External Hard Drive Recommendations?

I have a P-7811 FX and am looking at an external HD instead of getting a second internal HD. I'm just wondering if anyone could recommend any good ones, 500GB or 1TB, as well as their experiences with it. Better to get USB 2.0 or Firewire? Any better brands for external HDs? Heat issues? I live in Canada if that makes any difference in availability, although I suppose Ebay is there if I need it.

Let me know,
Thanks.

 

Does the 7811 not have an eSATA port on it? If so, I'd go with the seagate freeagent extreme 1.5TB... That's what I've got and it rocks all kinds of jams. Seriously. It's awesome. Just don't drop it though.

By the way, this one also has firewire and USB 2.0 interfaces on it, but they go in this order of speed: eSata > firewire > USB 2.0

 

I have the same but have problems with my P6831 using eSata. Please check your with HD-Tune to see if your getting better than FW speeds.

More here; http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=216065&page=37

Both Seagate and WD drives are very good, I tend to go with the one on sale

 

I completely overlooked eSata drives, heh, whoops. This seems to be what I'm looking at and leaning towards over on TigerDirect Canada:

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4083482&CatId=2429

I've never heard of the company though, Fantom, and their GreenDrive. It's 1 TB, with 2 year warranty and only 160 CAD. Reportedly runs on less energy than most drives too.

Any thoughts?

 

I got more than 10 Ext. hard drives and my favorite is Thermaltake BlacX esata.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153071
I use it with Hitachi 1TB internal HD and very fast. Also temp is about 41c all day long.. I backed up 40gb of files in 19minutes with esata..
Check it out

 

That works full speed with my p6831 Different chip set and very handy! I use this for my 2.5" drives as well.

 

Not sure if the enclosure interface card will give you full eSata speeds. IMHO I would go with any bare drive with 5 year warranty and tested enclosure of your choice. If price and USB only priority, go for it.

 

Sorry, I'm not too familiar with the enclosures for HDs. Does that mean I can use pretty much any internal HD, desktop or laptop, and use the enclosure to make it an external portable HD? If I'm mistaken, could you clarify please?

As for the Fantom, I've seen no indication that it isn't full eSata speed. Aside from reading some speed listings being in Megabytes/s and some in Gigabits/s, 300MB/s or 3.0Gb/s, they seemed to be right inline with other eSata drives. The only thing kind of bad is having only a two year warranty, but most external HDs I've seen only have three year warranties anyways.

I'd kind of prefer to just have an external HD and just buy one thing, rather than buy an enclosure + an internal HD. However, if price/performance can be persuasive, I'd be open to buying enclosure + internal HD.

Edit: I think the fact that the TDCanada listing doesn't have the full specs, and only lists the USB 2.0 speed is maybe causing confusion. Here's the specs for the Fantom, including eSata: http://store.fantomdrives.com/general/prodDisplay.asp?CatID=&ProdID=611

 

I have that drive, runs great

glad that it has a wd in it and not a seagate

 

I hope my reply helped you decide which Ext. HD you'll get..