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Hard Drives
Which is the better drive? Western Digital - My Book Essential 2TB External USB 3.0/2.0 Hard Drive or Seagate - FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 2TB External USB 2.0/3.0 Hard Drive
Which is the better drive? Western Digital - My Book Essential 2TB External USB 3.0/2.0 Hard Drive or Seagate - FreeAgent GoFlex Desk 2TB External USB 2.0/3.0 Hard Drive
Personally I have always bought enclosures and drives separately. Not only has it been much cheaper, but I don't encounter any of the software issues related to the pre-built ones.
Newegg.com - Rosewill RX-358-S BLK (Black) 3.5" SATA to USB & eSATA Ext. Enclosure w/Int.80mm fan
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Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS 2TB 5900 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive
for instance. Plugging the drive into the external enclosure is simply the matter of having a screwdriver on hand. It's not at all complicated.
They are both name brands and I would have thought there won't be much to choose between them if they are a similar price.
The best thing to do is to put their name plus "review" into Google and then do it again with their name and "problems" and see which seems the best and least problem prone.
Hope this helps, John
Agree with Maguscreed, prefer to get an external enclosure and internal HDD.
This gives you more flexibility, very helpful for troubleshooting.
Would also suggest to get an external HDD case with eSATA connection, this will give you a faster external drive.
My Seagate FreeAgent 1TB External USB drive lasted only 5 months before it crashed along with all the data I put on it.
I also had a 1TB Western Digital My Book External Firewire/USB drive that lasted all of 18 months before crashing.
This got me searching for a more reliable and hopefully faster External Hard Drive which I found in the LaCie Hard Disk MAX 2TB Quadra eSATA/FireWire800/FireWire400/USB 2.0 RAID Portable External Hard Drive...
I have the 1TB + 1TB LaCie External Hard Drive configured in Raid 0 and I am using the eSata connection to interface with my computer and the LaCie's measured performance is 5X as fast as the Firewire 400 and 6X as fast as USB 2 performance that I got from the failed WD and Seagate External Hard Drives.
Its a breeze backing up large amounts of data like groups of multi-GB video recordings or one of the many 25 GB Windows 7 System Images that I keep from different dates to the LaCie eSata External HDD because the transfer rate is so much faster than it was with Firewire or painfully slow USB 2.
~Maxx~