View Full Version : External Hard Drives
Following the epic failure of my Seagate Barracuda last week, coupled with my sheer stupidy for not backing up my 10k of photographs on there, I'm now looking for an external ~500GB hard drive to back stuff up on. I don't need any fancy backing up software as I favour the copy/paste method and it's only photos and music I'll want to back up anyway.
What would people recommend? My budget isn't endless, so I'm looking for an economical solution.
I've found the following in the £60-£70 price bracket, but I've no idea what I'm looking for really. They all have good reviews from buyers:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149702
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149457
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149357
Any advice/suggestions?
leowyatt
04-01-2009, 23:49
I bought an Iomega 500Gb drive for £49.99 early last year and it's been great.
Since having loads of problems with them in the past I avoid Iomega stuff like the plague. I'm a big fan of Buffalo stuff so out of the three that's what I'd go for.
Buffalo stuff seems a reasonable choice to me too. Not sure about Iomega as I've tended to steer away since the whole Zip/Jaz mess.
Personally, I'd also suggest the option of getting an enclosure and drive seperately. The cost is a little higher, but you get more flexibility, and the option to yank the drive out and plug it into a system directly if it all goes **** up (you can of course do this with many of the external drives, but you may have to be a little more destructive - which might risk damaging the drive).
Streeteh
05-01-2009, 00:14
I too would recommend a 'build it yourself' external. Seagates have been failing a lot recently from what i've seen, i personally recommend Samsung, incredibly quiet, reasonably fast, cheap and i've not yet had one (out of two) fail on me *touch wood*
leowyatt
05-01-2009, 00:23
Can't actually remember the make of drive in the enclosure I think it's samsung but could be wrong.
I too would trust Samsungs in the past, but I've heard a few stories that their failure right might also be on the up.
Personally, for backup purposes I'd give the Western Digital Green Power drives serious consideration - not for the claimed Green credentials (which, to put things into perspective is 5-10W at most), but because the lower spindle speed might help with the lifespan of the drive.
A Place of Light
05-01-2009, 00:52
I'd go with an internal drive and an enclosure, mainly because you tend to get longer warranties on internal drives (because the manufacturer expects them to be bolted into a case and left alone). External solutions are portable so the manufacturer expects them to be bumped around more, so they typically give shorter warranties with them.
There are exceptions however, just don't think it's anything resembling a difficult job to buy an enclosure and fit a drive. It's about one grade less complex than wiring a plug.
Thanks for the replies so far.
Confusion time. What's the difference between this enclosure thing and just buying another hard drive to shove into my case as a slave?
leowyatt
05-01-2009, 17:59
you can take the HD with you in the enclosure :D that is it.
LeperousDust
05-01-2009, 18:02
Yeah there isn't one, well apart from when (i mean if ;)) your computer catches fire the external drive might be safe :D
NokkonWud
05-01-2009, 18:02
Go for build it yourself Samsung. Not had a problem with any Samsung HDD's ever.
Stay away from Iomega, Western Digital and Maxtor.
You are not solely reliant on a single SATA controller. They don't fail often but having your main and backup drive in the same box, on the same controller with the same PSU is something I'd advise against.
So would I buy a cradle thing with a USB port and then just stick a regular hard drive into it?
NokkonWud
05-01-2009, 18:16
Yep. :). You'd need a power socket too.
Yep. :). You'd need a power socket too.
Unless you use a lappy HDD.
Or would I get one of these (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143275)? I think that's what Paul was advising against though.
So would I buy a cradle thing with a USB port and then just stick a regular hard drive into it?
That's what I'd do. My preference is for Icybox caddies. They're built well and despite having a couple knocking about (literally) in my laptop bag they've never given me any grief. I've just ordered myself one of these (http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/IcyBox-IB-310StU-Compact-Aluminium-Plastic-35-Enclosure-for-SATA-HDD-Black-Silver) because I need a bit more storage.
Couple that with a Samsung HD and you're ready to rock.
