Good External Hard Drive??

im in the market for a good external hard drive. preferably 7200 RPM and around 100G or more. if anyone knows anything about externals it would be helpful. i really have no expertice in this area but i am familiar with laptops and computer components. any help or suggestions welcome.

 

Are you looking for an external hard drive for a laptop? I picked up a 160GB Seagate, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache for 50 bucks or so at tigerdirect.com. Then I put it in an external enclosure. So basically I got my external hard drive for my notebook for $80 or so. Let us know what exactly you are using the hard drive for though. Keep your eye open for deals online though, you can get some stellar deals sometimes. Hope that helps!

 

thanks it helps to get some price comparisons on what other people have gotten. i plan on using it for music or maybe if it comes to it a game, i dont really know how well they work for that. baisically i have a 60G in my computer and i want extra room for all my music and i still want to put a couple games on there. i have a rather extensive music library so i dont want to cram it all on to the main drive.

 

Unless you're after one of those 2.5" drives that runs entirely off USB (not so good for you battery), I'd also recommend buying a standalone 3.5" HDD plus an external enclosure... I can't speak for the US market, but in Australia the mark-up for an all inclusive model from the likes of Maxtor can be as high as 50%.

 

I using my old 2.5 30gb hd as my external hd. And just like TedJ said, it runs entirely off USB.

JC

 

Yea, I actually bought my external HD to back up and put my games onto, since my notebook only had a 60GB hard drive. The external hard drive I bought was a 3.5" disk. I don't take it anywhere though, since it is only for backups and games. Also, It does have to be hooked into an AC outlet if that is a drawback.

 

You can also just buy a cable adapter that will let you use a bare 3.5 or 2.5 drive as an external drive....yes, the drive is open to the elements (I mean, it's just the drive laying there on the table), but it does save space if you want to take an old beat up drive with you on the road with music or movies. You do need an external power source to plug into for the 3.5 drive.
If you go someplace like Newegg and search for "ide usb" you'll see some listed under the "Adapters and Gender Changers."

I realize that this wouldn't be for everyone as many people would be paranoid about something happening to the drive but I've done this for a long time and have never had a problem-of course I don't keep any really important stuff on these drives.

Now, if you "really" want to go "ghetto geek"....take one of the hd cages from a desktop computer tower (you know-the kind you can sorta "unhook" from the holes?) and use it as a holder for three drives mounted together. I have one like this with a tower fan on one end of it (lotsa heat!) and....if I would put my larger hd's all in it I'd have about 1.3Tb of portable storage! In reality I keep two or three older drives in it and it's a good conversation piece. I normally only take one 60G with me when travelling as that's plenty for music and such. Guess it's a bit hard to visualize from text. Anyone want a picture?

 

Send It Over!!!!!!