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(, Sun 1 Apr 2001, 1:00)
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IT spam question
I'm looking to buy an external hardrive, but when I look through websites there seems to be very little to distinguish one from another.

Any advice as to price, brand, where to buy etc I reckon 500 gig should keep me happy for now.


Thanking you
(, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 11:18, 16 replies, latest was 16 years ago)
I'm
very fond of Western Digital.

Avoid anything made by Phillips.

And at todays prices I'd go for a terrabyte.
(, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 11:21, Reply)
Cheers

How's Oz? My girlfriend keeps threatening to bugger off there for some sunshine.

Cow!
(, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 11:23, Reply)
Ditto
I've got a shedload of WD ones and I like them. Steer clear of Seagate as they're having problems at the moment, I don't rate Maxtor either.

I'd agree with Legless on the 1TB front, they're so cheap these days!

If you have Firewire on your computer spending the extra for a Firewire drive may be worth it, as they are much faster in real world use despite being allegedly slower than USB2.
(, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 11:24, Reply)
another vote for Western Digital
I've got 2 I use for work, and a colleague has one at home and they are all excellent.

prices have gone up though, seemingly in the last week or so.
(, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 11:37, Reply)
Ooh, they have gone up haven't they! That's weird...
The Buffalo ones seem to be reasonable prices (cheaper than WD anyway) and will be pretty good, based on my experience with their RAID NAS boxes.

Also, I forgot to say this before, and apologies for shouting it, but it is a very important point:

DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, WHATEVER YOU DO, BUY ANYTHING MADE BY LACIE. IT WILL BREAK.
(, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 11:45, Reply)
sosIA
dONT BE SILLY i HAVE A lACIE kEYBOARD AND ITS FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII$%g$
%g$%






Sorry
(, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 11:49, Reply)
Halfy
you're such a card.

Oh wait, I mean cunt.
(, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 11:51, Reply)
I bought an Iomega 500g multimedia player recently
It's ace.
(, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 12:01, Reply)
500g
is awfully light for a hard drive.
(, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 12:15, Reply)
The best tip you'll get today
DO NOT BUY AN ALL-IN-ONE THING

Buy a hard drive enclosure
Buy a hard drive
Buy another hard drive

The one thing that absolutely will happen, is that it WILL FAIL. Maybe the day after you buy it.

Separate hdd from enclosure, there are warranty issues. If your enclosure fails/power supply fails (I had 3 failures last year) and you open it up, you potentially invalidate the warranty of the hard disk.

Oh and some of the all-in-one things do things to the harddrives. They take perfectly ordinary harddrives, and fuck about with the firmware - often with enclosures that have multiple drives. Dont buy them.

Have one IDE and one SATA enclosure, buy some disks.

For gods sake though, buy 2. On 2 occasions last year I lost 500GB of data - once through a failed disk, and once through me being overindulgent with rsync.

Make of disk - whatever. Make of enclosure, personally, Icybox are utter dogshit. Lacie have been great. Dont buy the cheapest.

Dont buy a cheap NAS either. I mean anything under about £200. It will be shit and you will want to kill entire populations.
(, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 12:16, Reply)
I disagree
Mainly for reasons of laziness, I just buy the pre made ones and have never had any issues. If any of it fails it's under warranty, and of course it goes without saying that you should have any important data on at least two drives.

I built a couple using enclosures a few years ago and one of those failed. As always, YMMV.
(, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 12:42, Reply)
@Bert
it weighs about as much as a bag of sugar.
(, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 12:58, Reply)
I use this...
www.scan.co.uk/TodayOnly/Index.aspx

They'll do amazing offers on there, check the hard drive section further down. Or just use the main site, either there or www.ebuyer.com.

Well, if you're based in Britain anyway...
(, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 13:26, Reply)
Do go for Western Digital or Fujitsu
Do not go for Maxtor. I've had three of the fuckers fail on me. Saying that, my WD Raptor failed on me last month, but that's apparently aa rarity. And It has a 6 year warranty, so they replaced it.
(, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 17:40, Reply)
I've had a LACIE
500Gb for 2 years - no problems. Quite cheap too.
(, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 21:46, Reply)
If you want a handy portable...
...the Freecom 400gb is small, light and only £68 online. As someone else said, buy two - because one will fuck up.

I know - 5,400 albums gone - like tears in rain.
(, Fri 23 Jan 2009, 14:55, Reply)

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