Good place to get a Portable Ex. Hard Drive?

daycent

Hi,

I'm looking to get a portable external hard drive. Something sturdy with good transfer speeds etc. etc. 500 GB's I'd imagine is the usual amount. I'm thinking firewire as opposed to USB for faster transfer speeds?? I'm not that well up on my hard drives I'd probably usually go with Pixmania or MemoryC.

Whenever I go and buy something, a thread usually appears here with a better alternative so I thought I might as well ask "the community"

Will be used for photo storage mainly. Any suggestions?

Thanks.

jpb1974

Having being keeping an eye on the Bargain Alerts forum recently - electronics from Amazon.co.uk seem to be very popular now that they ship to Ireland. Worth a look.

I have a few different external hard drives... Seagate, Western Digital and Iomega. I really do like the Seagate... it's noticeably faster than the other two and the backup s/w that came with it works well.

Seemingly one place not to go is Komplett.ie who seem to be in all sorts of disarray at the moment. I bought from them in the past and they were great but they've been taken over and apparently all hell has broken loose there.

artyeva

if it's of any use to you pixmania have a load of clearance stuff on offer today - got a spam-mail from them this morning so you might get a good deal.

i'll leave it to those who know more about these things to advise you on what to buy

although i think e-sata connections are the faster alternative to USB [?]

i got a 500GB external a few weeks ago but it's not what you might call portable. it was on offer for a bit less than €50 i think in PC world.

bullpost

I stay with USB as for me its fast enough and its extremely portable so I can attach it to my laptop or desktop or take it to work . Not everything has firewire.

Paulw

I prefer esata when I can get it. Otherwise, USB2 disks are great. I recently bought some externals from elara.ie

jpb1974

Pixmania seem to be another supplier who are on many people's blacklist.

I've dealt with them before. Some transactions were fine, two others were horrible.

They also used to advertise "If you find it anywhere else cheaper we'll match the price"... so I did and I contacted them... the response... <insert rolling tumbleweed gif here>.

If you do buy from them don't buy into that Pixmania cover crap they try and sell you... it just adds to the cost of the product that should already come with a manufacturer's warranty.

pixbyjohn

http://www.verbatim-europe.co.uk/en_1/product_2-disk-raid-external-hard-drive-2tb_14612.html
I use this and find it suitable for my needs.

daycent

jpb1974 wrote: »

Pixmania seem to be another supplier who are on many people's blacklist.

I've dealt with them before. Some transactions were fine, two others were horrible.

They also used to advertise "If you find it anywhere else cheaper we'll match the price"... so I did and I contacted them... the response... <insert rolling tumbleweed gif here>.

If you do buy from them don't buy into that Pixmania cover crap they try and sell you... it just adds to the cost of the product that should already come with a manufacturer's warranty.

Yeah, I've had mixed experiences with Pixmania, I wouldn't be in a rush to go back to them but they have good prices on hard drives.

pixbyjohn wrote: »

http://www.verbatim-europe.co.uk/en_1/product_2-disk-raid-external-hard-drive-2tb_14612.html
I use this and find it suitable for my needs.

That looks good but I'm looking for something self powered for the moment. Will get something bigger after a while for the desktop.

jpb1974

Might pick up one of these myself -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Expansion-External-Hard-Drive/dp/B002I3BINU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1274880742&sr=1-2

Prices on Elara don't seem to compare so well.

daycent

I just found this on on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-500gb-External-Portable-Drive/dp/B001XM4P1O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1274881155&sr=1-1

I'm not sure how fast it is compared to others??

I'm wondering about connection speeds because I'll be putting all my RAW files on it and editing from lightroom, so I imagine it's important to have something fast?

jpb1974

• 8MB cache buffer
  Smoothly processes each data transfer.
• 5400 rpm speed
  Gives you quick access to data on the hard drive.
• 14 ms average seek time
  For fast read and write times.

Should do a pretty decent job. I have an older model at home and the speeds are pretty decent. This is a newer model so should be sufficient.

jazzyk

Was looking for the same thing myself recently. Cheapest I could find was http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Portable-Michael-Jacksons-Pre-loaded/dp/B0034G60O2 works out about 71 euro. Not really into Michael Jackson but was cheapest 500GB portable I could find ..

daycent

jazzyk wrote: »

Was looking for the same thing myself recently. Cheapest I could find was http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Portable-Michael-Jacksons-Pre-loaded/dp/B0034G60O2 works out about 71 euro. Not really into Michael Jackson but was cheapest 500GB portable I could find ..

The one above is working out at the same price for me. I'll probably go with it, looks like it should do the job.

