320gb External Hard Drive for 59.99e -Good deal?

Get In There

Sorry if this is not a deal by any means but I would like to get your views as to wether this is a good deal or not as I think I would like to buy extra memory for films, photos, backup etc...

http://aldi.ie/ie/html/offers/58_8838.htm

S.I.R

i wouldn't pish on most of aldi's stuff - even if it was on fire...

forbairt

Does it need to be portable and self powered ?

If not I ended up getting one of these

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=420463

The 320GB drive though is self powered ... and portable
Medion are an okish brand as well (can't remember if they use WD harddrives in their products)

320GBs these days strikes me as on the small side especially if you're storing films / photos

Most photo shots I take these days are 3 to 5 mbs in size each so you're very quickly clocking up the GBs

That said I've a WD Passport 120GB which is great for moving stuff around with and fits nicely into laptop bag.

bazwaldo

320GB is as big as I've seen for a USB powered disk. And €60 is a great price too. However I can't comment on whether medion or whoevers disk it is rebranded is a good make or not.

They usually have 3yr warranty on this type of thing so I would recommend it.

forbairt

bazwaldo wrote: »

320GB is as big as I've seen for a USB powered disk. And €60 is a great price too. However I can't comment on whether medion or whoevers disk it is rebranded is a good make or not.

They usually have 3yr warranty on this type of thing so I would recommend it.

Actually 500GBs is I think the current max on them
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=389021

Ogham

You could get this 500GB Toshiba hard drive from Amazon for just a few euro more.

Amalgam

The Medion brand will have no relation to the Hard Drive inside..

Another brand, Lacie for instance, use the likes of Toshiba and\or Seagate, it could be any manufacturer.

---

Ogham wrote: »

You could get this 500GB Toshiba hard drive from Amazon for just a few euro more.

Ogham, I noticed they're being touted heavily, Elara or Komplett, can't remember which, are doing the 1TB version, at the moment, for under 100 euro. I've never personally had a problem with Toshiba, don't get me started about Maxtor though.

bazwaldo

Ogham wrote: »

You could get this 500GB Toshiba hard drive from Amazon for just a few euro more.

Yeah but its not USB powered and its 10 times the size (in dimensions).

Daemonic

Ogham wrote: »

You could get this 500GB Toshiba hard drive from Amazon for just a few euro more.

I had one of these. The power supply weighed a ton and the drive died taking all my files with it. Luckily it was only a backup drive.
Have one of the WD Passport drives now and can't fault it.

TJM

Aldi (Medion) computer products are generally very good quality. I'm typing this on a Medion desktop in fact. As the other posters have said, this is a very good deal for a portable high capacity drive not needing a separate power supply. The real question is whether you need a larger drive complete with power brick that will live in one place.

Africa

Medion is a good brand - i bought my PC there on a recommendation of them making good technology, and two years later i still have it. And its not like i use it for only word and email - im a computer programmer.

This is a great deal, quite a steal...

Capt'n Midnight

http://aldi.ie/ie/html/offers/58_8838.htm
320 GB, 2.5", 8MB cache and a USB 2.0 connector, no power adaptor required.

it won't be as fast as a 3.5" drive but are handy for backing up files , and if you have a PC that will boot up from USB and a non-windows OS you can probably use it as a live drive too

Richard Dower

Personallyi don't think it is...for a few reasons. It's only 8MB buffer and you'll find other 2.5" brands with 16MB, a more important point is spindle speed...i'll bet money it's 5.400 RPM....you should be looking for 7,200 RPM.

Fair enough it's 2.5" and much smaller then the 3.5"...but buffer and speed are important, at least for me.

SickBoy

Richard Dower wrote: »

Personallyi don't think it is...for a few reasons. It's only 8MB buffer and you'll find other 2.5" brands with 16MB, a more important point is spindle speed...i'll bet money it's 5.400 RPM....you should be looking for 7,200 RPM.

Fair enough it's 2.5" and much smaller then the 3.5"...but buffer and speed are important, at least for me.

From my experience with USB drives cache size and RPM are redundant because you are limited by the bus speed of the USB 2 interface.
Actually you should avoid 7200rpm drives on self powered 2.5" USB drives as they require more power and you are more likely to see errors when transferring data to the drive.

ecomac

320GB for 2.5 inch hard disk is a very reasonable size. I didn't see biger 2.5 disk than 500GB and I saw already 2TB 3.5 inch drives.

Amalgam

I've read it's a 5,400 RPM drive, an english forum were discussing it, I passed bookmarking the link, though as SickBoy pointed out, with the nature of the connection, it doesn't matter. 7,200 RPM drives create a fair bit of heat, not ideal for an enclosed space.

ecomac

A little bit more heat and a little bit more noise as well. If you do care about speed, you should look for external hdd with usb (for convenience) and with eSATA (for speed).

dingding

ANyone know if the aldi drive is SATA, I might buy it and use the hard disk somewhere else.

ecomac

Most of newest hdd enclosures is SATA, so for 99% that one is SATA as well. But can't to guarante.

baloonatic

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=420463

About €90 all in i think

Anybody know anything about this one? Is the brand any good? Any downsides?

ecomac

WD (Western Digital) is quite good brand. I had one some years ago. It was slightly louder than average hd, but very fast. 87 Euro for 1TB (1000MB) is very reasonable price. And you have 24 months warranty.

caspermccormack

I use a 400gb WD myself and have no bother with it, but my Da has the Aldi one 320 gb and it works every bit as good. I use mine for playing movies through the playstation3. And my laptop is Medion and again no troubles. I for one would recommend.

Canonfan

dingding wrote: »

ANyone know if the aldi drive is SATA, I might buy it and use the hard disk somewhere else.

Can someone help on this please? I need a SATA hard disk for my laptop.

Many thanks.

Cionn

Did anyone get one of these i tried two stores but no joy. Same old story small numbers of the items you want. There were loads of flower baskets and other gardening items.

Maybe next year.

chavezychavez

Got one yesterday evening in Aldi Listowel at 6pm. Thought they'd be sold out but the casier took one out of a large box, that had another 4 in there.

Haven't really done much with it except reformat to NTFS. One thing to note, there are 2 USB connections on the lead, the extra being for Aux power to the harddrive in case the I/O USB connection isn't sending enough power.

Jonathan

baloonatic wrote: »

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=420463

About €90 all in i think

Anybody know anything about this one? Is the brand any good? Any downsides?

About €100 all in.

I have recently recently bought one of these.

I've had no problems with it, and the built in power management is nice (drive spins down when not in use).