External Hard Drives

Blarp

I'm looking to get two separate external hard drives, 1 for my PC and 1 for my laptop. I am wondering what sort of HD would be best for both of these platforms. I've got quite a lot of stuff to back up but value for money is important. I have had no previous experience of using an external HD but more recently I have felt a need for one and am looking to buy.

Sail

A HD is a HD, these days. Speed probably won't be an issue if it's for external backup, so just look at the storage size to physical size to price ratio and pick one that works for you.

Blarp

Thanks. Think I might get one of the Western Devices ones, they look about right.

Blattus

Generally smaller drives that don't require to be plugged in and can run solely on USB power will be more expensive, but I'm guessing you could figure that one out.

Newegg. Also, this deal might work well for your laptop. I have a friend who has that one and he's really satisfied with it, and for the price and portability it seems worth it.

Ah, I remember well the days where I had to look hard to find the 1gb/$1 ratio for externals.

andy_xie

Generally smaller drives that don't require to be plugged in and can run solely on USB power will be more expensive, but I'm guessing you could figure that one out.

Newegg. Also, thisdealmight work well for your laptop. I have a friend who has that one and he's really satisfied with it, and for the price and portability it seems worth it.

Ah, I remember well the days where I had to look hard to find the 1gb/$1 ratio for externals.

I actually have 2 of those Maxtor externals, ones a 160GB and the other is a 120GB. They work fine for me, the only problem was with my older external, the usb port actually fell out and I just had to replace the case. So far, it's been good to me.

Omnutia

All external hard drives are just 3.5" desktop/2.5" laptop/1.6" (same drive as the iPod) hard drives with a case. If you can get it, eSata is going to save you a lot of time if you want to back up a lot of stuff quickly. Using USB2 it used to take me about three hours to back up 60GB (though the IDE hard drive might have had something to do with it.).

...

You don't need to get separate external hard drives for your laptop and your desktop. Just get one with a large capacity and just back both computers up to the thing. Unless of course you have a sensible argument to get two drives instead of one.

Apreche

Just get one external drive. Connect it to the desktop via eSATA. If you can't do eSATA, use USB 2.0. Don't settle for less than that. Then use network sharing on the desktop to create a tiny NAS. If you really need to go somewhere, turn the NAS off, and take the drive with you. If you can afford it, and figure it out, a better solution is to get an actual NAS, and setup some secure way to get into your network from the outside world involving dynamic DNS and a secure VPN or something like that.