Or would I get one of these (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143275)? I think that's what Paul was advising against though.
It would be about a tenner more to get the external enclosure and in my opinion that's money well spent.
You're unlikely to have a problem so bad that your primary and backup internal HD go tits up but for the sake of a tenner I wouldn't take that chance.
So... maybe this (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146252) and possibly this? (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149272). They don't sell Icybox on Ebuyer Burble and I couldn't find a 500GB SATA on the website you posted.
Matblack
05-01-2009, 18:26
What happened to those cool units you could just slot a bare HD into almost like an 8 track cartridge and quickly swap it out for another one?
MB
I think that's what this is. I saw Daz using it on Sunday and he just plugged the HDD in and away he went.
Yes to both :)
Cool :D My darling Mother also desperately needs to back up all the crap on her computer and has the same motherboard as me, so I'll get them one of these too. She has thousands of old photos and documents scanned in to do with the family tree as well as my Dad's accounts.
Matblack
05-01-2009, 18:30
One of these
http://www.maplin.co.uk/images/300/a83hq_3.jpg
MB
You mean these (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149269) things MB? They're fantastic things, I use them a lot at work but personally I wouldn't use them for long term data storage. I much prefer the idea of the HD being inside a box.
These things definitely have their uses though, I'm often grabbing stuff off spare HD's at work so I've got one of these things that does 2.5" & 3.5" SATA drives and connects by USB2 or eSata. Nice.
Could this combination be used on a MAC? Dad's asking
Yep but moving the drive between a PC and Mac can be problematic. If you are thinking about having 1 on the Mac and 1 on the PC then it's all good.
Yeah I thought that might be the case so I'd already told him he'd need separate ones. All ordered now. Thanks a lot :D
Thanks to this thread I've just gone and ordered:
1 x ICY-IB390B Icy Box 3.5" Black Aluminium SATA Enclosure - USB and eSATA
@ GBP 22.00 each (Ex Vat)
1 x SAM-HD502I Samsung Spin Point F1 SATAII NCQ 500GB 16Mb Cache Hard Drive <9.0ms 7200rpm - OEM
@ GBP 36.99 each (Ex Vat)
Coming on these forums keeps costing me money! :)
My hard drive is out of stock :angry:
Where did you order yours from?
Get a Samsung F1 xxx GB and an Akasa Integral. Let Eeyore show you the way :) The enclosure is USB 2 and eSATA. The latter for super dooper speeds. I run five of them :D
http://kainzy.org/DSCF0859.JPG
^^^ link to the products that i need for that set up please?
My hard drive is out of stock :angry:
Where did you order yours from?
http://www.novatech.co.uk/
Cheers :) Extra tenner, but I cba to wait until it comes into stock again.
Aye, free delivery though :)
Yep. Always a bonus :) Lots of computer places are doing it these day http://www.boat-drinks.co.uk/images/icons/icon14.gif
^^^ link to the products that i need for that set up please?
One of these (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-005-AK&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=&name=Akasa%20Integral%20P2%20eSATA/USB%202.0%203.5%22%20Hard%20Drive%20Enclosure%20-%20Blue) (out of stock) buggers, and any SATA hard disk. I used to by Western Digital MyBooks but they're fat buggers. Over Xmas I removed the hard disks from them and just shoved them into spare akasa enclosures.
Cheers :) Extra tenner, but I cba to wait until it comes into stock again.
3% on Quidco too :)
3% on Quidco too :)
Yep, got that as well. So just under a fiver more expensive ;D
Received my hdd and caddy this morning and just have a quick question. The caddy came with an eSATA connection. Will this be faster than USB2? I'm assuming that if the system all goes tits up I can still use the drive on USB2 on another computer?
leowyatt
09-01-2009, 10:25
i would think so, but don't quote me on that :o
Yes, and yes.
eSATA is like plugging the hard drive in to your motherboard. USB2 is way (around 5 times) slower by comparison. If you've got eSATA ports, definitely use them.
