External hard drives

i guess you could decide if you want to make your own external... but do take in consideration that it should be cooled properly. It will probably be a lot cheaper and a fun project to do.

But if you don't have time or you are not sure what you are doing.. just buy a external hard drive.

Here's a site for ranking of external hard drives.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,123728-page,1/article.html

I have a MyBook Premium Edition. Its quiet and it looks nice.

 

for portability, go with a western digital passport, they go up to 160GB, requires no external power, and weighs less than a pound. bits in your pocket easy

 

I recently bought a Synology DS-106e NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive.
Brilliant machine which attaches to my network, via my router, and enables my whole household network to use the drive. i use it as a media streamer to my Freecom media player in the lounge
Its a great bit a kit and can be accessed externally anywhere in the world, has built in web server and php stuff, included Download manager which lets you download torrents even when all PC's are off! and a whole bunch of other stuff.
it is a bit pricey as NAS drives go, especially as you gotta provide you own SATA HD, but i think its worth it

http://www.synology.com/

 

keep in mind that with those 2.5 hdds + enclosure
u don't really need much cooling
it doesn't heat up all that much, and with all portable drives
its just temporary storage/transport
not like ur running whole o/s off it...

if ur planning to run a small portable hdd, then theres no point in having it on 24/7
ur better off just getting a 3.5" in those slider trays in your case where u can just pull out

 

for portabilty plus storage 2.5" notebook drives are perfect, no need for a seperate power brick, just need 2 usb ports!!

only prob is they go up to bout 160GBs max (i think)

for ext. hdds (big ones) seagate or western digital, seagate offer 5 year warranty on their hdds, not sure bout there ext hdds

 

That's more expensive than any harddrive possible, wouldn't it =_=b

 

well theres always a trade off between the capcity and its size
they 2.5" i got back then came with 3 year, im guessing the current batches all come with 5 year
and theres no real point in getting the 10k or 7.2k rpm hdds for the 2.5", heats up more and costs a lot more.. not worth it... its just for temporary storage, get wats most cost effective

 

i just bought 500gb WD sata hard drive .. and also a vantec external housing with e-sata support .. so far no problem .. u may consider this too ..

 

wd vs seagate

hi guys.. western digital or seagate better ?
or fujitsu ?
can any1 tell me different quality ? or where is it made from ?

 

Maybe try putting together your own external drive by buying the drive and the enclosure separately? It could be cheap if you shop around.

 

If you want high performance, choose a case that has eSata. It is much faster than USB

 

I've had more WD fail on me than any other brand, but they are cheap, so you get what you pay for. Older Maxtors coming in 2nd place.

 

I dun think this is true.. doesn't it depend on the purpose of the hard disk? If its just for backup, I dun think its necessary to get sata. And sata casings cost more..

well.. correct me if im wrong though.. its based on my limited IT hearsay

 

just bought a WD 500GB hard disk .. and bought a external casing separately which support sata and e-sata .. work fine and good ..

 

2 month ago i buy a iomega external drive from 250gb and its works fine.

 

is yours the ipod video? and if so how do you get it to work as a external hd, i tried and it dot work and i read that for the video ipod it doesn't work as a hd like as the mini and the older generations etc.

i have the western digtal 320 external hd and it works great, dont have a problem with it. looking into getting a 160gb portable western digtal external hd now, got a 120gb one but thinking of returning it to go for the 160gb one. i dont see it here in canada (the 160gb one). dont get a compustar one or something like that, friend got it and it sucked. crap out right away.

 

Maxtors, and Iomega

 

You just have to clicky the "use as hard drive" or something in the iTunes screen. But then you will have to manually eject the device.

And no, IPod Video works for External HD, my 60GB does at least.

 

like hiake said, ipod videos can be "enabled" to act as a hard drive.

you just have to find the function in itunes, and enable it as a hard drive, and treat it as a hard drive (data transfer thru my windows explorer) but you gotta eject the drive thru itunes.

but i would advise AGAINST using your ipod frequently as back up and such.

altho it has HD capacity, it is an mp3 player, not an external hard drive as we know it..

i used mine rarely, only putting data in it when i have to...