New external HDD help

Hello

I'm hoping to buy a new external HDD to backup my data.

I've got a extensive dvd collection(2500 dvd's) so i'm thinkin of ripping them to avi's and storing it on a HDD..

What storage capacity would u recommend?

Also i was looking at the WD My book essential 1TB , it seems solid. It's available for 119$ on amazon . I would be shipping it to India as I'm located here. Should i go for it?

I would be using it with my desktop and my two laptops - a dell and a macbook.

Is there any other good external HDD sub 140$?

Thanks

 

When dealing with any drive, particularly externals, there are 2 names to look at - Seagate and Maxtor, and Maxtor is owned by Seagate. Western Digital drive quality has steadily gone downhill for the past 20 years, and as a result they've lost a lot of market share. As a result, the past couple of years they've been flooding the market with cheaper externals, but their MTBF is crap. You should typically get at least 3-6 years out of a good drive if you maintain it properly. You're lucky if you can get 1-2 out of a WD these days. It's sad because many years ago, WD and Seagate were the top drive manufacturers. Whatever happened at WD became systemic, and they haven't recovered to the point where they're trustworthy enough to recommend to clients and other users.

As an example, my original Maxtor 200gb internal HD on my old Dell desktop is still running (KOW) - and I got that system in 2002. By comparison, I got my daughter a similar Dell DT, (1 model earlier) that had a WD drive that crashed in less than a year. A simple search for WD problems shows they still haven't gotten their act together. Caveat Emptor was never more right than when dealing with a WD drive. You just cannot rely on their quality anymore.

That said - you can get a 750gb Maxtor for just over $100, and even a 1TB Maxtor for not much more if you look. That much data is going to require at least 2 externals, since you're nuts if you don't take the opportunity to use it as an external backup for other files as well.

The other option is skipping an external drive altogether and getting a Media Server. A bit more expensive, but they're designed to hold digial media files and stream them wirelessly across your network.

You need to first figure out how much space you're going to need. Depending on the storage capacity of the DVD's, you're probably going to need at least between 1-2 TB's.

However, consider that the drive you might think is the best for your needs might not be the one that's the best price/capacity deal. Drive manufacturers typically price their most popular drives higher than others, as well as their newest ones. If you look at typical user drive purchases, they always spend more money for less space; they'll buy a 500gb drive for say, $100, but won't buy the 750gb drive for 30 or 50 bucks more, even though the price per GB is a lot less than what they purchased with the higher capacity drive. Always look at the drive a size larger than what you think you'll need, or instead of one single drive, purchase 2 drives that gives you more capacity than just one. I have 4 external drives connected to my HDX, 2 Seagate 320 SSD's, a 300gb Maxtor and 750gb Maxtor. The 750 backs up all the other externals, plus my internal HD's.

New SG and Maxtor drives also have their install and backup software already loaded on the drive so you don't have to screw with another DVD. Also, it's an incremental backup program, not an archive compression backup. I'll sometimes run programs directly from my backup drive. It is also one of the easiest Backup programs I've ever used - it took 5 minutes to setup after it was installed.

 

Yikes, 2500 DVDs! That's going to take a mightly long time and a lot of space. What quality are you looking to archive at? You could be looking at upward of 10TB to store perfect clones of those DVDs. Seagate makes great drives for sure, I'd recommend them.

 

Thanks a lot!!

I was checking out the Seagate FreeAgent | Desk™ 1.0-TB USB 2.0 Drive .. http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=ST310005FDA2E1-RK-fa-desk-1000gb-hd&vgnextoid=2c12009184e4c110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD&vgnextchannel=c6e1bf94f6e4c110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD&reqPage=Model

It costs 115$ on amazon .. Should i go for it?

@ Convoluted

I rip them too a 700 mb file. Comes around 1.6 TB .. But 1 TB should do for now..

 

This is a decidedly subjective statement. I'm curious to know where you got your information from, because I'd hate to think that you were inventing these "facts" to support your recommendation of Maxtor and Seagate hard drives over WD.

In any case, the following seems to hardly suggest that WD has "steadily gone downhill" in comparison to Seagate.

Western Digital rises as Seagate struggles

And lest I forget, Seagate is not immune to their own troubles regarding hard drive quality control as I wouldn't want to bring up the whole 7200.11 fiasco. On second thought, maybe I would:

Seagate Hard Drive Fiasco Grows

Seagate customers swamped by Barracuda drive failures - Seagate firmware to blame

 

@garetjax

Well what would you recommend me then?

 

Personally, I would go with the following:

Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache
Vantec NexStar 3.5" SATA to USB 2.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure

Pair these together and it will cost you less than what you are considering right now.

 

Well it wudn't be suitable for carrying around much would it?

EDIT : And those two come to the same price as the WD My Book 1TB Black .

 

I have Western Digital My Book 1TB USB Essential Edit. 2.0 7200RPM/16MB and happy with it
[ WDH1U10000 ]

 

And why would this be any different than the Seagate FreeAgent and Western Digital MyBook? However, I digress. The following are some spec's you might want to consider:

Western Digital MyBook:
6.50" x 5.40" x 2.10" (L x W x H)
Weight - 2.5 pounds

Seagate FreeAgent:
6.89" x 6.77" x 1.33" (L x W x H)
Weight - 2.2 pounds

Vantec Nexstar:
8.46" x 4.84" x 1.22" (L x W x H)
Weight - 1.8 pounds

No it doesn't. The Western Digital MyBook is $119.99, while my solution is $114.98, which is still less than the Seagate model you're looking at. Yes, even by a whole whopping couple of pennies.

 

Well yeah that's true.
What about shipping costs to india?

 

I don't live in India, so I wouldn't know.

 

THanks for the help