Which Hard Drive?

[BoltonSte]

So at long last we've decided we could do with getting a couple of external hard drives.

1. For home, to back up anything imprtant, but mainly for photo's/videos (of holidays etc...you dirty buggers!)

1. For the wife to use for work, she's a teacher so mainly reports and presentations she does at home. Saves backing up from work laptop onto a stick then onto our laptop (she has an amazing knack to buggering memory sticks)

I've seen 1TB in Maplins for about £60 but have no idea where to start (other than the wife won't need something that big for work).

So what are you recommendations, which should be avoided?

Ste

[timwilky]

What ever you go for, make sure it can handle e-sata as well as USB. I would even suggest go for USB-3. More devices now support both of these. Even my year old laptop has e-sata and usb-3 as well as RAID mirroring with the second internal drive. Yes I did say laptop.

[JamesMio]

The most reliable ones (according to my good friends that run a Data Recovery company up in Edinburgh (http://www.kingdomdatarecovery.co.uk/location/data-recovery-edinburgh)) are Western Digital drives.

They're the only ones I try to use now and can't say I've ever had any problems with them over the years.

[collis]

i'd get a fixed nas unit, that way it can be conencted to your network and be available to everyone always, then i'd get a small portable usb drive for the wife.

[maviczap]

Western digital external 1Tb on offer in WH Smiths for £54

Check out Ebuyer or Aria for better prices than Maplins

[The Guru]

I got a 2tb Buffalo Juststore (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0036B78BO/ref=oss_product) external drive from Amazon in March this year for £70. They're out of stock at the moment.

I also got a WD my book essential 1tb (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Essential-External-Drive/dp/B002KPW5JM/ref=sr_1_16?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1308313941&sr=1-16) last month. It was bought for my boss but he didn't want it as it was too technical :rolleyes: so I inherited it.

[maviczap]

Buffalo http://www.ebuyer.com/product/255189 £65 for 2Tb

WD £69 for 2Tb http://www.ebuyer.com/product/204506

[DJFridge]

I agree with Collis and following - get a NAS. I bought a QNAP TS219 and put 2 2TB Samsung drives in it for home. They've been faultless. I also connected an Icy Box eSATA dock http://www.amazon.co.uk/IB-110StUS2-B-Docking-Station-eSATA-Interface/dp/B002D4JCIC/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=computers&qid=1308322037&sr=8-2 so I can take data to and from work so we have an off-site backup. Except we don't at the moment because the **** backup software isn't working properly but that's another problem.

[maxinc]

External drives work fine until you knock them over accidentally. I would never use them for anything other than temporary stuff. Best way to protect your family data is, as has been suggested, an external NAS with internal mirroring to cover against drive failure.

[DJFridge]

External drives work fine until you knock them over accidentally. I would never use them for anything other than temporary stuff. Best way to protect your family data is, as has been suggested, an external NAS with internal mirroring to cover against drive failure.

Oh god yes, always mirror or RAID your drives. The TS219 at home is a plain mirror, giving us 2TB of storage. The one at work has 4 2TB drives which I've set up to have 3 in a RAID array (just over 3.5TB effectively) with one spare I can swap in if needed. And I back up the whole thing to the separate external drive as well. Paranoid, moi?

[Daveo2010]

I have a couple of seagate barracuda drives inside my machine that have given many years of reliable service, can't fault em, and when I took the drive out of a seagate USB caddy the other day I was astounded at the level of internal build quality, totally gratuitous it was - overbuilt, too big and heavy for its own good, but shows they mean business eh.

I also have a western digital elements USB drive that's proved very reliable so far, and the case is sturdy quality and compact, though they seem to have changed the cases now.

I bought this drop-in dock the other day: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002UAR8JY/
seems very good build and works nicely, but probably not what you're looking for - good for recovery and emergencies, I wouldn't use a naked disk for anything that I'd want to keep.

I also built a NAS recently out of an old pc I had lying around - whack ubuntu on there, set up samba, instant file and print sharing.. ace, best thing is it didn't cost me a bean :) Didn't bother with RAID, but I have online backup (carbonite.com, cheap peace of mind!)
(http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002UAR8JY/)

[metalmonkey]

G-Tec is what i'm getting, its USB 2, e-sata firewire 400 and 800. Thought this is for video editing. Its over a £100 for 1TB have spoken to others that edit these are the best. Simimlar makes are the same price so might as well jusy buy this one.