External Hard Drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ryka
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Ryka

I would like to purchase an external hard drive to use for Vista Back
Ups. Several people have recommended Western Digital, but I'm not sure what
model I should get. How many GB do I need? Do I need USB 2.0 and/or Foxwire?
What will work well with Vista Home Premium and be easy to use (I've never
used an external HDD previously)? Any and all suggestions are appreciated.
 
Ryka said:
I would like to purchase an external hard drive to use for Vista Back
Ups. Several people have recommended Western Digital, but I'm not sure
what model I should get. How many GB do I need? Do I need USB 2.0 and/or
Foxwire? What will work well with Vista Home Premium and be easy to use
(I've never used an external HDD previously)? Any and all suggestions are
appreciated.
Click to expand...

I purchased a NexStar 3 external enclosure that had both USB and esata (
external sata ) connections. My motherboard has an external sata connector
on the back but if you dont it comes with a bracket . The thing is Vista
just sees it as another drive and its just as quick as any sata drive. It
also has a hard switch so you can turn it off or on as you like

I have put in a WD 250Gig hard drive in the enclosure but any will do a good
job .
 
I would like to purchase an external hard drive to use for Vista Back
Ups. Several people have recommended Western Digital, but I'm not sure
what model I should get. How many GB do I need? Do I need USB 2.0 and/or
Foxwire? What will work well with Vista Home Premium and be easy to use
(I've never used an external HDD previously)? Any and all suggestions are
appreciated.
Click to expand...

I recommend you don't buy a commercially preassembled external hard drive.
You can put one together easily enough from a bare hard drive and an
external hard drive enclosure, for much less cost. These are readily
obtainable. USB is fine (btw it's Firewire, not Foxwire).

As to size, bigger is better. You can put together an external 320GB drive
using a Western Digital 320GB 7200 RPM EIDE bare drive and a Kingwin
external drive enclosure for under $100 from Newegg.com.

Here are some links just to get you started.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144392

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817146307
 
Rock said:
I recommend you don't buy a commercially preassembled external hard drive.
You can put one together easily enough from a bare hard drive and an
external hard drive enclosure, for much less cost. These are readily
obtainable. USB is fine (btw it's Firewire, not Foxwire).

As to size, bigger is better. You can put together an external 320GB
drive using a Western Digital 320GB 7200 RPM EIDE bare drive and a Kingwin
external drive enclosure for under $100 from Newegg.com.

Here are some links just to get you started.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144392

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817146307
Click to expand...

Rock, the way external hard drive prices are falling, manufactured drives
can compete pretty well with enclosures:
http://tinyurl.com/39ever
http://tinyurl.com/2c6twb

And these are both 500GB with free shipping.
 
Nice price, though I've seen too many preassembled drives with sealed cases
or the drive not capable of replacement without OEM repair or service. In
some cases worse than attempting a battery replacement on the original IPod.

Additionally the majority of included software is unnecessary and redundant
to the simple tasks needed and provided by Msft or Apple o/s's.

...winston
 
...winston said:
Nice price, though I've seen too many preassembled drives with sealed
cases or the drive not capable of replacement without OEM repair or
service. In some cases worse than attempting a battery replacement on the
original IPod.

Additionally the majority of included software is unnecessary and
redundant to the simple tasks needed and provided by Msft or Apple o/s's.

...winston
Click to expand...

Agreed, but at these prices, it's not much different than the price of just
replacing the hard drive in an enclosure.

Agreed on the software as well, Winston. It's a nice little extra and for
some without such 3rd party apps, they may get a nice backup program out of
it (One of my drives) came with "Retrospective Backup) but as you say, most
tasks can be handled by the OS.
 
'Retrospective Backup'
The person who coined that must have grown up in the '60's.

Nice seeing you around !!!

Are you dual booting and/or using WLMD on Vista ?

...winston

 
Ryka said:
I would like to purchase an external hard drive to use for Vista Back
Ups. Several people have recommended Western Digital, but I'm not sure
what model I should get. How many GB do I need? Do I need USB 2.0 and/or
Foxwire? What will work well with Vista Home Premium and be easy to use
(I've never used an external HDD previously)? Any and all suggestions are
appreciated.
Click to expand...

I would highly rcommend *AGAINST* Western Digit5al. every Western Digital
hard drive i have ever owned has failed catastrophically and early.

Currently, the best drives on the market are Seagate. 5 year warranties
across the board, including external.

