External hard drives??

[MahiraRaqs]

I am not very savvy when it comes to techy stuff. I have a laptop and a desktop that are lagging because the memory is getting full with pics and music and video stuff. I've been told that I should get an external hard drive and transfer that stuff to that. Is that my best option? What do I get? How big? Again, I'm not savvy on this stuff so I really don't know what a gigabite or megabite or any of that means. Then I see there are portable external hard drives, should I get one of those? or are those just for backups? (which I should do anyway) Some help would be very appreciated. =)

[ANA_bellydancer]

It depends on what you want to save in. If you have many photos and videos, you should get a big one.
Here's some links:

Chart - Top 10 External Hard Drives - PC World

What is an External Hard Drive?

Amazon.com: External Hard Drives

[mekyria]

I got two external harddrives from WD, they look like books. I have a 500 GB one, at the time it was the best option for my budget. If I had the choice, I'd buy the biggest one available in my price range. The way I look at it, we'll keep doing more stuff digital, so extra space is a plus.

[TheGreatKathyLori]

I bought a very nice external hard drive from Western Digital ( actually got it at best buy back in April ). It's called My Book, it's 500 gb. It came with software called memeo. It uses a usb connection. I use it for work. It only cost around 90-95. The size is around 2" by 5" by 4". Something like that should do the trick for you.

[Asim]

Understand -- and I say this as a tech-savvy person who is recovering from failing to do this -- you need to put anything you care about in More Than One Place. In other words, back it up.

OK, having said that, here's some details. If you have digital music, mostly likely it's an MP3. MP3s are (very) roughly a Megabyte per minute of song. A Gigabyte is 1024 Megabytes.

All external hard drives are "portable", but yes, some are more portable than others. Unless you're planning on traveling with them, don't worry about those, or anything that says "rugged" or the like; you're playing for an aspect you'll never use.

The "sweet spot" for "stationary" externals these days seems to be in the 1 Terabyte range. As someone with an extensive digital music collection, much of it in a extremely high-quality (and multi-megabyte) format, a terabyte drive runs approx. $100 these days, and should fulfill both music/pics/etc. AND backing up the computer's operating system. I'd also strongly recommend ordering it online over BestBuy and related places, as you usually get better prices, even with shipping, and much better selection. Indeed, I'd recommend a place called NewEgg, which usually deals with geeky folks, but has kick-ass customer service and competitive-with-Amazon pricing; here's their 1 Terabyte and over page. (And no, no kickbacks for me or anyone I know, I just have good experiences with them.)

I've found the best way to eval drives is to look on Amazon and NewEgg's reviews; as people tend to be very...real, if they don't like something, or it breaks on them. That said, I think this market's pretty "safe" by and large; I own 2 drives from two very different companies (one low-end and the other a high-end brand), and both work pretty well.

I know this is a lot, but hopefully it'll help.

[*Shira*]

I love external hard drives! They're good for both backups and for data storage. I've been thinking about moving my iTunes database to one.

The portable kind cost more than the other kind, but I prefer them because they are smaller and easier to store. They're the kind I prefer to buy.

My favorite brand name is Western Digital. I have found them to be reasonably priced and very reliable.

Seagate were okay for me, but I prefer Western Digital. Seagate seems to lag behind other manufacturers when it comes to releasing high-capacity drives with excellent speed.

I have a couple of LaCie drives that have been okay for me, but a couple of different people I know have had problems with their LaCie drives quitting working.


One big word of warning if you go for the portable kind: don't drop it! You can destroy it if you do!

If you store a lot of music or videos, I'd recommend that you get something 500 gigabytes or more. For example, if you have a large iTunes database....

I like this one: [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Passport-Essential-WDBAAA5000ARD-NESN/dp/B002KC6T06/]Amazon.com: Western Digital My Passport Essential 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive WDBAAA5000ARD-NESN (Real Red): Electronics[/ame]

It comes in a variety of colors, so you can use different colors for storing different stuff. For example, you could put your iTunes database on a red one, your backups on a white one, etc., and then you can tell at a glance (by the color) which one is likely to have the data you're looking for.

Here's a tip for people with Windows machines: Many of these external hard drives come pre-formatted in a format known as "Fat32". The "Fat32" format is evil, because it won't hold as much data as the physical disk is capable of holding. (I'll spare you the techy explanation.) Before putting any data on it, I urge you to reformat it using the NTFS file format. It'll hold a LOT more data if you do that before starting to use it. It takes about an hour to reformat a high-capacity drive, but you'll get more storage for your money if you do that.

[indigostars]

I second backing everything up.

I use a Lacie external hard drive. They work well for me. However, read around. I've never had a problem once with it or the one I gave to my boyfriend (I ended up needing more space). The one my boyfriend has is 5 years old now, I believe.

[da Sage]

Backing up is the way to go. My hard drive crashed, and I lost all my memory - some creative writing, resumes, downloaded knitting patterns, and my bellydance costume drool-files!!!

I had backed up previously, but it had been a few months (I put my portable drive in a "safe place", and was too cheap to get another one when I couldn't find the first). I so regret it!

[zorba]

LaCie fan here - although its really hard to go wrong with any "known" brand. WD is a hard drive manufacturer, so if you buy a WD external drive, there'll be a WD drive inside the enclosure. For what that's worth. If you buy a Maxtor, LaCie or most other brands, the actual drive inside may be from a variety of manufacturers (including WD) - for what THAT's worth.

"Back in the day" WD drives weren't the best - but of late I haven't seen any real problems with them (I see a *LOT* of hard drives!), so they're as good as anyone else is these days. How I miss Quantum though...

[*Shira*]

By the way, if the brand name SimpleTech is still in business, beware of them. I've had two of theirs go bad on me.

[MahiraRaqs]

I'm looking at this one Newegg.com - Western Digital Elements 1TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDBAAU0010HBK-NESN - External Hard Drives

[sabrinabellydancer]

right now Costco has great external drives in 500GB, 1T 1.5T & 2T
$50-$200
there's even a $30 coupon for the $150 1.5T Seagate.
others are HP, MyBook, etc.
Totally worth it vs. the disaster of no backup/bogged down machine

btw, my bf has discovered that the 500GB western digital can be eviscerated and installed directly into the laptop creating a 500GB internal drive. hehe ;) also another option if your memory is bogged down.

also look into internal solid state drives. very fast. might up your speed

[jewelsdances]

What are the best ones for a MAC computer? If they don't specify MAC compatible, then I assume you can only use it with windows?

[indigostars]

I'm on a Mac, and I use a Lacie. I think pretty much all the big names can work for a Mac

[zorba]

Yep - as long as it has a compatible interface; USB is on every Mac I know of, Firewire is still on most - any of them will work. LaCie does market more towards the Mac market, and often has FireWire where others may not. With the imminent advent of USB 3.0 - even FireWire 800 will be slow by comparison.

You may want to reformat the drive to the Mac HPFS if its going to be Mac-only for reasons similar to Shira's discussion about NTFS. If the drive is going to be moving between Mac and PC, leave it as FAT 32 *unless* you have NTFS drivers on your Mac (or HPFS drivers on your PC).