Buying an External Harddrive

[malteser monkay]

Hey peoples,

I'm off to uni next month, and my home PC has a lot of music and personal files which I've been transferring to my laptop, which appears to be eating away at the space on my laptop quite considerably. I've been looking to get a really meaty sized external harddrive which I can just plug into the USB. Figured it'd be useful as I could transfer uni files to work on at home if needs be, when I stay at home. Been looking around a little, found this:

80GB (http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1136151528.112454980 8@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccdgaddfhihmffjcflgceggdhhmdgmh.0&page=Product&sku=458192&category_oid=-24880&fm=5&sm=0&tm=1)

Thought this was a reasonable price - but wondering if there are any other places I should take a look at for good pricing and whether this really is a reasonable price really!

Thank you for replies :)

Malt

[ShyBoy]

Novatech (http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/products/a752x1y0z1p1s0n0m0) are pretty competitive.

Check out ebuyer, but be warned not all their products are standardised (i.e. lucky mix sometimes). If you look round a number of places and just see what the average is and go with the cheapest. Scan, dabs, etc. etc.

[malteser monkay]

And another question - what is firewire and would it be beneficial in any way shape or form?

[ShyBoy]

And another question - what is firewire and would it be beneficial in any way shape or form?

Firewire is another form of data transfer mechanism, apart from USB. It's faster, so if your computer has a firewire port you would get an advantage. Personally, I've never ever used it once. So there you go :p

[Renzo]

And another question - what is firewire and would it be beneficial in any way shape or form?

You should get some cd's from the uni with stuff like that. The uni network is pretty heavily regulated firewallwise anyway.

[ShyBoy]

You should get some cd's from the uni with stuff like that. The uni network is pretty heavily regulated firewallwise anyway.

Have you got firewire and firewall confused? Or am I just being dumb :confused:

[Renzo]

Have you got firewire and firewall confused? Or am I just being dumb :confused:

No. Firewall-wise....as in the stuff to do with the firewall.

[malteser monkay]

No. Firewall-wise....as in the stuff to do with the firewall.

I was talking about firewire babe, think it's a feature to do with connecting external hardware instead of needing a USB cable to connect say, an external hard drive, there's another method. I don't think a firewall inteferes with connecting external hardware...hopefully it doesn't anyway!

[Renzo]

I was talking about firewire babe, think it's a feature to do with connecting external hardware instead of needing a USB cable to connect say, an external hard drive, there's another method. I don't think a firewall inteferes with connecting external hardware...hopefully it doesn't anyway!

Ah I read firewall. My mistake. :blush:

[ginner]

Actually, USB2 provides a faster transfer than firewire. If you're connecting to a laptop then you also have to be careful with firewire and everything ships with a 6-6 pin cable and most laptops have 4 pin socket, so you need a 6-4 pin cable which costs an extra £20.

Seagate hard drives are, in my opinion, the most reliable. They're also fast and quiet.

I got this one for my computer:

http://www.dabs.com/uk/channels/components/Productview.htm?quicklinx=3RFS&mc=6

There's a smaller, more reasonably priced one:

http://www.dabs.com/uk/Search2/Product+Details.htm?quicklinx=39h0&searchphrase=seagate

Or if you want something even smaller, cheaper and more portable then go for this:

http://www.dabs.com/uk/Search2/Product+Details.htm?quicklinx=3R52&searchphrase=seagate

Another thing you could consider is using a hard disk mp3 player as your main source of storage, copy all the music over, then just plug some proper speakers in to listen when not out and about.

http://www.dabs.com/uk/channels/homeentertainment/personalportableaudio/productView.htm?quicklinx=395F
(good because it's USB2 and doesn't need a separate power supply)

Hope that helps. You can repay me in sexual favours. I'm willing to travel.

[Teh_Gerbil]

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=9979765095&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=62839

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=9979765095&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=87973

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=9979765095&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=88354

There are three at about that price... in order, gonig up from the first.

You could get an MP3 player as suggested above, it is what I use for college.

