Which External hard drive for my needs

I'm looking for external hard drive for my movie library.
I've been looking at 2-3TB externals that I could throw movies onto and it could stay connected to my PS3 for easy access. I found a few but not rly sure what the difference is and which ones are better for my needs.
Any comments between these...

Desktop External Hard Drives Overview

 

Honestly, external hard drives are a commodity. They all do their job, and they all do their job equally well. You're not going to find major difference between one drive / brand versus another.

The difference between drives are going to be:
* Price
* Capacity
* Features (e.g. included automated backup software, media streaming software, etc)
* Warranty

Brand is irrelevant to reliabillity. I can tell you that I always buy Western Digital, because they never failed for me. Or that I never buy Brand_XYZ, because I had 3 drives from them that all died within 1 year. But that is all anecdotal evidence, not hard data.

Out of the drives that you mentioned, I'd get either a Western Digital Elements or MyBook product. For what you're doing, you don't need backup software or media streaming features. You just need a drive that plugs in, stores data, and works. Just get the largest capacity drive that you can afford from either of those two model lines, and you should be in good shape.

 

K, sounds simple enough Elements is $99 My Book is $179 I think in that case just get the cheaper one ?

 

Well it depends. Any old HDD will do it's job. The cheaper it is the lower the speed, the more expensive they are the faster they generally are. Any old HDD will do. The bigger they get the slower they tend to get as well.

 

The Elements sounds like it will be perfectly fine for your needs.

 

Can you link the two web pages for those two products?

I should also mention: All of the drives you mentioned are external drives using larger 3.5" desktop hard drives.

3.5" External Hard Drive:
+ Less expensive per GB than 2.5" external HDDs.
+ Higher capacities than 2.5" external HDDs (up to 2TB - 3TB)
+ Wider support for interface options that are faster than USB 2.0 (USB 3.0, eSATA) - this may not be relevant to you if all you are using is USB 2.0.
- Larger, heavier
- Requires external power brick.

2.5" External Hard Drive:
+ Smaller, lighter, more portable than 3.5"
+ Does not require external power - can run off of one USB cable for both power and data
+ Equal performance to 3.5" drives, especially when running off of USB 2.0
- Typically more expensive per GB than 3.5"
- Lower max capacities than 3.5" (up to 1TB)
- Typically supports only USB 2.0 interface

 

External HDD prices are getting really cheap. If I were you just get a cheap one, not a Seagate or WD drive. Go for any other brand, WD is ok I guess but I've had issues with them and I think they're genericly really slow and annoying. Elements sounds fine and I wouldn't bother with the price for My book. On top of that some drives come with annoying software *cough* Seagate! *cough* and they charge an extra ton for that stuff that you wont ever use, or that you will be more or less forced to. Just buy a drive that is storage and nothing else if you can. Or that doesn't come with annoying software.

On top of that there is a huge price jump from 1 to 2 TB in my country. So it would actually be cheaper to get 2, 1TB drives here. Don't buy more storage than you need anyway. Start off with 1-1.5Tb or something and then buy more if you need. Undershooting the amount you need is a waste of your money. You can always buy more.

Lastly for a very cheap alternative. You could get a 2.5" Caddy and buy some large internal drives that you can dock in there. Just some generic cheap 2.5" drives and use them for storage. My sister bought 3, 750GB 5400rpm 2.5" drives for at least 1/3+ cheaper than any sort of External drive(s) she has seen around. On top of that she got a kicker of a caddy!

 

Kent helpfully explained the difference between anecdote and data above, and you still ignored him!

I've got six or seven WD external drives, and my RAID server & workstation both use WD internal drives. I've never had issues with any of them, apart from the power supply broke on one of the MyBooks, and they gave me a new one. I'm not, however, going to use that as data to tell people that they should always buy WD. Hard drives are much of a muchness these days really.

@ kent - based on the use case he defined in his first post I think 3.5" will be fine. Rep added for actually bothering to care about technical specifications and distinguishing between anecdote and data further above though.

 

He didn't post that at the time I posted mine he edited his post and added all of that information but yes he explained it much better than I did. Though I added 'my touch' if you will.

Everything after the 'Can you link the two web pages for those two products?' is from an Edit that wasn't there before I started my post.

 

I was referring to his first post, which was there before you posted. It makes the entirely correct point that your anecdotal experience of failures is statistically meaningless.

 

Does it really matter if I repeat what someone else said? Look around... there are tons of people repeating 'exactly' what I say... and I said it on page 1, threads are on page 4 now and every 5th post is someone repeating what I've said already...

Tends to happen you know? I wouldn't worry about it if I were you. There's a ton of opinion/data in forums and people have their own original way of describing things.

I think you should be more concerned that your posts are entirely offtopic.. even if mine are repeating what someone else already said...

 

Not necessarily. Most work accidentially.

Michael

 

Anyway...

Here are the links to the products available to me at a good price and that look good enough the wife won't mind it sitting next to the TV.

Western Digital 2TB Elements $99
Western Digital 2TB Elements Desktop External Hard Drive : Desktop External Hard Drives - Best Buy Canada
Western Digital 2TB My Book Essential $129
http://www.costco.ca/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=10347336&whse=BCCA&Ne=4000000&eCat=BCCA|84|23049&N=4010899&Mo=12&No=4&Nr=P_CatalogName:BCCA&cat=23051&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&lang=en-CA&Sp=C&topnav=
Western Digital 3TB My Book Essential $179
http://www.costco.ca/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=10345750&whse=BCCA&Ne=4000000&eCat=BCCA|84|23049&N=4010899&Mo=12&No=1&Nr=P_CatalogName:BCCA&cat=23051&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1&lang=en-CA&Sp=C&topnav=

 

Get that one. The 2TB MyBook Essential from Costco for $139.

The item sold by BestBuy is cheaper, and would typically be my recommendation. But it is worth the extra money to buy your drive from Costco, because of their lifetime return policy.

Buy your external drive from Costco, and put a sticker on the side of the drive listing the purchase date of that unit. If anything happens to it at any time that you ever own it, you can have Costco look up your receipt using that date, get a full refund of your $139.00, and get a replacement unit. A lifetime return policy is better than having a lifetime warranty.

 

$30 extra for a lifetime warranty is a really good deal definitely go with what Kent said.

 

Just looking comparing them by size, I would recommend getting the MyBook only because by the time you hit the 2TB barrier, there will be something triple or quadruple that out. It also depends on what kind of format you are storing these movies, if it's BluRay quality (720/1080), then I would recommend MyBook Essential because at that point you will fill up drives faster.

Another thing I would recommend acquiring this cable as well, it will allow you USB 3.0 backwards capability w/your PS3. As I have owned both PS3's (slim/original), I know the drives aren't USB 3.0. The first two versions of the MyBook are USB 3.0/USB 2.0 while the MyBook Elite is only USB 2.0. Also, if you are wondering, I have already ordered that cable and although it took about a few weeks (as it does ship from China), I did get it after a bit of a wait.

Just as a side note, for external storage devices, I always look for Western Digital and for internal storage devices, I always look for Seagate. Both companies are great and I'm sure WD makes great internal and Seagate makes great externals, but at the moment from my experience (as I own an external hard drive from WD and an internal from Seagate). I haven't encountered any issues.