Topic Title

Good morning.

Does anyone have any recommendations for an external hard drive? I'm guessing the bigger the better, eh?
Thanks,

Stephen

I've had very good luck with both Western Digital and Seagate. With Terrabyte drives under $100 smackers now you can't afford not to go with the biggest that you can afford.

Hi Stephen,

I would buy a SATA hard drive and an external enclosure, and just assemble it yourself. You can choose an enclosure that has just USB, or if you have FireWire and/or eSATA on you computer, you can get those as well. Doing this is quite easy -- 2 plugs and about 6-8 screws and you're done.

The biggest advantage is you'll get the 3 year warranty on the drive (if that is the warranty for it) instead of the 1 year warranty on a "pre-made" unit.

You can get 1TB drives for as low as $65, 1.5TB for $90, and 2TB for $150:



External enclosures are $15 and up to ~$50 or more:



I like the aluminum units, and I have used one very similar to this one:

I have bought 3 of the Western Digital "Passport" 500 GB drives. They are about the size of a man's wallet. I like them because I plug one into a USB cable at my office, have the Second Copy backup software that I use make automatic backups through the day onto the Passport, unplug it at the end of a day, and throw it in my briefcase to take home. I find the upload and download speed for the Passport to be as fast as a built-in hard drive.

I purchased each drive at Costco for $69. They regularly sell for between $89 and $99 through Newegg and others.

Thanks everyone for the input. I'm toying with Neil's suggestion about building the unit as the way to go.

Stephen

I've built my own too ... very painless, though you will need to check prices to verify that once built they're roughly the same cost as the pre-built ones.

Also, watch out for the enclosure - some are pretty cheap and fall apart fairly quickly. Spend a few extra bucks on a quality enclosure.