You'll also be pleased to know that whichever port you use (USB1/2/3, Firewire400/800, eSATA) makes no difference to how the data is stored, so feel free to swap and change as you choose. Just don't connect more than one port on the caddy at the same time. :)
Cheers :) It's come with an eSATA port too, so I'll fit it and connect it all up. Installed SyncToy the other day.
Right, problem time. When connected via the eSATA cable, the system doesn't acknowledge the hdd. When connected via USB, it recognises and says it's installed, but I can't see it when I go into my computer.
I've had a look on the Samsung webby and there's something about some motherboards not supporting 3GB/s and having to download a patch which converts the hdd to 1.5GB/s. However, I've absolutely no idea whether this applied to my motherboard or not. I am pretty sure my old SATA hdd had a jumper on it which limited it to 1.5GB/s, but I think that was just on it when it arrived.
My motherboard is a MSI MS-7309 (K9N6SGM-V). Can't find anything on whether it supports 1.5GB/s or 3GB/s. I'm completely lost :(
Please help?!???!?!???
Had a look on the MSI site and it says "Transfer rate is up to 300MB/s" - does that mean that it should support 3MB/s??? I really am confused.
There's also something here (http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/faqView.do?b2b_bbs_msg_id=131) on the Samsung site relating to my hdd (the HD502IJ) and it tells you to make a boot CD etc., but as it's not my primary master then I'm not sure whether I should be downloading this patch. Don't want to screw up my bios.
The 1.5GB/s or 3GB/s thing they're suggesting sounds like nonsense in this instance - unless Samsung haven't followed the standards. All drives should be capable of operating at the slower speed out of the box. I suppose they might be referring to forcing the drive to operate at 1.5GB/s only, in which case fair enough.
I had a similar problem with my Akasa Integral caddy and Samsung HD501LJ, and it came down to a bad power cable which I had to RMA. Check all the internal cables are firmly in place and the drive actually spins up.
I had to initialise and format my hard drive before Windows would recognise it.
In Vista:
Click on the Start Button and right click on Computer and select Manage.
Expand the Storage section and select Disk Management.
LeperousDust
09-01-2009, 16:42
Yeah just sounds like you might not have formatted it to be fair?
I had to initialise and format my hard drive before Windows would recognise it.
In Vista:
Click on the Start Button and right click on Computer and select Manage.
Expand the Storage section and select Disk Management.
Yeah just sounds like you might not have formatted it to be fair?
Ditto the above, just received my new hdd and enclosures and had to initialize then format it before I use it. Forgot how long it takes to format a 1TB disk :(
That could account for USB but not eSATA. An unformatted hard disk connected via eSATA should still show up in the BIOS, and in Windows.
Forgot how long it takes to format a 1TB disk :(
That's what the 'Quick Format' option is for. :p
Some of the bigger retail external drives actually malfunction if you don't select that option. Never had that happen with a caddy though (but it could).
Forgot to mention that if I connect it via eSATA and start it up (it spins up etc. fine), it freezes my computer. That's what lead me to think it might be the problem I referred to earlier about patching the bios.
Oh, if I connect it via USB and do the disk management think it comes up as "unknown", says it's 476GB and say it's not initialised. It's the only 500GB drive I have in there, so will try and initialise it.
Me again. It now says it's online, but as there are no partitions, I can't see how I can format it as it's still not visible in My Computer. Should I create a partition and then format that? Also, it's only saying 476GB. How can I get the full 500GB or is that not possible?
That's just marketing people being picky with their numbers (they round a kilobyte to 1000 bytes, whereas it's actually 1024 - so by the time you scale up to 500GB those 24 bytes per kilobyte add up to 25GB!). 476GB is the actual usable size.
Right click the drive, create partition, and it will take you through everything else from there (formatting, drive letter etc) :)
That's just marketing people being picky with their numbers (they count 1000 bytes as a kilobyte, whereas it's actually 1024 - so by the time you scale up to 500GB those 24 bytes per kilobyte add up to 25GB!). 476GB is the actual usable size.
