external HDD recomendations

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as above guys, any recommendations for a basic 500Mb-1Tb external HDD to run from my PC. I'm not looking to spend a fortune as it is pretty much entirely for music.

 

Been looking at Western Digital 1Tb for about £50-£60 - what you guys think?

[maz0]

WD are a safe make bud, an the price seem's good too. Dont worry yourself about cache or spin speed if its just for music back up etc. Also double check the warranty length but i think Wd's is decent.

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we use a lot of the WD drives at work and they seem to have a higher reliability than others so thought the same might be true for the externals.

 

for the sake of £60 i think i might give it a try anyway

[narcotix]

+1 on the WD external drives.

 

I've had 2 of them for quite some time now and have never experienced any issues with them

 

[ian.lewkowicz]

The externals are simply a normal drive in a caddy so reliability will be the same. Only advise I will give you is always disconnect it from the computer correctly (clicking the little arrow thing down by the clock and removing it) and also leave it a few seconds before picking it up or moving it etc so that the disc has stopped spinning. If you don't then it doesn't really matter what make it is, it can scratch the disc and you can wave bye bye to your stuff.

 

Western Digital is a good make though, and looks to be a good price. Where is it from?

 

As maz0 has said the spin speed and cache aren't as important with external drives as the bottle neck isn't the hard drive if it's being connected via USB

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http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002 ... d_i=468294

 

or

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002 ... d_i=468294

[ian.lewkowicz]

Both look good, which one you go for would be personal preference or whether you need any of the features of the more expensive one

 

Another thing just to point out is to remember you'll need a mains power socket near the computer for these External hard drives where as ones like this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Passport-Essential-Portable/dp/B002KPW5IS/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1273579963&sr=1-4 use the computers power. These can sometimes be handy as no extra electrical connectors are needed but if your using a laptop it will decrease your battery life

[Madmarky]

+1 to western digital. I got 2 My books, 1 500gb which ive had for about 3 years and never had a problem, and more recently i got a 2TB one and is also fine. Also the 2 TB has a great security feature and you cant gain access to it when you boot the pc unless you supply the password.

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cheers or the advice guys, I've ordered a WD HDD so I'll see how it gets on. Went for the cheaper one as it will be next to a free socket anyway so not bothered about that.

 

[andlid]

Have you been looking at any NAS or stuff like that? I'd look into that it's pretty cheap these days and you can use any device very easily to access things as you need them