External Hard Drive Reviews

[joreth]

I'm in the market for a 1T external hard drive.  I currently have a 500GB WD My Book, which was working just fine for a while, but has recently begun overheating.  I have to unplug it, let it cool off, then reboot the computer while simultaneously plugging it back in to get the computer to see the drive once it overheats.

And, because I'm poor, I never bought a backup system.

So I'm doing google searches to find reviews, but I'm having trouble finding any for the 1T size.  I have a coupon for another WD product, and the 1T My Book Pro Edition is currently on sale for $200.  But I'm cautious about purchasing another My Book.

I found one review (http://www.gcn.com/print/27_14/46462-1.html) that covered several different brands, and based on that one article, the Seagate FreeAgent Pro and SimpleTech Pro Drive sound pretty good.  They both have decent transfer speeds, good backup software, and go for just over $300.

I've also heard that Maxtor has a good reputation for decent hardware.

So, anyone want to chime in with their opinions and experiences, or links to reliable comparison reviews?  I'm concerned with cost, overheating issues, and backup capabilities.  Transfer speed is important, but less so than the 3 I just mentioned.  It might be inconvenient for something to take a long time to transfer, but if I have to sacrifice speed for not losing my data totally, I'll make that sacrifice.

Comments

[joreth]

I am still in the market, but my external case for an internal drive has no fans on it and internal drives do not typically come with backup software or backup options, like externals do. This external drive would be my primary drive, so fans and backup options are at the top of my priority list, especially since one of the problems with my current external drive is overheating.

[jaigh-taylor.livejournal.com]

in that case I would suggest getting a little NAS box that supports raid.

[joreth]

Portability is also at the top of the list, as this drive will be for my laptop, which travels with me to work and back (all around the country).

I don't know anything about raid. What is it, how easy is it to learn, and how portable is it?

[jaigh-taylor.livejournal.com]

Raid is typically the practice of taking >two drives and configuring them to either mirror each other for performance and redundancy reasons.

If you're looking for a portable drive though, that would not be an appropriate solution.

[joreth]

So I'm still back to my original question, which is, which portable, external harddrive is the best?

[jaigh-taylor.livejournal.com]

I'd say cruise around on pricewatch and read reviews.

And just be aware that it's not if, but WHEN the disk will fail (because they all fail eventually!)