External Harddrives

Ok stupiud question time…

Are external hard drives good for stuff you want to access frequently, or do they function better for things you just want to store away and rarely access?

Not a stupid question at all.  A pretty good one.

You won’t be running programs off them, but a USB2.0 or Firewire drive is fine for data.  For example, having all your music and movies on an external drive makes sense.

Thanks MiG.  Pretty sure I’ll be picking one up now.  :smiley:

Good thing to remember is when your not using it leave it unplugged from power/computer. They last longer…

J’

If I can connect to the site that is… too much traffic :frowning:

Tigerdirect.ca :smile:

Ok so I looked at tigerdirect, and now I’m torn…  do I get the lesser-known brand with more GB drive I was originally looking at, or do I go for the less GB bigger brand-name drive for almost the same amount of cash?

Are most external drives as easy to install as the next one?  The Seagate and Western Digital drives say you can plug it in and it’s ready to go, yet the no-name one says nothing about ease of installation.

How much you want to spend ? How many gigs do you really want ?

I personally like the maxtor one touch drives.

Do you have a firewire card or a usb 2.0 card ?

usb 1.1 is slow when transferring data.

Let me know smart ass i can help.

P.s installing the hard drives (external ) is simple :smile: You can do it. Trust me.

There’s a 500GB I/O Magic drive at FutureShop.ca for $200, and then there’s a 300GB Seagate on tigerdirect.ca that looks sweet.  I basically want something at least 300GB, that I could take somewhere else quite easily if I had to.

I don’t have USB 2.0, and I don’t think I have firewire, but I’m going to grab a USB 2 card from whichever place I order from.

Do you have an iPod?  Do you use USB?  Is it slow transferring?  (ie:  it should less than 1 song transferred per second).

I only have USB 1.1 so transfer to my iPod definately isn’t as fast as it could be.

I’ve been looking for a real excuse to grab a new USB card, so another hard drive will work just fine.

BUy A usb 2.0 card first then. backing up to this external hdd on usb 1.1 Will kill you… Takes way to long. they are 15$ ish or if you want better speeds buy a FireWire 400 card for the extra 5$ and go that route.

Should I grab a Seagate or WD… or go for the not-so-well known brand with more GB??

They are both good. They both dothe same thing and both probably have the same warantee. It’s up to you. Id grab the one that has firewire/usb 2.0.

Post a link to both so i can look at the ones you are looking at.

http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?sku_id=0665000FS10082087&catid=23795&logon=&langid=EN

or

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2244169

I want the space, but I don’t want something that is gonna die or give me a lot of problems.

Id go the tiger direct. Better brand. The fs one is a cheap pos case and a hdd.