Best External Hard drive, recommendation

**ken979** · #1 2nd Apr 2008, 15:04

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~~ · #2 2nd Apr 2008, 15:10

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

i got referred to this site and i may help

**Hybr!d** · #3 2nd Apr 2008, 15:12

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

**spot** · #4 2nd Apr 2008, 15:13

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** · #5 2nd Apr 2008, 15:27

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

**spot** · #6 2nd Apr 2008, 15:39

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** · #7 3rd Apr 2008, 00:45

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** · #8 3rd Apr 2008, 00:52

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** · #9 3rd Apr 2008, 01:16

Our list may be the same, but not our recommendations

**spot** · #10 3rd Apr 2008, 02:28

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.