[ken979]

Hi Everyone

I am fast running out of space on my hard drive and am in the process of looking at buying an external hard drive to use with my computer.

Can anyone recommend a hard drive? Ideally i am looking for something 750gb+

I would really appreciate your views

Thanks!

[gaza14]

where do you live? for local shops or do you prefer online.

i got referred to this site and i may help

[Dave Hybrid]

Personally I only buy Samsung and Western Digital drives, have found others unreliable, but thats just my experience.

[spot]

Any. Seriously. They work, they're equivalent. There's only three brand names doing 1000GB drives, pick one.

Think about how long it'll take you to fill it over a USB2 connector though. Under most Microsoft Windows you have a de-facto limit of 200Mbit/sec, that's 12 hours to read or write the entire drive. That's a long long time. A SATA-2 connection inside your computer would do the same in under three hours (I changed this upward when I realized the hard drive sustained transfer write speed is less than the data path can carry).

[philthomas]

Yep ......Samsung & WD either will be good.

[spot]

Who else makes 3.5" hard drives? There's WD, Hitachi, Samsung and Seagate, that's the only four companies I know of who do them. I'd use Hitachi and Seagate with no hesitation just like I'd use the other two.

[philthomas]

Fujitsu, Hitachi, Maxtor, Samsung, Seagate, Western Digital all make them, but my preference would be Western Digital and Samsung, as I have never had one of these let me down.
You can keep Seagate & Maxtor (same company now) ... wouldn't recommend them to anyone.

[spot]

You've seen 3.5" Fujitsu drives this year? I haven't. There's none on eBay either. I think that makes our lists, if not our advice, identical.

[philthomas]

Our list may be the same, but not our recommendations

[spot]

It's worth registering at storagereview.com, they have 50,000+ drive performance database which keeps track of reliability far more effectively than I can do with my limited purchases. Their current leaderboard seems to favour Samsung and Seagate.

[Desertfish]

"1TB Western Digital MyBook2 Home Edition - 3.5" USB 2.0 / FireWire 400 / eSata External Hard Drive" found on Scan for £150.

Can't comment of the firewire and eSata transfer rates as I only have the 320GB version which only supports USB2.0. Then again. mine is only for data backup so i'm not all too fussed about the transfer speed.

If you're looking for a 750GB+ drive, it means you got quite a fair bit of data. what is something happens to that. You might be thinking of a serious backup solution. Two of these on your desk next to each other do look cool though.

Cheers:
Chris

[alex]

I'm with Desertfish, I've 2 mybooks of the 500gb variety; quiet, stylish (like it matters) and not bad value for money for the standard usb-only one's.