Which external? Seagate or Western Digital?

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hi guys

need an external hard disk for backing up PC and have decided to go for a 250Gb, but am undecided between the:

Seagate Value Line 250GB External USB 2.0 2MB Cache Hard Drive (HD-073-SE) - £82

and the

Western Digital WDG1U2500 MyBook Essential 250GB USB2.0 External Hard Drive (HD-083-WD) - £78

Both look like they do they same, but would appreciate anyone's thoughts.

Cheers
pie
 
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Hawkpie said:
Western Digital WDG1U2500 MyBook Essential 250GB USB2.0 External Hard Drive

I bought this last week.

Not too much to say about it really, nice packaging, small, clean design, quiet, reasonably quick, literally plug it in and it starts working.

Only think I did was format it to NTFS as I think it comes as FAT32, and it also gets rid of some crap Google software thats bundled with it.

Very happy with mine :)
 
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Silver_&_Gold said:
Cheaper and better to build your own!

Actually I toyed with the idea of doing my own but the MyBook worked out slightly cheaper.

Plus I know I wont need any more space for a long time, so it made sense to go with the 'pre-made' solution.
 
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Nismo said:
Actually I toyed with the idea of doing my own but the MyBook worked out slightly cheaper.

Plus I know I wont need any more space for a long time, so it made sense to go with the 'pre-made' solution.


Then your shopping in the wrong places!! I have yet to find an external Hd that I could not build cheaper. (Excluding ones on super special offers obviously)

Also with the pre-built ones you get crippled warranty’s which is extremely important on external Hd's as their failure rate is significantly higher..
 
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Silver_&_Gold said:
Then your shopping in the wrong places!! I have yet to find an external Hd that I could not build cheaper. (Excluding ones on super special offers obviously).

I shopped around, standalone worked out cheaper. If the DIY was more cost effective and looked as good, then I would have gone down that route.

I can only guess that the external enclosure you have in mind is a cheaper one (which is why you work it out as being cheaper) that I probably would have seen anyway, and thought looked nasty. Not having something sat on my desk that I wasnt happy with aesthetically.

Plus I never actually said how much I paid for the MyBook ;)
 
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Sem

Sem

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Silver_&_Gold said:
Cheaper and better to build your own!

i wanted to build one but i cant seem to find a decent looking enclosure that takes SATA drives with 1394 outputs

i dont know why you think that would be better

also a lot of these external drives have 1 push backup button
 
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As with most things that have components combined you get a better setup if you buy them separately! ie VCR/DVD combo's, HiFi's, Pre-built PC's, External 2.5/3.5" HD's ...etc

In this instance building yourself means you can use the best HD (Seagate 7200.10) which will be the fastest and also come with 5 years warranty. Also you can buy some very attractive enclosures for £15 if you shop about.

A wise man builds it himself but hey it's your money dude :p
 
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I've got a 250Gb Mybook and it's tiny and pretty! I got it because it could stand up without needing an ugly stand, and because it looks so cool. Yeah, I shop on important factors :cool:

HDtach gives it 28Mb/sec (USB2) which I suppose isn't tooo bad.
 
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Silver_&_Gold said:
As with most things that have components combined you get a better setup if you buy them separately! ie VCR/DVD combo's, HiFi's, Pre-built PC's, External 2.5/3.5" HD's ...etc

In this instance building yourself means you can use the best HD (Seagate 7200.10) which will be the fastest and also come with 5 years warranty. Also you can buy some very attractive enclosures for £15 if you shop about
Potentially better setup, but at cost. Grab a Dell and try to build one yourself for the same cost. Once you throw in the applications, it is not unlikely for the Dell to come ahead in value.
 
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went ahead and order the WD MyBook at the weekend and it arrived yesterday.

very nice. quite small and very quiet. backed up 170Gb in just over an hour. not too bad.
 
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