Recommend me a good external.

ChaMerZ · Post by **ChaMerZ** » Sat Jul 28, 2012 2:35 pm

I am looking for a cheap fairly reliable external with ~100GB of storage. Mine just crapped out on me taking all my videos and some of my music with it. I've got like 20gigs of music left that I would really hate to lose if some shit like this happened again.

All the ones that I see on the market are 1TB and they're going for like $150 which just doesn't fit my budget right now. Anybody know where I can get some older models with lesser space (& also not too expensive)? 1TB is just too much space for me.

so do me a solid?

Sigma · Post by **Sigma** » Sat Jul 28, 2012 2:44 pm

If you want a small one, I would go with a 2.5" which has the added bonuses of being small and powered solely by USB.

I like the Western Digital Passport drives which start at 320GB for about 70 bucks new.

You other option is to go second hand, but obviously then you can't be sure of the condition of the drive, or how much it's been used. Or if you have a spare internal drive lying about unused, you could buy a caddy for that to turn it into an external.

ChaMerZ · Post by **ChaMerZ** » Sat Jul 28, 2012 3:19 pm

Sigma wrote:If you want a small one, I would go with a 2.5" which has the added bonuses of being small and powered solely by USB.

I like the Western Digital Passport drives which start at 320GB for about 70 bucks new.

You other option is to go second hand, but obviously then you can't be sure of the condition of the drive, or how much it's been used. Or if you have a spare internal drive lying about unused, you could buy a caddy for that to turn it into an external.

thanks for replying. would there be a big difference between me buying a 2.5' separately + enclosure (& fitting them together myself) and buying one that's already made? Which one's tend to be more reliable? I've never assembled an external before, and I'm kind of hesitant with trying it because I'm not too knowledgeable about hard drives.

deepfriedjellol · Post by **deepfriedjellol** » Sat Jul 28, 2012 6:09 pm

i got a seagate 1.5TB for 150 from newegg
love it
just wish it was a bit lighter weight because if that shit falls off the table, that shit's unplugging and unplugging

it has the option of using firewire but i hear they get pretty hot on the mac

Sigma · Post by **Sigma** » Sat Jul 28, 2012 9:10 pm

ChaMerZ wrote:thanks for replying. would there be a big difference between me buying a 2.5' separately + enclosure (& fitting them together myself) and buying one that's already made? Which one's tend to be more reliable? I've never assembled an external before, and I'm kind of hesitant with trying it because I'm not too knowledgeable about hard drives.

Buying an internal drive and caddy isn't much different from buying an external drive in terms of reliability. An external hard drive is only an internal drive in a plastic case with a male SATA to female USB cable attached to it really. The only real advantage of buying an external drive over an internal/caddy combo is aesthetics. Some external hard drives will come with backup software pre-installed, but I've never found it to be of much use.

Reliability almost always comes down to the drive itself. When it comes to hard drives, the failure rates for all of the major manufacturers are basically the same - unless there's a particular model of drive that's known to have issues. A small percentage of all hard drives (whether external or internal) will be dead on arrival. A small percentage will die in the first week or two. Outside of that, hard drives usually chug along for years.

Fitting an internal drive into an external caddy is easy. It's pretty much comparable to changing a plug on a lamp. You undo a couple of screws to open the case. You fit the drive inside (which is sometimes also held in with screws). You connect the SATA connector to the drive. You close the case and put the screws back to hold it closed.

ChaMerZ · Post by **ChaMerZ** » Sun Jul 29, 2012 11:23 pm

Sigma wrote:
ChaMerZ wrote:thanks for replying. would there be a big difference between me buying a 2.5' separately + enclosure (& fitting them together myself) and buying one that's already made? Which one's tend to be more reliable? I've never assembled an external before, and I'm kind of hesitant with trying it because I'm not too knowledgeable about hard drives.
Buying an internal drive and caddy isn't much different from buying an external drive in terms of reliability. An external hard drive is only an internal drive in a plastic case with a male SATA to female USB cable attached to it really. The only real advantage of buying an external drive over an internal/caddy combo is aesthetics. Some external hard drives will come with backup software pre-installed, but I've never found it to be of much use.

Reliability almost always comes down to the drive itself. When it comes to hard drives, the failure rates for all of the major manufacturers are basically the same - unless there's a particular model of drive that's known to have issues. A small percentage of all hard drives (whether external or internal) will be dead on arrival. A small percentage will die in the first week or two. Outside of that, hard drives usually chug along for years.

Fitting an internal drive into an external caddy is easy. It's pretty much comparable to changing a plug on a lamp. You undo a couple of screws to open the case. You fit the drive inside (which is sometimes also held in with screws). You connect the SATA connector to the drive. You close the case and put the screws back to hold it closed.

sounds good i'll take your word for it. if it's more cost effective that way then i'll try it.

just need to find some time and do the proper research before buying.

also, since you seem to know a lot about hard drives, what's your opinion on SSDs? When they become cheap and popular do you think disastrous hard drive failures will be a thing of the past? it would be good to know that i could put my data somewhere knowing that 5-10 years down the line it'll still be intact. I just can't live with this paranoia man.

Sigma · Post by **Sigma** » Mon Jul 30, 2012 12:19 pm

I'm not saying that it's always more cost effective - just if you have a spare internal hard drive already, it's cheaper to buy an external caddy and use the drive you already have.

SSDs should have a better lifespan than regular HDDs in theory, because there's no moving parts and that's often where a regular mechanical hard drive will go wrong, but flash memory has a limited number of writes so it really depends on the lifespan of the memory chips that are being used.

You always need to keep at least one backup and if the data is really important to you, one of those backups should be off-site in case of fire/theft. Uploading your files to the cloud is one good option.