External hard drive recommendation?

Hi all, could you help me on something?

I have one laptop and am about to buy another. I want to buy a desktop hard drive to back both of them up. What kind do I go for. I see that there are normal ones and USB 2 ones. Are the USB 2 ones faster?

Any advice much appreciated. So far I'm looking at a 1tb storage device for around £50. I think this would be enough for my music, photos, documents etc.

Thanks!

 

So you want to buy an external hard drive?

Do you want the drive to be USB or AC powered? because you can get USB powered ones (more compact and less wires) but it will probably be only 500-640GB space

 

the only difference between the two is that, the two usb ones are meant for computers that still use USB1.1 which is very very old but still in use some places, and USB 1.1 doesnt have enough power to transfer files to the hard drive, so there are two, but in your case since you have a new system or any relatively new PC within last 6-7 years or so should easily be able to run on the one USB. Hope this helps Cheers!

 

Sorry yes, an external hard drive, ac powered. It will just sit on my desk so I don't need a portable one. They're quite small anyhow aren't they!

 

Thanks for this. I obviously got myself confused seeing those on the shelf as well then. So I just need a normal USB one as soon I'll have a nice shiny new laptop!

Thank you!

 

Theres plenty of Seagate Freeagent or Western Digital Mybook drives to choose from..

Does your notebook support eSATA because it is like 5x faster than USB2.0?

 

I'm getting a HP Pavilion DV7-4015SA Laptop, AMD Turion, 320GB, 2.3GHz, 4GB RAM with 17.3 Inch Display.

The spec doesn't say if it supports eSATA so not sure.

 

I tried to find the detailed specs of the HP Pavilion DV7-4015SA, but not really available.

Is that a UK model? Some newer laptops come with the USB 3.0 ports. So, you might want to make sure what ports come with your laptop.

If you just want to transfer music, photos and document, the USB 2.0 would be just fine.

However, eSATA is much faster. Even if your laptop doesn't have the eSATA port, you can always add a eSATA expresscard or USB 3.0 expresscard. I bet your laptop comes with the expresscard slot.

There is a thread about the expresscard somewhere in this forum.

 

Thanks HRK. You can see the spec here

HP Pavilion dv7-4015sa Entertainment Notebook PC Product Specifications HP Pavilion dv7-4015sa Entertainment Notebook PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

It seems to have SATA which i think is the same only not external?

 

ah ignore me, I just found it on the spec, DOH!

 

Sweet!

In that case, you could even go with a docking station like this.

Newegg.com - Thermaltake BlacX ST0005U External Hard Drive SATA Enclosure Docking Station 2.5” & 3.5” USB 2.0 & eSATA

This becomes very handy when you need to clone your hard drive.

 

would this two mate together harmoniously?

Vantec ? NexStar CX SuperSpeed - NST-310S3-BK- 3.5'' SATA to USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure
+
WD Caviar Green 3 TB SATA Hard Drives ( WD30EZRSDTL )

I will use it as a backup and data drive only.

 

That should be fine.

 

The enclosure seems to be limited to 2TB.

It should work if you partition the drive in half prior to installing to the enclosure.

 

All of Vantec's NexStar single-HDD enclosures and docks say only up to 2 TB, though, so it's likely that it's just an outdated specification, and that they can actually see more.