jorgelito

I'm looking to pick up an external hard drive to back up my photos, documents, etc. I would like to back up my DVDs and maybe get rid of them. DVDs take up too much space.

Specs needed:

1. 500 GB
2. USB 2.0
3. Prefer under $100

So far I've narrowed it down to:

1. Western Digital MyBook Essential 2.0 - $100 or so w/shipping
2. SeaGate - maybe the FreeAgent or Free AgentPro?
3. LaCie

Western Digital has so-so reviews. They break after 6 onths to a year or so

SeaGate I'm not sure

Lacie has good reviews but it is expensive

Any suggestions or insights?

I've been looking on eBay, TigerDirect, Buy.com, NewEgg so far.

Help?

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Martian

Seagate makes excellent hard drives. I'd go with them.

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Plaid13

I dont know what you have read about western digital but i only use them for hard drives for one good reason. few years ago i had a 80 gig hard drive that i had for quite some time and it died after a nasty power surge in a storm. i called the company and without asking any questions at all they sent me a brand new one and had me send my old one back in that box. That kind of service has won me over. in the last ten years i have used nothing but western digital drives and i have only had that one fail and i abuse the hell out of them. always downloading copying erasing over and over nonstop. But that being said i have never had a external drive. But i do know western digital stands behind the products they sell.

Never used a seagate but i have always heard good things about them.


I know you said you want to keep it under $100 but if you plan to be storing dvds on it that will fill up fast at 500gig. each DVD is around 8gig but you can get software to compress them down to 4.6gig or so. Still a large file. Better off just buying yourself one of those cd/dvd books to store them in outside of the case. Its the cases that take up all the room anyway. If not you might want to think about spending the extra cash for a larger drive. Unless you have a small dvd collection. You will also need software to copy and backup the dvds and most have copy protection so you will need software to remove that as well.


Keep in mind when you read reviews on anything that for every 1 bad review theres most likly about 100 people that love the thing and never bothered to write a review. People are much more likely to take the time to complain about something they are upset with then praise what they are happy with.

If you really want to find something your happy with i suggest always looking at middle of the line products. Its almost always the best way to spend your money. The newest and best stuff may be fancy but it will cost twice as much as something that was new and fancy a few months ago. and maybe only be 10% better.

Willravel

SKIDOOSH

I still like iomega, but Martin's right that Seagate's a good way to go.

passthru

I agree with Martian and disagree with Plaid13. Except for the statement "Never used a seagate but i have always heard good things about them." which I agree with. It should be noted I hold grudges and have seen a few WD drives do silly things in my years.

For the objective side, though, Western Digital doesn't stand behind the products they sell. Failures while a drive is under warranty are handled pretty similarly by all manufacturers so that response is to be expected. However, all IDE hard drives used to have 3 year warranties. WD reduced their warranty period to 1 year, on all their drives, arbitrarily. Most other manufacturers followed suit. Thanks to WD, nearly all hard drives had their warranties thirded. Seagate, who had been around but was never too big in the consumer market, saw an opportunity and increased their warranties to 5 years on all of their drives. The other manufacturers started burning and increased many of their warranties to 3 years. A few have some models that are 5 years, but I believe they are all higher-end models, i.e. cost more than the others.

An external hard drive is nice, but still is a single point of failure that's made up of multiple components that can fail. That being said, I always suggest Seagates because of the warranty. I think only one has failed on me, and it was an external that got knocked around from time to time.

And Will posted while I was typing this. I agree with him too :)

freelod

Iomega is a good brand, you can look at this
Iomega 500GB Prestige Desktop USB 2.0 External Hard Drive - Buy.com

Hain

• I used to support WD whole-heartedly. Not anymore. I have a WD MyBook and it turns out there is a weird weird error in the USB to IDE firmware where the device will not write to a a byte at 128GB. I thought it was a physical error on the disc, but reading around showed that other people were having the exact same issue at exactly the same position. WD official position was that they cannot guarantee their products to work with third-party software... However, I have nothing but internal WD drives in my computers because my internet download server, aptly renamed to Humpty Dumpty, took a great fall and still works to this day.
• I can't say anything about Seagate.
• My boss has this huge old 80GB external Lacie that still works...

