External Hard Drives
 

I am looking at buying an external HD for my sisters laptop (she is a professional photographer and used up her built in hd allready) and I was wondering if anybody had any experience with external hard drives they would like to share with me before I tell her what to buy.

I was looking at this model: link

That one looks pretty good. Does she have a firewire port on her laptop?

I'm not sure but she has one on her desktop.

My company had bought a few of the LaCie drives (the 500gig variety) and in good conscience Icould never recommend them to anyone.

We had nothing but problems with 3 of the 4 we bought.

We bought them to transport huge databases from customer sites to our home office. The databases were copied to the drives -- disconnected properly - taken to our office.

It was hit or miss as to whether they would fire up with data on them again.

One drive, we got hooked back up - life was good -- then we had a power blip in the office - and no one thought to put the external drive on the UPS -- well tthe drive went down without being disconnected - and we lost everything on the drive.

the 500 gig drives were UBER sensitive....


We finally gave up with the LaCie's and went for the Maxtor 250gig drives, and these get beaten to death (thrown in my suitcase) and have never had a problem)

Get this: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...7&sku=V13-1005

and wait for one of those silly deals from CompUSA where they give you a gig for $0.50...

I agree. It is much more cost-effective to purchase an enclosure and put in your own hard drive. Additionally, this allows you to upgrade the external hard drive as technology advances and prices drop.

The only caveat: purchase a quality enclosure. My friend lost his data when he went cheap (on the other hand, my bottom-of-the-line enclosure keeps chugging along).

Thanks for the help. I did not know you could get an enclosure and put a hard drive in it. That sounds like the way to go. Thanks a lot guys you saved me over a $100 =)

I too agree. I did this--bought a drive when it was on sale for some crazy cheap price, dropped $30 for an enclosure, and got an external drive for less than half of what I would have paid for it normally. Its a good route to go. Just make sure you get a decent enclosure. Mine is all aluminum--good because it helps shed the heat of the drive.

I just 'built' my own enclosed drive as a back unit for my laptop.. I work out of my house and have a company issued laptop. A month ago my work laptop got fried, but fortunately I was able to recover the files on HD by taking the drive out and copying the files to CD by using a specially desgined connector on a desk top. Since then I acquired a Nexstar enclosure and a 20gb laptop HD. Connects via USB 2 port. Total cost is about $80. Works like a champ. Use it mainly as a back up, but also has its place to transfer files from on PC to another. And much cheaper than USB flash type drives. The small size means I can take it with me when I travel.

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I've purchased 3 as seperate components. I have had great luck this way, and have saved a fair amount of money. You may want to consider a 2.5" had (laptop hd) and enclosure. The are really nice to throw in a backpack with you laptop, as the normal enclosures are rather bulky. The one I have is usb2, I'm not sure if they make a firewire model or not..

Or... Buy an iPod. It works like an external HD.

You won't near the capacity in an iPod than you would with a normal 3.5" (or even 2.5") HD + enclosure.

Also a good idea for someone who travels. Laptop hard drives are a good deal more expensive, but are also much smaller, and in my experience, a bit more rugged as well. Besides, they just look sexy :)