Portable hard drives?

[t-homo]

Seagate and Western Digital are two of the top brands. My bro had a couple of WDs fail on him when he built his comp a few years ago, switched to Seagate and hasn't had a problem. I got a 250 gig Seagate protable this past summer for 100 bucks at wal-mart. Not on any special sale or anything.

[Mr Lefty]

Originally Posted by t-rock

Seagate and Western Digital are two of the top brands. My bro had a couple of WDs fail on him when he built his comp a few years ago, switched to Seagate and hasn't had a problem. I got a 250 gig Seagate protable this past summer for 100 bucks at wal-mart. Not on any special sale or anything.

yeah I have a WD iBook and it's crapped out on me a couple times... but never completely... just where it wouldn't be recognized via usb for a week or two...

seagate is what I'm looking at next for my desktop... tigerdirect has a 1.5TB for like $140... though it has some firm ware issues...

[Dave]

whatever brand you decide get one in a 2.5 inch size. power via usb is most convienient. ever consider just getting an enclosure and stuffing your own hd in there? i have a rocketfish enclosure thats the shit

[Papa_Complex]

There isn't a hell of a lot of difference in what's inside the box. There are only so many USB/Firewire chipsets and only so many manufacturers of hard drives. Just buy a case and install whatever size and manufacturer of drive you tend to prefer. You can pick up a SATA 750GB drive for around $110.00 and a case for $20.00-$30.00. All it takes to put it together is a screwdriver and many manufacturers of enclosures even give you one in the box.

[OneSickPsycho]

Originally Posted by Papa_Complex

There isn't a hell of a lot of difference in what's inside the box. There are only so many USB/Firewire chipsets and only so many manufacturers of hard drives. Just buy a case and install whatever size and manufacturer of drive you tend to prefer. You can pick up a SATA 750GB drive for around $110.00 and a case for $20.00-$30.00. All it takes to put it together is a screwdriver and many manufacturers of enclosures even give you one in the box.

Newegg has SATA 750GB drives runnnig in the $80 range right now.

[Papa_Complex]

Originally Posted by OneSickPsycho

Newegg has SATA 750GB drives runnnig in the $80 range right now.

All the more reason to do a build-your-own.

[Amber Lamps]

Here's a question,my laptop has a port for a 2nd HD,is it possible to install a HD in that port and use it to back up my info? Or would it crash it with the first HD?

[Dave]

yeah just make sure the second one is jumpered correctly and you should be set

[Papa_Complex]

Originally Posted by TIGGER

Here's a question,my laptop has a port for a 2nd HD,is it possible to install a HD in that port and use it to back up my info? Or would it crash it with the first HD?

If it's an eSATA connection then you should just be able to plug it in.

[thunderex]

Originally Posted by TIGGER

Here's a question,my laptop has a port for a 2nd HD,is it possible to install a HD in that port and use it to back up my info? Or would it crash it with the first HD?

You could do that but it's not really the best backup solution. The second hard drive would save you against hardware failure of the first drive but you'd still be issues with many of the other things you're guarding against with backups. Your computer could be stolen or damaged in a way that destroys both drives (submerged, dropped from a very high height, etc). Also, if you computer has some problem not related to the hard drive the backup is just as inaccessible as your primary drive.