External HDD

davestar_delux · 9 Aug 2007 at 16:35

Hey, looking to purchase one of these and don't have any experience with them and looking at the OcUK range am really spoiled for choice. Is there anything I should be looking out for or avoiding specifically or are they all much alike?

rpstewart · 9 Aug 2007 at 16:53

<consultant mode> Well, it depends... </consultant mode>

Start off by narrowing down your requirements a bit:

How much space do you need?
Do you want one that's self powered or can you cope with a separate power brick?
What interface do you want - USB, Firewire, eSATA, ethernet?
Do you want a pre-built unit or would you prefer to pick the caddy and drive separately?

Greenlizard0 · 9 Aug 2007 at 17:13

I personally had this dilemma a while back and opted for a WD drive with Firewire and USB ports.

Also look at your motherboard and see what it supports. I wanted to go for an e-Sata drive but couldn't have done so with what hardware I already had.

davestar_delux · 9 Aug 2007 at 22:45

rpstewart said:
<consultant mode> Well, it depends... </consultant mode>

Start off by narrowing down your requirements a bit:

How much space do you need?
Do you want one that's self powered or can you cope with a separate power brick?
What interface do you want - USB, Firewire, eSATA, ethernet?
Do you want a pre-built unit or would you prefer to pick the caddy and drive separately?

Cool, this is handy

Space: At least 160GB would cover the 2 PCs i have at the moment which aren't even full.

Self-powered. I don't want a brick really.

Interface: Well I guess USB or Ethernet so it will work with the 2 PCs but i'll be moving to a Macbook soon which could use Firewire.

Last question: I have no idea? Why would you choose them seperately?

rpstewart · 10 Aug 2007 at 08:31

The space and self powered bits really need tied together because to go self powered you're pretty much limited to 2.5" HDD based devices which used to be fairly small but you can happily go up to 250Gb with WD's Passport range.

The bus choice is also driven by the self powered requirement, while Firewire can supply power to the drive I don't of any currently available firewire powered devices so that points to USB (ethernet devices are all mains powered).

The self build route is normally the one chosen if you want to specify a particular HDD (or have one spare) or if you want features that may only be available on certain caddies - for example the ability to swap drives in and out of the IcyDock MB559.

So which would I recommend? The 160Gb or 250Gb WD Passports seem to fit the bill nicely.

Slackworth · 10 Aug 2007 at 09:33

davestar_delux said:
Cool, this is handy

Space: At least 160GB would cover the 2 PCs i have at the moment which aren't even full.

Self-powered. I don't want a brick really.

Interface: Well I guess USB or Ethernet so it will work with the 2 PCs but i'll be moving to a Macbook soon which could use Firewire.

Last question: I have no idea? Why would you choose them seperately?

You can achieve the amount of extra space you require with a self-powered drive as rpstewart says. LaCie do a 320GB Mobile Drive using RAID0 (http://www.lacie.com/uk/products/product.htm?pid=10731) but as you can see the price is rather..errm...high. 250GB is about the best bang for buck on 2.5" and would give you a fair amount of space but there are certainly better deals to be had if you buy a "desktop" style drive rather than a mobile.

The Seagate FreeAgent series has a lot of the power bits and bobs built in to the base of the drive meaning the power adapter isn't that big. Most of the other generally have a normal plug and then just an external transformer in between the mains and the drive.

davestar_delux · 10 Aug 2007 at 12:13

Slackworth said:
there are certainly better deals to be had if you buy a "desktop" style drive rather than a mobile.

Thanks guys, both very helpful replies.

This quote above, I take it a "desktop" style simply means it will have a power unit yeah? Sorry if this is obvious, just something I wanted to clear up.

Can one of you tell me more about caddies? I am looking at this one here:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-008-BT&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=72

as I have a spare IDE 3.5' not being used here. How does the caddy connect to my PC? And is there anything else to consider before going down this route?

rpstewart · 10 Aug 2007 at 13:34

That's an internal unit rather than an external one. The idea is to cool/silence an HDD in the host PC rather than allowing portability so it connects over the normal IDE cable.

For an external device you'll need to look at something like this for IDE over USB2. There are firewire and eSATA (for SATA HDDs) versions available as well.

Yas786 · 10 Aug 2007 at 13:59

Last week i bought the 750gb Seagate Freeagent Pro external HD from OCUK, have to admit im extremely impressed with it...pretty fast and comes with USB2, firewire and Esata connections. Nice unit and not a bad price considering....has a pretty nifty way of turning on ie its a touch sensitive button on the base that you just hold a finger onto and it turns itself on or off.

Highly recommended, went for the 750gb one as i have a lot of stuff that needed backing up plus my old WD 250gb external hd went kaput on me the other week. Thankfully i had backed most of my stuff onto dvds

.