Hard Drive Recommendations?

[richc46]

I have read so many horror stories about External Hard Drives that have a very short useful life.
Can anyone recommend a good, dependable External Hard Drive (about 350-500gbs), that will give dependable performance for an acceptable amount of time. Of course it has to be Window 7 compatible.

 

[noyb]

I make my own by getting a good enclosure .. something like one of These ...
Then installing a HDD of my choice .. I have a couple of These.

This way .. I can get to the HDD if the enclosure fails.

It's been my experience that the enclosure is less reliable than the HDD.

Also .. I can have a bootable Spare in an enclosure .. and swap Drives if needed.

I also run the external only when being used.

 

[DC187]

As with noyb I have found it is the enclosure that is susceptible to failing more than the drive itself. In most cases you can just remove the drive and just stick it in a new enclosure

 

[Mashed1316]

Hmm! I would TOTALLY recommend you a Western Digital Caviar Black 640gb, SATA II, it has 32mb cache, runs @ 7200rpm, silent, overall an excellent HDD, and it's only about 75$

Buy an External Case and use eSata port!

Hope my info helps!

 

[noyb]

...Buy an External Case and use eSata port!

Hummm .. But eSATA will probably not Auto Play .. (Hot Swap) .. When you turn it on.

It's been my experience that for normal Backup operations the eSATA does not yield the speed difference you might expect over USB.

The only time I connect via eSATA ..
Is if I want to Boot from my external(s) that have a Backup bootable Partition.

Otherwise .. It's too much trouble to have to reboot to detect an eSATA external.

 

[awenthol]

I'm running 3 Western Digital external drives....two 500GB and one 320GB. I have all of them plugged in all the time and have yet (knock on wood) to have any troubles with them. One has even been through hell and is going as strong as the day I got it...

 

[timothyp]

lacie is a good brand, but expensive. I keep my lacie (1tb) and bufallo (1.5tb) , plugged in at all time. Both shut down when the pc is not on.