Hard Drive Help

swintonphoto

Well, my built in hard drive is reaching capacity and I am looking for an external option. It appears to me that it will be a bit cheaper to buy an internal drive and put in in an external enclosure as opposed to buying a strictly external drive.
I am looking for something 160-300gigs. I have been looking at Seagate (I like their 5 year warranty), Hitachi, and Western Digital. I have some friends and family that have had problems with Maxtor drives.
Any suggestions on what to get and where to get it?
Thanks!

Mike Lane

www.pricegrabber.com
www.pricewatch.com

I really can't recommend harddrives. I'm not really knowledgeable enough about them to push one over another. I do know they're cheap these days and maybe you could go instead to best buy or somewhere that has a good warranty system and buy one there.

If you're considering external harddrives may I humbly suggest that something like the HD80 may be a good idea? You can use it as a standard external drive, you can add your own harddrive to it plus you can use it as a standalone storage device when you're out shooting.

For the HD80 (or PD70X) and others like them you need to use a 2.5" notebook drive.

Just a thought.

flyingdutchie

swintonphoto wrote:

Well, my built in hard drive is reaching capacity and I am looking for an external option. It appears to me that it will be a bit cheaper to buy an internal drive and put in in an external enclosure as opposed to buying a strictly external drive.
I am looking for something 160-300gigs. I have been looking at Seagate (I like their 5 year warranty), Hitachi, and Western Digital. I have some friends and family that have had problems with Maxtor drives.
Any suggestions on what to get and where to get it?
Thanks!

I bought 2 200GByte Seagates (1 for use, 1 for backup), internal IDE drives. Man oh man... these are quiet!!! I had to touch them to feel some vibration to check if they were really spinning the platters.

Their speed is fast (not the fastest) and i like the 5 year warranty too!

wxwax

Hafta say, I'm had a couple of trouble free years with my Maxtor externals, I'm surprised to hear about problems.

jeff lapoint

wxwax wrote:

Hafta say, I'm had a couple of trouble free years with my Maxtor externals, I'm surprised to hear about problems.

I'd have to second with the Waxmasta said. I have the Maxtor 300 gig diamondmax. Works great and got wonderful reviews from toms hardware.

-j

Ric Grupe

I have a Maxtor One Touch II, 7200RPM, 8mb cache buffer, USB 2.0 external drive that seems quite good.

The "One Touch" means, when I turn it on there is a button on the face that I press to backup my files automatically. Only copies the new files since last backup. Easy......:D

Oh.....200GIG........$200........Best Buy.

photodoug

Ric Grupe wrote:

I have a Maxtor One Touch II, 7200RPM, 8mb cache buffer, USB 2.0 external drive that seems quite good.

The "One Touch" means, when I turn it on there is a button on the face that I press to backup my files automatically. Only copies the new files since last backup. Easy......:D

Oh.....200GIG........$200........Best Buy.

tigerdirect

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1696315

Seagate / 250GB / 7200 / 8MB / ATA-100 / EIDE / OEM / Hard Drive with Diablo USB 2.0 Hard Drive Enclosure

$99 after rebate

Art Scott

I have used Maxtor (120gb external metalcase) & Seagate (300gb internal) & Quantum Fireball (20gb internal "C"dive)....I used to work in the Computer manufacturing business and have seen all brands fail.....really it boils down to how much space do you need and how much do you want to spend...The mail thing I suggest is if you go with an internal and put it into a case...buy a case with a fan in it...keep that drive cool.....heat is what damages drives.

I have 2 or 3 10 -20 gb drives I need to copy to my 300gb and get one of them back into my compter for a scratch disk.


Seagates Warranty starts when the drive leaves the factory, per an email from seagate refering to my last drive (300gb) bought off ebay for $75......and I was checking serial numbers on drives at Best Buy and was finding drives that alreaday had a year off the warranty.....that has been my only gripe concering the seagates....and yes they are quiet....but so are my other drives......

I have had good luck buying off ebay if the bestbuy was having a good sale......I have had the 300gb for about 4 months and it is already half full of raw & PP files and that is all that is on it just pics.

My advice is to buy the biggest drive you can afford...there are good buys for the 500gb if you are willing to look for them.

Good luck

Ric Grupe

photodoug wrote:

tigerdirect

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1696315

Seagate / 250GB / 7200 / 8MB / ATA-100 / EIDE / OEM / Hard Drive with Diablo USB 2.0 Hard Drive Enclosure

$99 after rebate

On page you reference:

Important Note: OEM hard drives do not include cables, software, or hardware (screws, brackets, etc.). Full manufacturer's warranty applies.

Mine came with software, cables and oh yes....a power supply.

Andyman

NewEgg. Best place to buy computer parts. I've ordered from them several times and never had a problem. They offer alot of products, pretty good prices, and very good service. In fact, every time I've ordered from them, my stuff has literally come in the mail early. Just this past week, I ordered an Athlon64 X2 3800 cpu and a new motherboard with $5, 3-day UPS shipping. I ordered it Monday night, and it was here Wednesday morning. Can't beat that.

Do you know if your motherboard supports SATA? If it does, it might be smart to get a SATA drive (as opposed to IDE/ATA). The faster transfer rate helps with large amounts of files, such as viewing photos, etc.

If you buy a large drive, pay attention to what you're doing when you first set up (format) your new hard drive because windows has problems sometimes formatting large hard drives.