1TB+ External HDD recommendations

[Havana_UK]

Hi all,

It's been a long time since I looked at external hard disk drives.

I'm looking for a USB 2.0 1TB (or bigger) external HDD but I'm not sure what's good and what's not...

Can anyone make any recommendations from experience?

Budget is up to £100.00.

Thanks for your help

 

[vertica]

I've had a few, and my advice is stay away from anything seagate/maxtor. (there the same company) i had 2 DOA and one that died in a week - all form different vendors i might add!

Since then only ever used WD mybooks, OCUK dont seem to stock them (swear they used too..?) Available up to 1TB as a single drive or 2TB as a raid-ed device. My two havent put a foot wrong, and are fast and quiet

They do a few models in each capacity, just different connectivity - USB, USB+Firewire, USB+Firewire+ESata.

but if you are limited to USB then iirc the 'essentials' range would serve you fine.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=353

Raid solution = http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=466
This gives you the option of 1TB as raid1 -if 1 drive fails all data can be recovered
or 2TB in raid 0 =no redundancy if either of the drive fails everything is lost!




Other option is to self build, get a caddy and drive of your choice, will work out about £90 for 1TB or £125 for 1.5TB

 

[ChrisLX200]

I can't give the MyBook 1TB unqualified approval because I've got issues connecting via eSATA (it won't). Also, they are very difficult to strip and replace the hard drive. I think if I were shopping for another I would buy a caddy and separate HD, partly because you can choose the interface you want, and partly because in 12months time 2TB drives will be common and you could then upgrade the capacity if needed. USB2 is slow when you're talking about moving 100's of gigs of files, it's OK when you have stored whatever you need on there and occaisionally want to pull off the odd file (say, a CD image). Transferring lots of small files is even slower. eSATA is what you want - if you can get it to work...

 

[ajf]

A certain well known high street shop has 1Tb WD Essentials at £69 online at the moment. Seems a good price for basic mass storage.

Andrew

 

[liquidex]

For price the WD Mybooks are pretty good as I do not think you can get a caddy and a hard drive for cheaper or even the same price when I searched.

However I have been having minor problems with mine on and off since I have had it. Not detecting the drive, disconnecting mid way through transfer or transferring at usb 1 speeds. Pondering to just break the case and get the drive out as I think its the sata to usb interface thats causing the problems.