[ginner]

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=9979765095&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=62839

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=9979765095&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=87973

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=9979765095&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=88354

There are three at about that price... in order, gonig up from the first.

You could get an MP3 player as suggested above, it is what I use for college.

To top link (La Cie) is notorious for frequent failure. If you're going for one on the cheap then you should avoid that one like the plague!

[Teh_Gerbil]

Learn something everyday! :thumb: Scratch the first one then.

[DG]

I thin Maplin at the moment is selling 160GB one for £80
BTW You can buy a normal HD and an external case and make your own, I made mine - has a 400GB HD in it.

Case was £19 from a fair and HD was £120

[Mr_Wobble]

The 80GB one from PC World that you listed isn't a bad price at £62 for retail.

If you've got a bit more to spend, and can use a small screwdriver, then you could do what some of have done, and buy a seperate external USB 2.0 housing, and hard drive, then just pop the drive in. You get more storage capacity for your money that way. Just look at the huge amount of space DG has for his money.
Generally the housings are about £20, and a 200 GB IDE drive is about £60, or a 250 GB IDE drive around £75. Huge amount of space for under a hundred quid. That's about £30-35 more for over three times the capacity of that drive at PC World.
If you go this route, avoid Maxtor drives, as I had two fail. They ran hot, were noisy, and gave nothing but trouble, and Maxtor and the company that sold them won't accept them back, despite the fact that they went wrong within a year. Bastards!

Go for USB 2.0 More computers have USB (and it's back compatible with computers that have the older slower USB 1 & 1.1). Firewire doesn't offer any advantage over USB for external drive storage.

[Mr_Wobble]

wondering if there are any other places I should take a look at for good pricing
You could try www.ebuyer.com www.dabs.com and many other sites.
Or have a look on eBay. (http://computers.listings.ebay.co.uk/Drives-Storage_Internal-External-Hard-Drives_W0QQfromZR4QQsacatZ16178QQsocmdZListingItem List)

[Rich-E]

http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/ have got some external drives on offer this weekend, 80Gig Western Digital USB2 Drives for £51.41

[wheresmyplacebo]

stick with usb 2.0 harddrives as the hard ddrive is the limiting factor not the connection

[Jim V]

This was the recent top tip from the tech team - 80g usb 2 for £57 (including vat) and designed by the Porsche Design Agency

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=62839

of for about 20 quid more pick up the 160gb drive

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=9997634839&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=62840

[Jim V]

Or if you really want to take the piss -

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=9997571757&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X3Jldmlld3M=&product_uid=62853

[Teh_Gerbil]

Or if you really want to take the piss -

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=9997571757&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X3Jldmlld3M=&product_uid=62853

Mmm Terabite of space. Bet I could fill it up.

[malteser monkay]

Hey again, dunno if anyone'll browse over this again but found this place but haven't really heard of them so I'm not sure whether I should really trust them - what do you think? Cause the prices are quite low compared to what I've found around and about:

Clicky (http://www.allcam.biz/products/usbstor.html)

[Mr_Wobble]

Haven't heard of them either, but then there are so many hardware suppliers nowadays. Prices are good though, and as you can see, just spending a bit more at least doubles the capacity you would get from the 80GB model you were looking at originally. They use good drives, and good housings by the looks of it.
They seem to have plenty of info, including contact details, on their site. Probably quite trustworthy.

[ginner]

Haven't heard of them either, but then there are so many hardware suppliers nowadays. Prices are good though, and as you can see, just spending a bit more at least doubles the capacity you would get from the 80GB model you were looking at originally. They use good drives, and good housings by the looks of it.
They seem to have plenty of info, including contact details, on their site. Probably quite trustworthy.

The Hitachi Deskstar drives are nicknamed the Hitachi Death Star drives because they're so prone to failure.

If you're going to buy from there, just don't buy that one.

[Monserrat]

The prices for external hard drives are extortionate.

Solution: Get a normal 3.5" IDE hard drive and then buy an enclosure kit for it. You will get 2x the amount of hard drive space for the same price you'd pay for an external hard drive. Enclosure kits use the USB port too.