[wicker_man]

Since this topic is posted very often in Tech, I thought I'd make a quick guide to external hard drives.

External hard drives are a great way to add extra storage to a laptop or desktop and brilliant for making backups (which I strongly reccomend you do every week).

Types Of External Hard Drive

There are 2 main types; desktop and portable.

Desktop drives use a full 3.5" (usually 7200rpm) hard drive and offer good value for money and large capacities. They need a mains power supply.

Portable drives use smaller laptop 2.5" hard drives (either 4200 or 5400rpm). They cost more than a similar capacity desktop drive, but fit in a pocket and great for carrying around important work/documents you need frequently. The advantage is that most do not need an external power supply because they get it from USB or Firewire (6 pin) ports. Some drives may need more power and supply an extra USB cable to get power from another port. If you use 4 pin firewire, then you will need extra power.

You can also get even smaller 1.8" drives (such as ones used in iPods and ultraportable laptops), but they cost more.

Interface

There are 2 main types of connection used for external hard drives; USB and Firewire.

USB 2.0 is the most common. All modern desktops and laptops have USB 2.0 ports and they offer good speed for data transfer. It is also backwards compatible with USB 1 ports (and runs at a lower speed).

Firewire 400 ports are found on most desktops and laptops (apart from budget models). For desktops, you can get PCI firewire cards cheaply. Firewire 400 is faster than USB 2.0 for sustained transfer and therefore better for video work and transferring large amounts of data. There are 6 pin (powered) and 4 pin (unpowered) variants of Firewire 400. Most desktops tend to have 6 pin, while laptops tend to use 4 pin. All Apple laptops have 6 pin firewire.

There is also Firewire 800, which uses a 9 pin connector. It is twice as fast as Firewire 400, and good for people who do lots of heavy video work or transfer huge files regularly. You can get Firewire 800 PCI card for desktops, but they aren't commonly found on laptops apart from Apple PowerBooks (15/17" G4) and MacBook Pros (Core 2 Duo versions). You can get leads to connect Firewire 400 (4 or 6 pin) to Firewire 800 ports.

Capacity

You can never have too much hard drive capacity and it is best to buy the biggest you can afford. You may think that you will never fill it up, but it can be useful for backups or temporary storage.

1GB can hold approximately:
16 hours of 128kbps MP3 (about 240 songs of average 4 mins)
About 2 hours of DIVX/XVID movies
About 350 average JPEG 6 megapixel photos
4 minutes of DV video (imported from a DV camcorder)

What Drive To Buy

Generally as long as you stick to a good brand then you should be fine. Western Digitals seem very popular and reliable, especially their MyBook and Passport ranges, so you can't go wrong with them. Also, Seagate are known to be reliable. Avoid brands like Maxtor (I personally have had several of their drives fail), and any unbranded cheap drives. They tend to use poor quality components and low quality drives that are more likely to fail.

Western Digital MyBooks

Here are some good deals currently (prices correct at time of writing, 05/06/2007)

Essential USB 2.0 connection, black with green activity lights

250GB, £54.99 from Amazon
320GB, £64.07from Amazon
500GB, £89.99 from Amazon

Premium USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 connection, black with blue activity and capacity lights

250GB, £70.50 from Amazon
320GB, £80.76 from Amazon

Pro USB 2.0, Firewire 400 and Firewire 800 connection, silver with blue activity and capacity lights

500GB, £115.42 from eBuyer (Just 18p more than the Premium 500GB at Amazon!) Don't forget Google Checkout for £10 discount from eBuyer.
1TB, £239.11 + £7 Delivery from Dabs (Twice the width of other MyBook drives because it uses 2 hard drives.)

Passport USB 2.0 connection, black with blue activity light

60GB, £40.97 from Amazon
120GB, £52.86 from Amazon
160GB, £69.99 from Amazon

[theArchitect]

Originally Posted by wicker_man

Since this topic is posted very often in Tech, I thought I'd make a quick guide to external hard drives.

Good idea, hopefully someone will add it to the stickied guide list.

[TheThirdMan]

Great stuff! You should add a product guide (ergo western digital mybooks) at the end!

