Best External Hard Drive brand on the market

Hey guys,
what's the best external hard drive brand on the market?

 

Depends what you want, speed, memory, or warranty or the all in one?

 

I need a 500 gb fast(USB 2.0 is ok) and very reliable external hard drive.
What brand should I look at?

Sorry for not making myself clear...

 

The Seagate FreeAgent 500Gb, they go for around $170

 

2.5 or 3.5? Don't buy Maxtor 3.5 500gb. Sounds like the engine of 30 years old Ford

 

Thx
What about western digital and toshiba/hitachi?

Is seagate really reliable?
P.S. What is 2.5 or 3.5???

 

Please read this: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=30057

That guide will give you everything you need to know.

 

I have a 500gb my book, and its pretty nice, Its quiet and shuts off after a few minutes, which is a great power saving feature.
I recommend using hitachi drives though.
I got the my book from a friend, sold the 500gb drive cause I do not like Western Digital Drives, and put my 500gb hitachi in there.

The freeagents are nice, but I do not know if they have a power down ability like the WD's.

K-TRON

 

Still don't have a clear picture about the difference between 2.5 and 3.5...
Please help...

 

Inches. 2.5 is smaller(laptop size), 3.5 bigger(desktop size). If you need to move your external hard drive around you should think about buying 2.5.

 

From personal experiences, I would say no. I've seen more failing Seagate HDDs from friends/clients than any other brands. Go with Hitachi, you won't go wrong with them. Fujitsu is pretty good also.

 

This is awesome Seagate FreeAgent 500GB

 

Just wondoring (avoiding a new thread sorry to post here) how are buffalo external hard drives?

 

I did not see it on the FreeAgent site, but Buffalo also offers the auto power on/off feature.

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/external-drives/

 

In Japan and Asia, they're quite popular, and the quality is supposed to be pretty good since it's another Japanese brand. They also have this auto on/off feature like the My Book which is quite important imo.

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/external-drives/

I'm not sure what brand of HDD they're inside though.

 

I cannot say what the best external drive is, however I can say that I do not recommend Western Digital, my exteral 500GB MyBook Premium died after a little more than a year of use. My friend had the exact same one and his did not even last that long. That said they will give you a free replacement but that doesnt really matter if the data on the drive is invaluable.

I have a Lacie Porsche Design drive now and so far it has been good but who knows.

I know people who have had Maxtor and Seagate drives that people really like. Hitachi definatley makes good interal hard drives as does Fujitsu.

 

Buffalo 500GB is good.They have encryption,power saving features,on/off button,status display and turbo usb.And it has a samsung spin point inside.

 

Ok, after a quick search, Buffalo uses Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi, or Samsung HDDs. So I have 3 chances out of 4 for getting a good one in my case of not liking Seagate.

 

I have 2 external Western Digitals 250GB, 500GB, 1 internal WD 80GB, and 1 portable 160GB WD HDD-- no problems at all so far. I have had them all for an average of a little more than a year. My original Hitachi internal HDD died on me in just under a 12 months of use. Just wanted to restore some WD support. They do have sleek designs and, at least for me, reliable HDD's.

 

I would suggest you get an enclosure which has both USB 2.0 and eSATA ports. You can then use eSATA (using an adaptor in your card slot) if you get bored with USB 2.0 transfer speeds.

You might find it worthwhie to buy the enclosure and the HDD separately so you have control over what you get.

John

 

Sorry,need help again. What is enclosure???

 

An enclosure is exactly what it sounds like. It basically provides a casing for a hard drive, which lets you convert the HD's SATA or IDE connection to USB, FireWire or eSATA.

Has anyone had experience w/ Lacie's ext. HDs? They had a rugged 2.5" one w/ USB/FW/eSATA that seemed interesting.

 

i suggest getting an enclosure with a firewire connection, which most modern laptops can connect with, instead of having to buy an esata card

 

I would just pick up an external enclosure like this one and grab whatever 3.5" hard drive you want. Seagate has got a 5 year warranty so I'd go for a 500GB since they're only about $80 now.

