specs/quality?

 

If you want 7200RPM, then yes these are the ones you should be looking at. Note that there are still some 7200RPM 2.5" externals that aren't DIY as well. One more thing, if you are going to use the drive as storage and on USB2.0, 5400RPM or 7200RPM doesn't matter much. In sequential data, a drive like the spinpoint M8 1TB should be on par with a 7200RPM 500GB drive.

The floods in Thailand that occured last fall drove the HDD prices up, those 750GB drives used to be in the 70-80$ range.

 

Yeah, I heard about those floods. People are saying that prices should be getting cheap pretty soon. Problem for me is I need the drive now... Do you think there will be Fourth of July sales online to take advantage of?

And I searched newegg for the spinpoint, but the momentus looks more in my price range. I only have $100 really to spend.

Actually, hows this one look to you?

 

There's no harm in waiting for the 4th, at worse, they won't get discounted. As for an enclosure, USB2.0 enclosures run around 10-15$ and USB 3.0 are more within the 20-30$ price bracket. That is for aluminum enclosures. a 3.5" drive will be cheaper, but it's not something you can take in your shoulder bag with the laptop.

 

Okay. The problem I guess I'm having now is figuring out which notebook drive is the fastest, with 750gb-1tb storage, for $100 or under. The only way I was able to tell which is fastest is by the RPM, but you said that doesn't matter with USB 2.0...

And then actually, I need to figure out which enclosure to buy... I feel like I might be better off looking for a fast in-the-box portable external drive.

 

Storage means mostly sequential reads and writes. If you install programs on it, it's another story though.

USB2.0 tops at ~30MB/s so any drive will saturate that regardless of RPM in sequential reads/writes. Randoms will still be better on the 7.2K RPM drive, butlike i said,for data storage it doesn't matter much.

 

I only plan on using for storage, so what you're saying is any drive I use will transfer at ~30MB/s? There's none that transfer faster than others?

 

So, this enclosure with this drive seems like a good deal. Any disagreement?

EDIT: I changed the drive in the link.

 

On USB 2.0, you might be able to get 35MB/s. e-SATA and USB 3.0 will be much faster, in the 75-100MB/s realm. Of course, a USB3.0 enclosure plugged in a USB2.0 port will operate at USB2.0 speeds.

 

Yeah... I knew that one.

It seems like buying an external drive out of the box could yield me better results though. Even just looking through Newegg, it seems like I might be able to find higher storage capacity for cheaper. here's a few I put in comparison to show.

Here's a $99 1TB external with 64 reviews average 4.5 stars on amazon. Why not go with something like this?

Or this for $20 more, 1.5gb portable.

 

Right now, with the bare drives at the prices they are at, yes you can find externals cheaper than going DIY. Also like i said, on USB2.0, you won't care much for the RPM of the drive. You'll likely have a drive with a plastic enclosure, but as long as you don't do sustained reads/writes to the drive for hours on end heat won't be a problem either.

As i said previously, i got DIY because i can choose what i want, not because of the price. Also i like playing with hardware which is another incentive for me.

 

Ok, I think I have enough information to make my decisions now. I greatly appreciate your help with this. NBR has a good mod on their hands.

 

One last thing, a 5400RPM drive and an enclosure for the DIY (aside from 1TB drives) should fit in your budget or you can look for an external with an aluminum enclosure. Plastic isn't bad, but aluminum keeps the drive cooler, is lighter and sturdier. I'm a fan of aluminum enclosures for that reason. What i said in my previous post still applies though, a standard seagate/WD/hitachi external will do the job just fine too.

Still wait for the 4th and look for deals on both bare drives and externals. I'm 99% positive there will be some.

 

Sounds good. Thanks.

 

To the OP:

Too bad this is on backorder but if you can wait this USB3.0 1TB makes more sense than that 750gb + enclosure you chose that was $76+$7 (USB2.0 only) or the $100 1TB external.