[wicker_man]

All done!

If I have missed anything, let me know.

Could a mod please make this thread a sticky?

[sir_inferno]

people won't read it then

[PieMaster]

Originally Posted by wesetters

I've added it to the Howtos thread, Tech tends to fill up with stickies if we sticky all the howto threads.

While I remeber, can you add a link my vista one and get a mod to de-sticky it?

[tiempo]

Yap Yap Yap
Thats the only hard drive company you need

[sir_inferno]

you see i always used to hear bad things about western digital...maybe they've cleaned up their act...regardless, i'm still hooked on maxtor

[TheThirdMan]

Ive had a couple of maxtor, and both buggered up. My WDs are really good- quiet, quick and so far, reliable.

[tiempo]

Maxtor?!?
TO be honest with you, I only have a lust for WD because I have yet for one of them to die on me, and working in IT, I see hardware laying around, and I have NEVER see a WD hard drive on the table dead - always Maxtor or IBM And maybe Seagate....
But not a WD....
And I hope my computer does not read this and decide to...

Oh no -that was just a break in the song

[sir_inferno]

seems like they're all pretty equal tbh...

i've got a seagate which is fine, i'm running about 4 maxtors which are all fine, looks like i'll be buying a WD soon (despite my having seen dead ones lol)

the one we can probably all agree on being crap is the ibm/hitachi deathstar...now they're all buggered

[wicker_man]

I have mainly IBM Travelstar drives in my laptops which have been great, quiet and reliable. Only a Toshiba 40GB 5400rpm one is going a bit dodgy at the moment.

I had a Fujitsu drive in my old laptop and current PowerBook which seems to be good too. Although, these are laptop drives.

I have a dodgy Maxtor 200GB external which randomly corrupts it file system, an excellent reliable (so far) and quiet 80GB Seagate in my iMac and a fairly decent (although a little loud) Western Digital 160GB in my G4 Cube which has been ok so far (ordered a quiet Samsung one originally but Micro Direct buggered up my order).

[Deathly Hallows]

Oh thank God, I really need help with my external hard drive. I got a MyBook for extra space for my laptop. It worked Ok the 1st time yet I didnt know how to put files over but then the next time I tried it, my laptop wont pick up the fact that the MyBook is plugged in.

Any ideas?

[sir_inferno]

plug it into a different usb/firewire port...
try it on a different computer...

two things to try from the outset

[Deathly Hallows]

ok done that on brother's laptop but it just seems not to work. I have tried on other USB ports but nothing.

[PieMaster]

If it doesnt work on either, chances are it's broken.

[Deathly Hallows]

but I used it once and then used it once on my brother's and it worked fine. When attempted to reuse, it didnt register we had plugged it in. I just hope Amazon accepts it back

[PieMaster]

Originally Posted by sir_inferno

i've got a seagate which is fine, i'm running about 4 maxtors which are all fine, looks like i'll be buying a WD soon (despite my having seen dead ones lol)

Most of the disks I end up replacing are Maxtors. Out of just the ones i've personally had:

40Gb from Parents PC - Repeated head crashes
80Gb storage disk - Working fine
120Gb storage disk - Working fine
160Gb storage disk - Run really hot and has a whining noise
5x 200Gb's in server - 1 head crash and another on its way out now (dodgy noises)

I've currently got a 74Gb Raptor in my machine, and 7x 320Gb Seagate 7200.10's (one of which was DOA) in RAID5 for storage shared on a server for the house.
As for WDC's, I havent actually encountered a dead one yet. I put a set of 5 in a backup server for a company, 2 of which are in removable 5.25" caddies and get chucked around a fair bit.

[wicker_man]

Strangely, the only Maxtor I have that actually works well is a 1.08GB one from a Compaq Deskpro (which has lived in the attic for many years) and it is noisy as hell but detected and stores data with no problems!

[W@t3R]

Hmmm, I remember posting on here a while ago asking for help on deciding on a new external hard drive and most people said that the WD mybook was the best option, after reading this, it made me re-consider mybook... is it worth it???