Right click the drive, create partition, and it will take you through everything else from there (formatting, drive letter etc) :)
Magic. I now have a K Drive :D Thank you
Look in your bin cupboard when you get home btw ;)
Right, what OS are you on lostkat? A hard disks quoted capacity will always be lower when the OS see's it so that 476GB is normal.
My 5x eSATA externals always freeze my PC's also for a couple of seconds, and that is quite normal, so don't worry too much.
If you're on XP or Vista, you need to get into Computer Management/Storage/Disk Management. Arf, nevermind :D
Ah bugger, it now says "K Drive is not accessible. The parameter is incorrect"
I'm on XP
It froze for about 5 minutes until I gave up and re-booted. I've reconnected it via USB but obviously want to get the eSATA working
Is it still formatting? Disk management will tell you (and give you a progress percentage) :)
Ahhhhh! *BLONDE* I thought it'd done it, but my window wasn't big enough to see the "formatting" status at the bottom. It's 5% done. I'll leave it to do its business. I didn't tick quick format as I usually do because I thought it was best to do it properly. Not sure what the difference is.
I'm sorry for all the silly questions. I know just about enough to build a computer and set it up, but any problems and I'm completely lost. It's all a learning curve still. At least my Mum's computer is the same motherboard and OS so I'll know what to do. My Dad's Mac... well... he's on his own with that :p
Disk Utility will take care of things on the Mac. It's probably easier actually.
Not sure what's going on with eSATA. Sounds like you may well have to use the Samsung firmware trick.
A full format creates the file system and then performs a surface scan (or maybe the other way around), quick format just creates the file system and skips the scan. Usually a good idea to do a full one first time round and leave it after that - if a problem with the drive develops later you'd be using other tools to find out what, format's useless for it! :)
Mac stuff is easy, Kate. Go to Applications / Utilities then fire up Disk Utility. Feel free to give me a shout if you get stuck.
Right all formatted and fully accessible on USB2.0, but still hangs on eSATA so I'm going to try this BIOS fix thingy. Fingers crossed!
BIOS patch didn't work. System will not boot when the hard drive is connected via eSATA and hangs if I connect it after I've booted it. This is really annoying.
Can anyone help??? :(
Hmm any idea what motherboard you have? My 3 machines hang for a good few seconds when I switch on my eSata externals as mentioned but just for 5seconds at the most.
It's a MSI MS-7309 (K9N6SGM-V). I updated to all the latest drivers etc. when I did the reinstall last wk.
BIOS patch didn't work. System will not boot when the hard drive is connected via eSATA and hangs if I connect it after I've booted it. This is really annoying.
Can anyone help??? :(
I have the same problem with a USB2 one........but my pc is being funny in all kinds of ways (6 years old, 2 years since last format) and it's due to be retired...
Pumpkinstew
12-01-2009, 19:09
I'm guessing the e-sata plug you're using simply connects to a SATA plug on the mobo?
Effectively you're hotplugging the drive in this way and not all chipsets support this function. This might cause the system lock you describe if you plug it in while the computer is on. Does your mobo support SATA hotplugging/hotswapping.
I'm not sure why it would cause the system to hang on boot, as it should recognise the drive in JBOD configuration even if you don't have a raid controller. I have an external USB drive and it causes the box to lock at boot (Xp Sp2) even though the boot sequence doesn't list USB boot above HDD. Edit: this is an Asus board with Via chipset.
I know a fresh install requires SATA drivers on a floppy since the XP install disc won't pick them up. Is your boot disc PATA or SATA?
That's a fair point actually, but I don't think it's an issue here.
My suggestion - open up the case and plug the drive straight into the motherboard to see if it works like that (not a permanent solution - just a test).
I'm a bit baffled about this too. The perma lock-ups are what is bugging me. It is worth doing what Mark suggested and hooking the drive direct to the mobo just to see if any issues are present there.
vBulletin® v3.7.4, Copyright ©2000-2025, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.