External USB HDD's

BBones

I need 500GB to 1TB of space that I can connect to my laptop for storage. The reviews I have read have been mostly babble. I don't need massive/mach speed since this will be mostly a depot for me to park photos that need to be edited later (due to me going onto another shoot) or for archival/quick fetch reasons (much faster then finding a DVD, popping it in, waiting for it to be recognized and then finding the photo). So size and reliability far outwiegh speed.

Help me Obiwan's

Andy

Three relevant threads pulled from the Dgrin search engine for you:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=47959&highlight=external+hard+drive

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=47882&highlight=external+hard+drive

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=44177&highlight=external+hard+drive

wxwax

I'm eyeing a Seagate 750GB external right now. For back-ups.

photodoug

go big or go home

BBones

I like the idea of that Hitachi drive and it sounds pretty cool, but am I willing to jump on a technology that is not tested yet for storing something as vital as my photos which is my means of income.

Saw the 750GB Seagates today at Fry's....pretty slick for the price. I am also interested in the Lacie lego blocks.

Pupator

500GB external at Circuit City this week for $190 after rebate (western digital). Office Depot has the same drive for $200 after rebates.

03FatBoy

I have used the 'Venus' line from AMS for a number of external drives. It's an enclosure and you then select your own hard drive. Results in a less expensive drive than buying a "pre-made" external drive (normally). They have SATA and IDE enclosures. Cool thing about these enclosures is that they include a fan to keep yer drives, uh, cool. It's silent.

Anyway, here's a linky from newegg.com where I buy mine.

I'm very happy with them.

clove

I like the Western Digital MyBooks. 500GB, fast, and you can pick them up at Costco cheap. Plus they stack really nicely (I store them in my safe).

Newsy

03FatBoy wrote:

I have used the 'Venus' line from AMS for a number of external drives. It's an enclosure and you then select your own hard drive. Results in a less expensive drive than buying a "pre-made" external drive (normally). They have SATA and IDE enclosures. Cool thing about these enclosures is that they include a fan to keep yer drives, uh, cool. It's silent.

Anyway, here's a linky from newegg.com where I buy mine.

I'm very happy with them.

Those Venus enclosures sure look like my SNT enclosure.

http://www.snt.com.tw/product.php?mode=category&cid=14

A review... http://www.dansdata.com/sntboxes.htm

I now have two of the USB2.0/Firewire400 model, the SNT-2316C. The first has a 160G 7200rpm drive and the second a 320G 7200rpm drive. Both PATA type. I can't recall how I formatted the first drive but the 320G is definitely formatted to NTFS which allows for files larger than 4GB (useful for DVD movies).

I see the Newegg descriptions claim drives up to 750G. That was one question I always had.

One of the strong points of these enclosures is the fan and also, if you require Firewire, they use the OXFORD chipset which is very reliable. There are many other external enclosures out there using chipsets other than Oxford and there are many forum postings of issues with them not connecting or writing corrupted data.

It is very very easy to mount the drive in them allowing people with little PC savvy to go out and buy OEM drives from the corner PC shack and mount them in this enclosure. Makes for a very cost effective external storage solution using a brand name drive you prefer to ensure reliability. I use Seagate drives. Many other people swear by Samsung drives.

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