Looking for mega stoarge that's reliable and not terribly expensive.
Share with me, oh wise ones. What is the most "grassroots" external hard drive?
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April 4, 2010 1:40 p.m. mk2mer New Reader
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April 4, 2010 2:03 p.m. EvanB HalfDork
I have a FantomDrive 1TB from NewEgg. I paid around $100 for it in August and it has always worked fine for me.
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April 4, 2010 2:25 p.m. VanillaSky Reader
Do you have an e-SATA port on your computer? Even if you don't, it's something you should look for because we're not far from the point where everything will have one. It shouldn't cost you a whole lot more, and it's a MUCH faster link to your computer than USB.
Is this something you just want to be able to throw all of your data on for backup, or is it something that you need for mission-critical reliability?
BTW, the most grassroots external harddrive has to be mine. I bought a $6 case for laptop PATA harddrives and I use any one of my random 20 gig laptop drives that I got for gratis. I have 3 or 4 of them that I trade out of the case. One drive is music, one is stuff I want to keep from old computers but don't want taking up space on my laptop. The other is random junk. If you have a spare drive laying around, think about just tossing it into a case.
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April 4, 2010 2:30 p.m. zipty842 Reader
I just use the ends of the cases the connectors are on and the actual housings are put away unless I actually need to take a drive somewhere. One for SATA, one for desktop PATA and one for laptop PATA.
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April 4, 2010 7:21 p.m. mk2mer New Reader
VanillaSky wrote:
Do you have an e-SATA port on your computer?
I don't know. Will look into that.
VanillaSky wrote:
Is this something you just want to be able to throw all of your data on for backup, or is it something that you need for mission-critical reliability?
Just need to free up some room on my desktop hdd. Mainly needed for archival purposes
VanillaSky wrote: If you have a spare drive laying around, think about just tossing it into a case.
I do have some spares sitting here and there. I'll collect them and put them in cases! Never thought of that. That's why I come HERE for the info.
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April 4, 2010 7:23 p.m. mk2mer New Reader
EvanB wrote:
I have a FantomDrive 1TB from NewEgg. I paid around $100 for it in August and it has always worked fine for me.
1 TB for $100! Amazing how cheap this stuff is getting. I've also been told that the Samsungs are pretty good. Time to research.
Thanks for the input!
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April 4, 2010 7:30 p.m. keethrax Reader
I use:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182197
one of these, and plug in whatever spare drives (full sized of laptop) I have lying around.
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April 5, 2010 10:32 a.m. turboswede SuperDork
I wouldn't rely on it for a sole backup solution.
I would combine the large drive with a service like Mozy and/or burning the data to DVD-R's. I've gotten lucky that of the large drives I've bought, that only 1 has failed so far, but I buy them in pairs and mirror the data between the two. Also had a few laptop drives fail, but I'd been pretty good at backing up the data to our home server, so the inconvenience was pretty minor.
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April 5, 2010 2:54 p.m. pinchvalve SuperDork
I work from home and run redundant external drives, a combination or DiskGo by Edge and Western Digital. So far, no issues.
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April 5, 2010 6:39 p.m. JeepinMatt HalfDork
I've got two SeaGate 500 MB hard drives that I use to back up my stuff. Still way more space than I need. I'm up for a new computer in the next month of so, probably an HP desktop this time. Huge hard drives cost nothing these days, but I still plan on backing everything up