Look at the new FreeAgent and FreeAgent Pro lines.

Honu
 
Firewire (i.e. firwire 400) is *SLOWER* than USB 2.0 drives in most
applications, and is completely blown out of the water be eTSATA.

Honu
 
Ryka said:
I would like to purchase an external hard drive to use for Vista Back
Ups. Several people have recommended Western Digital, but I'm not sure
what model I should get. How many GB do I need? Do I need USB 2.0 and/or
Foxwire? What will work well with Vista Home Premium and be easy to use
(I've never used an external HDD previously)? Any and all suggestions are
appreciated.
Click to expand...


USB 2.0, new pcs already have 4-6 ports, just plug in and go. It'll appear
as a lettered drive in Explorer.
 
A number of companies market SATA drive enclosures that can contain one
or more drives. Connection can be by USB 2.0, Firewire, or eSATA. eSATA
is preferable because of its speed. Apricorn makes a nice single drive
enclosure that can be connected either by USB or eSATA. USB is slow thus
eSATA is a preferred connection.
If you need multiple external hard drives and can spend a little more
money, the "hot swap" enclosures are very nice.
 
Thanks to all of you for your advice and suggestions. I decided to go with
the Western Digital My Book Premium 500 GB Combo (USB 2.0 and FireWire 400).
I got a good price, free delivery, and it says it's Vista compatible with no
software to install except for the WD BackUp. This should more than
adequately do Back Ups and a lot more.
 
Hertz_Donut said:
I would highly rcommend *AGAINST* Western Digit5al. every Western Digital
hard drive i have ever owned has failed catastrophically and early.

Currently, the best drives on the market are Seagate. 5 year warranties
across the board, including external.

Look at the new FreeAgent and FreeAgent Pro lines.
Click to expand...

I've never had a problem with a WD drive.
 
Hi
I would suggest by starting using USB and copying the backup utilities to
the computer first. Then reformat the Western Digital to NTFS. Once
reformatted, restart with USB connected and then copy the backup utilities
back . You will then be able to use USB or firewire. BTW, full reformatting
takes a fair few hours.
I have just bought my 2nd one of these drives and have had no problems

Jon
 
I've never had a problem with a WD drive.
Click to expand...
Ditto. Running 5 of their drives along with a bunch of Maxtors.

Had 1 Maxtor 820MB fail after a few months, years ago. They replaced it (with
a 1.6G) that is still running (along with a 104MB Conner ;) drive ).
Heat or rapid temperature change is an enemy of drives. Shock gets notebook
drives and externals.
 
I recommend you don't buy a commercially preassembled external hard drive.
You can put one together easily enough from a bare hard drive and an
external hard drive enclosure, for much less cost. These are readily
obtainable. USB is fine (btw it's Firewire, not Foxwire).

As to size, bigger is better. You can put together an external 320GB drive
using a Western Digital 320GB 7200 RPM EIDE bare drive and a Kingwin
external drive enclosure for under $100 from Newegg.com.

Here are some links just to get you started.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144392

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817146307
Click to expand...


Or you could just buy already built for less than $90.

http://shop1.outpost.com/{vS9rcbJhBOdxKqx78UQ5JQ**.node2}/product/5161326
 
...winston said:
'Retrospective Backup'
The person who coined that must have grown up in the '60's.

Nice seeing you around !!!

Are you dual booting and/or using WLMD on Vista ?

...winston
Click to expand...
And been a fan of Buffalo Springfield!:-)

Thanks, Winston.

I was dual booting up until about a week ago. I might have dropped XP
sooner but my PDA, a Dell Axim X5 was not compatible with the new Sync
Center. I really didn't want to purchase a new PDA and Dell no longer
offered the PPC 2003 upgrade, in fact, for the time being, they are out of
the PDA business with the exception of selling third party models. I found
a guy on Ebay who was selling a copy of the upgrade for $4 and change plus
shipping. For the little over $7, I figured it was worth a shot. He sent
me a burned a copy, it updated my Axim and I was back in business.

I updated my Acronis True Image and Disk Director to current versions,
backed up my partitions, wiped my hard drive and started over, installing
Vista and rebuilding my partitions and creating new master images of my
setup.

I'm currently using WLMD for newsgroups and Hotmail. For my pop3 accounts,
contacts, scheduling, etc. I'm using Outlook 2003.

Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner but with the long weekend, I just
didn't get back online until today.
 
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