mrsronweasley | (no subject)

Current Mood: confused

(no subject)

I have spent the past hour reading external hard drive reviews on Amazon and a few other places, and I've got it all coming out of my EARS and now I'm even more paranoid about which one to buy, and ACK.

So, I come to you, friends' list, for help:

Any recommendations?

I really need to buy one SOON, or I will kill my computer. This would be bad. Buying an external hard drive would be preferable to computer demise.

So far, I've looked at Seagate, Maxtor and SimpleTech SimpleDrive. And the reviews are no help, because they vary, and I don't know who to trust. It's all kind of annoying - mostly because I don't know that much about computer technology, and also have really bad luck with it. So, I'm ULTRA-paranoid.

So...help? Seriously, any help would be appreciated.

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I have a 160GB Maxtor external HD from when I used to have a laptop, and have never had any problems with it. It comes with this automatic backup software called Retrospect or something that literally zooooooooms everything you want onto the disk at the touch of a button. And it seems pretty robust, as I've dropped mine a few times and haven't broken it yet

I went with the Maxtor. It'll all be on your head! *g* Just kidding. Hopefully it should be fine. Yeah? Yeah. We'll see. :D Thank you!

As far as I know, Samsung HDs are considered to be most reliable. Also, not even I managed to kill one of those. :)

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I went with the Maxtor, but if that craps out- hey, you never know! *g* I'm so SCARED of ruining them somehow. Me and technology have a deep love-hate relationship. I love it, it hates me. *weeps*

My office worker has a SimpleTech (80 GB) one, that she bought from newegg.com, that she swears by, and has been very reliable. That's about the extent of my knowledge about external hard drives! Sorry! *g*

Ohh, yeah, I've looked at those. I ended up going with the Maxtor, but I was very tempted by the Simple Tech. I think the thing that put me off was more than one person complaining that it wasn't working with their Dell laptops...which is what I have. So I figured, better safe than sorry? :P

I'm really fond of my Kingsley - he's a 250 gig drive from a label called "LaCie". This is the one I've got.

I got it back when I was working at the mountain - it's lasted me well over a year - and I've never had any problems at all with it. In addition, I can tell you that these are pretty indestructible, because it was the favourite brand with the folks up there - they never had any connection problems, no matter how enormous chunks of data we were transporting between computers. (Nothing to do, see, we all blatantly defied copyright laws and downloaded TV shows and movies en masse to entertain ourselves, and then we spread those around by writing them to everybody's external hard drives)

So, yeah, I would definitely recommend this label.

Ohhh, yeah, I looked at those. I read, though, that they weren't compatible with Windows? Or something like that? Decided not to take the chance, but it was my second choice. Thank you for the input! I seriously appreciate all the comments people have left. Finding this shit is hard, you know?

Not compatible with Windows???? Wha???

Yeah, people were having a lot of trouble with that. I dunno. I decided to steer clear, just like I steered clear of the ones that were having trouble being compatible with new Dells. *g* WEIRD, right?

Well, it's just that I've connected mine to about 30 computers so far, and I've yet to discover a computer that it won't work with... And that includes Apple computers!

Weird, indeed...

GOD, that's weird! Maybe those people were totally computer inept? Damn. Oh, well... *sigh*

My sympathies. When my original Maxtor 250GB drive died at just over a year old (my fault because I didn't know any better and kept it powered on 24/7 instead of turning it off when not in use), I shopped around and it seemed like there were pretty much equal numbers of reported problems with virtually everything I looked at.

I ended up with another Maxtor, 300GB this time, and it's been great. I just turn it off except when I'm actually reading from it or writing to it, so it doesn't overheat and doesn't burn out the drive.

Hey, I am taking that into consideration - because I just ordered a Maxtor. *g* Note to self: turn off. But yay, thank you! Maxtor got the most mentions, and it seemed a good deal. (I got the 200GB one.) Thank you! :D

Oh I know how you feel. I asked the same questions when I got mine.

Here's all I can tell you. I know Maxtor is reliable stuff. I bought a 250gb simpletech simpledrive. why? becuause it had decent reviews, seemed simple and was on sale at circuit city for $99.00 after rebates. Price was really the deciding factor for me.

The only trouble I have had with it was that it let me load all my files from my desktop to it then stopped talking to my desktop. I am not computer savy enought to figure out why except I've been told it is prolly becuz the size of the hard drive 250gb, is more than my older processor could deal with. (It's almost 3 years old) But I can hook it up to my newer laptop (less than 2 years)and have had absolutely no issues at all. It's simple and easy and has back up software you can use if you want. But I'v been happy just copying the folders I want over to it.

Good luck finding one.

Yeah, I went with the Maxtor. We'll see! I'll blame you all if it doesn't work for whatever reason. *g*

Thank you!

I don't have any external ones, but I've had good luck with Seagate drives...

They were the most costly, so I, uh...went the cheaper route. *g* Thank you, anyway, though!

I've been tempted to get one of these (http://lab.mimoco.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=17&HS=1), but I can't even tell if they're big enough, let alone reliable or a good deal.

Okay, that's kind of really adorable. I'd get it, only it's way, way too small for what I need. I got a 200GB external hard drives. (I have a little flash, but that's more pictures and word documents, it's less than a gig...) I need a place to store all my Callum/Manic Street Preachers media. There's a LOT. And my computer is SO SLOW because of it.

My *reliable* one that's been running for a year is a 100 gb Maxtor! Testify!

(Western Digital is the evil evil one that just died. Stay far far away.)

Awesome! Because I got a Maxtor, in the end. And it's being shipped today, and I'm stupidly excited and can't wait. *waits*

Thank you!

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