 

Yeah, I have to agree. Even with that said, however, I think Western Digital drives are pretty reliable. I've never tried any other brand.

 

I have had my Lacie Porsche Design 500GB hard drive for a about 6 months now.

So far I have had no problems but to be honest I do not think that their hard drives are the same quality as their monitors. I have heard that they are very fragile but I cannot say for sure.

 

It's a crapshoot with HDD. The Seagate HDD in my wife's iBook and MacBook both failed. Could it be that OEM laptop version of Seagate HDD is different from retail version?

I haven't had much of a problem with Maxtor or WD so I'm definitely leaning toward them.

 

Heres the problem with threads like these. Everyone who has ever had a drive die on them is going to come in here and proclaim that whatever brand they had, all of their drives suck. The truth is that drives die, from ALL companies, thats just how it is. As long as you stick with with the big brands (Seagate, WD, Hitachi) you cant go wrong. Its about what YOU need from an external drive.

That being said, Ive been happy with all of my external Seagates and the 5 year warranty is good peace of mind. And yes it does have the power down feature, pretty much every drive does now

 

Stick any hard drive into this baby and use them as 500GB floppies. It take both 2.5" and 3.5" SATA drives.

$39 on Newegg.com: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153066

 

hyperq, I saw this in person and I thought it's pretty cool also, only thing is that it doesn't have a cooling fan, and one of the reviews on newegg did mention about heat after a while.

Another thing is, it doesn't have the auto on/off feature. Most people don't realize how important that is actually. People are getting dead ext. HDDs in less than a year, but they don't realize that it's actually bad to leave your ext. HDD on if you're not using it, it will get overheated. Windows doesn't put it to sleep for you like a regular HDD. My Book and DriveStation is something to think about if you want that feature.

I guess this is good for people that need to swap different HDDs often, but not so great for people that need to use an ext. HDD for a long period of time.

 

Most external hard drives don't come with a fan either. It is cooler to leave the drive outside than trapping the heat inside an enclosure.

A simple solution is to put it next to a cheap desk fan on hot summer days.

 

To my knowledge most external hard drives 500GB or over have a fan. That said my Wester Digital did not come with one by my Lacie 500GB does have one.

 

The LaCie looks nice, does it have the auto on/off feature?

 

I don't mean to hijack the OP's thread, but I have a general question about hard drives that I didn't want to start a new thread to discuss. Why is it that when you buy a hard drive that's advertised to have a certain capacity, there is always less? For instance, I've owned two external hard drives that were advertised to have 500GB capacity. However, after formatting, there was only 465GB free space available. The same goes with my desktop hard drive. It was advertised to have 250 GB capacity, but there was only 224GB when I checked. In both instances, I hadn't installed anything. I know the desktop came with bloatware, but 224GB is still a far cry from 250GB. I just thought I'd ask since I never asked the question before.

 

Because 1 GB is actually 1024 MB, but manufacturers doesn't use that number, they round it to 1000 instead.

 

And it pisses me off....i hate that!

...Thats what u call bold faced cheating...it leaves me with a 'u got robbed feeling.'

 

To add a few things, manufacturers don't really round. People use base 10 numbering system while the computer uses base 2. In terms of bytes, 2^10 (to the power of) = 1024. So, to a computer, 1 kB (different than kb, which is a bit - different story here, won't get into it now) = 1024 B. But in our counting 10^3 = 1000, so manufacturers say 1 kB = 1000 B.

Prefix Name SI Meaning Binary meaning Size difference
k kilo 10^3 = 1000^1 2^10 = 1024^1 2.40%
M mega 10^6 = 1000^2 2^20 = 1024^2 4.86%
G giga 10^9 = 1000^3 2^30 = 1024^3 7.37%
T tera 10^12 = 1000^4 2^40 = 1024^4 9.95%

A small table from Wikipedia shows the difference. Sorry if the formatting is off. But you can see here why things are different from the manufacturer's listing and the computer's.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Names_for_different_units