Saint_Mel

Eason do Seagate 500GB & 1TB cheap enough

http://www.eason.ie/look/7636490013904/1Tb-Seagate-Desktop-External-Hard-Dr-2-

AnCatDubh

if buying for archiving important stuff (whether photos or anything else), then i'd suggest to consider buying a second one while you are at it. Seriously - buy two instead of one. And find a good way to synchronise them. Every hard disk will eventually fail. You can be lucky and it mightn't happen for a long time, or be unlucky and it might happen very soon after you buy it. At least have a second backup. I'm not yet convinced on a single hard disk as a backup medium.

sineadw

AnCatDubh wrote: »

if buying for archiving important stuff (whether photos or anything else), then i'd suggest to consider buying a second one while you are at it. Seriously - buy two instead of one. And find a good way to synchronise them. Every hard disk will eventually fail. You can be lucky and it mightn't happen for a long time, or be unlucky and it might happen very soon after you buy it. At least have a second backup. I'm not yet convinced on a single hard disk as a backup medium.

I've gone through two in a year. Carrying them around and then dropping them from a height might be where I'm going wrong though..

The Iomega ones are actually seagate barracudas by the way. I learned that when my last one fell out of its case after bouncing on a marble floor :rolleyes:

stcstc

lacie do some drives called rugged, they are shock mounted etc

they also have firewire connections too


i have a couple of them for when onsite and they have never let me down

Chorcai

http://www.komplett.ie

^^ On boards so ya can ask questions etc

http://www.misco.ie/

http://www.memoryc.com/

melekalikimaka

from opinions on boards and personal experience i would only reccommend wd hard drives, seagate and maxtor and not nearly as well trusted, too many storied bout them two flopping

artyeva

i had a 500gb maxtor a while back - it died of a sudden yet unexplained death. it's replacement worked ok for a while but then it died too. [with the floor's help mind you] i wouldn't buy them again. plus the power connector jack in the unit itself went all loose after about 2 months of not very much use at all.

TinyExplosions

melekalikimaka wrote: »

from opinions on boards and personal experience i would only reccommend wd hard drives, seagate and maxtor and not nearly as well trusted, too many storied bout them two flopping

And to put the cat amongst the pigeons, I would always go for Seagate as a first preference (the Barracuda's are great drives), with WD second!

Never had a Seagate die on me yet (he says, touching anything wooden he can find!)

Roy Rogers

And I have both a Seagate and a WD inside my PC at the moment and both of them are working beautifully

www.testfreaks.com is a pretty good site for reviews -- it might be worth searching it for the model name/number of any HDDs you're thinking of buying.

Nforce

Reasonably cheap one here, complete with a free movie! :P

500GB and usb powered..

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0034G60O2/

Not a fan of the artwork though

magicbastarder

AnCatDubh wrote: »

And find a good way to synchronise them.

i use ice mirror. does the trick for me.

daycent

daycent wrote: »

I just found this on on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-500gb-External-Portable-Drive/dp/B001XM4P1O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1274881155&sr=1-1

I'm not sure how fast it is compared to others??

I'm wondering about connection speeds because I'll be putting all my RAW files on it and editing from lightroom, so I imagine it's important to have something fast?

jpb1974 wrote: »

• 8MB cache buffer
  Smoothly processes each data transfer.
• 5400 rpm speed
  Gives you quick access to data on the hard drive.
• 14 ms average seek time
  For fast read and write times.

Should do a pretty decent job. I have an older model at home and the speeds are pretty decent. This is a newer model so should be sufficient.

I actually went with this one in the end. I ordered it two days ago and it's here already! And that was with the free delivery option which is supposed to be longer than normal delivery, and is supposed to take 4-5 days.

Anything I've ordered off Amazon has arrived a lot quicker than expected, I would definitely recommend

Kbeg3

I'm looking at getting one of these, any one have any opinions?

sunny2004

Kbeg3 wrote: »

I'm looking at getting one of these, any one have any opinions?

I have one of these, good little item, sharp design and edges, looks the part but the plastic marks easily, the blue light looks cool, I find it good... at that price I would suggest buying it..

enda1

Kbeg3 wrote: »

I'm looking at getting one of these, any one have any opinions?

If you are buying the drive for portability, then I'd stay away from something with such sharp edges.

It will wreck everything its packed with.

Kbeg3

Ended up getting a Lacie Starck from Sheldon photographic. Seems good, it's heavy but I don't plan on bringing it around with me so it doesn't matter.

af_thefragile

I got a Western Digital hard drive from PC world. Its 500GB for like 70eur or something and its pretty small.

I heard Western Digital hard drives are pretty reliable and won't crash much. But if you wanna go for super fast and super reliable hard drives then get a solid state hard drive. Though they have relatively small storage capacity and are fairly expensive.

challengemaster

af_thefragile wrote: »

I got a Western Digital hard drive from PC world. Its 500GB for like 70eur or something and its pretty small.

I heard Western Digital hard drives are pretty reliable and won't crash much. But if you wanna go for super fast and super reliable hard drives then get a solid state hard drive. Though they have relatively small storage capacity and are fairly expensive.

I have yet to see a SSD external powered by a USB connection