And if you are really thinking about backing up your DVDs on a 500GB, you might wanna look into DVD Shrink (about 50% reduction) or RatDVD (just about 75% reduction).

jorgelito

Thanks for all the tips. I decided to go with a Western Digital My Book Essentials 500 GB. I found one for $77 USD including tax with free shipping. I was hoping to find one for $65 but I didn't want to wait much longer.

__________________
"The race is not always to the swift, nor battle to the strong, but
to the one that endures to the end."

"Demand more from yourself, more than anyone else could ever ask!"

- My recruiter

jorgelito

Wow! I just received the hard drive today. That was really fast (ordered it on Monday) especially considering I got free shipping. I am very impressed. Well, now for the real test. I will set it up later tonight and hopefully be able to back up my PC and my Mac tonight.

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"The race is not always to the swift, nor battle to the strong, but
to the one that endures to the end."

"Demand more from yourself, more than anyone else could ever ask!"

- My recruiter

tiltedbc

I have the MyBook drive and love it big time.

mikec

what site????

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Deltona Couple

I have been building custom computers for over 15 years now, and have had the best of luck with every WD I have ever bought. You could do a search on the internet and probably find just as many complaints about a drive, as you do good things, for every manufacturer. Remember that it is human nature that more people will post complaints about things, but not post a comment about a good product. I am not saying EVERYONE, but if you work in the manufacturing world, you know it is true that MOST will. This being said, nobody can tell you the perfect drive, they can suggest the ones that have worked for THEM. Good luck on yours, I have a friend who LOVES his WD 500g Book.

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jorgelito

I found it on SlickDeals. You can also try searchalldeals.com for good buys.

Thanks, I love it so far!

__________________
"The race is not always to the swift, nor battle to the strong, but
to the one that endures to the end."

"Demand more from yourself, more than anyone else could ever ask!"

- My recruiter

Tully Mars

I bought a WD 500G HD to record, pause, rewind video off my Sat TV receiver. My Sat receiver has a USB port on the back for this very purpose. I hooked up the WD drive and the receiver went into a boot-reboot endless loop. I called WD and after getting some guy in India (couldn't understand half of what he was saying) he stated "this HD it is not for to not work to record the video. It is to work only with for the data and files of the data." Really cause the box says "records up to 250 hrs of DVD quality video." I took it back and after much searching several store (some things are hard to find in Mexico) found a Seagate. I plugged it in went to the menu and formated the drive. I now have a Tivo type receiver.

Short and long... probably wouldn't buy WD again. The product didn't work and the customer/tech service was a joke.

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Radio Monk33

No one has recommended buying a 3rd party enclosure and bare disk? Gives you choice and saves money.

I've seen a WD 500 gig caviar drive crap out at work (not good for backup drives!). My sister's lacie 500 has also become strangely unmountable. I imagine it's a bad interface connection to the drive. But the stupid lacie drives are not that easy to take apart...

I like the Seagate for the long warranty. Haven't had any problems yet.

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mikec

thanks!

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Skutch

I recently bought a western digital 750g firewire external drive (beautiful silver enclosure, matches a mac pro) to store dvds on, I love the thing. So far reliable knock wood. This is my third external western digital drive in the last 2 years, I like the way they work, look and cost (cheep). Got it off pricegrabber.

crazybobmarley

If they're asking these sorts of questions I'm going with that's more complicated then they want to get.

But really with hard drives it's all complete random luck with what you're going to get and how long it's going to last. You can only hope to prolong their life by keeping them cool and handling them gently.

You name the brand of hard drive and I've most likely seen it die or fail. If you're concerned simply go with the best customer service and learn to make and validate backups.