Getting an External Harddrive
 

I'm looking for a new external hard drive for my computer that has an excellent cost to benefit ratio and is assured to last. I've heard lots of stories from people that have lost over 100 gb of data because their hard drives crashed after only a few months of usage. My price limit is about 200 dollars, but I'm really hoping to spend 150 dollars or less. Please recommend any drives that you think are good to use and how long you've used them so far, so I can get a gauge of how reliable they are. Thanks for the help!

Well I bought a "lesser known" brand, a 160GB Acomdata. It's been running 24/7 for about 2 years now, no problems.

Well unless you just would not touch internal hdds then I'd get the following:
- Seagate 320GB SATA2 HDD - $94.99
- AMS Venus DS3 SATA to USB2.0 external enclosure - $49.99 (I usually don't recommend buying cheap enclosures but you can find cheaper external enclosure if need be.)

The seagate drive you posted is an internal drive though. If you use it in an enclosure does that mean it can function as an external hard drive? I want to be able to bring the hard drive from home to work.

Yes, putting an internal drive into an external enclosure is turning the internal drive into an external drive, in essence.

Wow I did not know that, the internal drives I looks at generally had better reviews but I wanted something portable. Knowing about external enclosures is a definite plus to finding a new drive. Thanks for the info.

I'm in dire need of an external HD as well, to back up the enormous amount of crap that's clogging up my laptop.

Is it generally better to buy an internal HD? I mean, do they have better track records as far as crashing goes? I know that our PC's Seagate has been running like a dream since we put it in about a year and a half ago, but it seems sometimes that I'm just getting lucky. I would really hate to lose some of the stuff I'll be storing on this extra HD.

Internal Drives are cheaper. I mean, $94 for a 320GB HDD? whereas an external 320GB off the shelf is like $200 more.

Well from looking around various places on the internet, I've found plenty of 320GB External HDs for around $99-110. However, if the quality of those drives is in question (I mean, the one I was seriously considering was this one: Seagate FreeAgent 320GB) then I would much rather buy an internal and an enclosure.

It all really depends on how you want to spend your money. If it were me, since I'm tired of messing with enclosures and such myself, I'd stick with that Seagate FreeAgent. But again, that's me.

This might tickle your fancy

I have the 60 GB model of this and it doesn't require any extra power sources from outside unless the thing you're plugging it into is that weak. It's been pretty reliable for me so far. I haven't had any problems with it at all so far.

I laugh at myself as I got the same type as Chao, but 40 gigs for the same price. Had no problems with mine such far.