External Hard Disk Drives

[john259]

I'd appreciate any advice regarding the purchase of an external hard disk, for use to increase disk space (i.e. not as a backup). It would be used for music files and other files not used very often, so USB2 should be fast enough I think. My main concern is reliability as there seem to be an alarming number of reports of failures of these devices. I'm currently thinking about a Western Digital My Book Essential 320GB - any good?

John

 

[bird_d00]

Western Digital are a good brand, if a little overpriced, Freecom are another brand to consider. They should be reliable if not mistreated, most problems with external drives relate to the lack of protection they have compared to an internal drive. Bear in mind that if (say) the cat trips over the connecting cable and disrupts the data this can totally *!$@ up your drive !

I would question why you would buy an external hard disk if not for backup purposes. An internal hard disk would be both cheaper and faster. Not difficult to fit - just make sure that there is only one jumper fitted, and it is set to slave drive. Other than that it's just a question of wielding a screwdriver.


Dave Bird

 

[bhumpf]

Freecom experience

I have been using a Freecom Classic 80 GB External hard drive for three years now and have never had a problem. Bought from the UK PCWorld store (£59.99 on offer) I regard it as one of the better purchasing decisions I have made.

I use it mainly for my system backup but also for other types of storage on an ad hoc basis, and as I say never had any sort of problem.

Obviously access times are slower, but not that much slower. I don't think it would be a problem. I have on occasion used the drive to store my music and picture files and seen no problem in playing these files from the external drive.

I thought I would give this positive response because all to often only the bad news about products surfaces.

regards

Bhumpf

 

[john259]

Thanks guyz. Reading the reviews again, Freecom do seem to get less reports of failures. I'm still exploring all the bewildering range of options!

John

 

[johnwhelan]

Thanks guyz. Reading the reviews again, Freecom do seem to get less reports of failures. I'm still exploring all the bewildering range of options!

John

In general internal hard drives are cheaper and faster, 5 year warrenty drives are available and normally larger sizes as well. Unless you are transferring from one system to another I'd go internal and even then a cat 5 LAN cable is fairly inexpensive.

Cheerio John

 

[overmars]

How reliable would people say are external hardives.Ive had one brake down in the past and i have know of other peoples ones that have broken down to.

 

[Lacker]

How reliable would people say are external hardives.Ive had one brake down in the past and i have know of other peoples ones that have broken down to.

I would say that was difficult to quantify.Amongst any mass produced,electrical and mechanical items,you will get a certain percentage of early failures.External HDDs are no different.As has already been pointed out,they will be more prone to accidental abuse,if they are in a vulnerable place.They may also not be so well cooled,as the internal HDD.

All I can say,hopefully not tempting fate,is I have had two USB HDDs for ages now,well tucked away in a corner,which have proved to be perfectly reliable.They are both 250gb units,don't remember what make,and I keep all my Trainz back up files on them,as well as all my photographs and music.Despite my comments each one contains a back up of the other.Just in case.
Regards Bruce

 

[wreeder]

I have six of them

I have been using external drives for about 6 years with no problems. I have two on an old Win 98 machine that I mostly use for Internet access. One is an Western Digital 80 gig and the other a Datacom 250 gig. Both units have Western Digital Drives inside. These drives use Firewire to connect to the PC so they are as fast as the internal drive. Someone asked why, because the bios on this box won't support internal drives larger than 20 gigs and it only has a 250 watt power supply. Easy expansion and transfer of large downloads to my other PCs by moving the drives to them is the other reason for choosing externals. Both are going on six years of use.

My graphics work station also has an 80 gig WD and a 250 Datacom external. Reason is it has a power hunger graphics card and a smallish 350 W power supply. I use the 250 to move files to and from work. These drives are 3 years old.

My new trainz box has a new 250 gig My Book and a new 500 gig My Book by Western Digital. Both are USB 2 and are fast enough to run programs such as MSTS which is installed on the 500. They are well vented and work like a champ. I work for an ISP so I download a lot from the DLS and store all the .cdp files on the 500.

My only caution is that they come with a dual use setup for PC and Macs and are formatted as FAT32. Reformat it first before using if you are only going to use the drive with XP or Vista for better performance.

William

 

[AussieNightcrawler]

Hi,

I have 2 external hard drives, the only problems that I have had is actually the external case itself, the computer will not detect the external drive as the case has broken somehow.

When I turn the external drive on the power will not stay on, anyway I just brought another external case to put the hard drive into and it worked fine.

So yeah, the only problems I have had is the cases themselves, be careful of cheap ones.

 

[Kelly88]

I have had a External drive now for 3 years
at first it was used as a general porpose unit, but for the last year
It has been exclusivly used for trainz
It is a MEMUP 300 GB ( www.memup.com)
The actual drive inside the box is from MAXTOR
This unit has 06/TC/GMax and other Trainz related items installed
(NO OP SYSTEM)

this alows me to take my trainz project anywhere and just plug into what ever computer is available with a USB connection free

It runs a bit slower than an inbuilt drive but not that I can notice

 

[john259]

Thanks again everyone, sorry for not acknowledging each post individually.

John

 

[samrec]

You have two choices here really. Either you got with external drives or with NAS systems. NAS system will add the advantage of everyone on your household to increase their storage space so that they can all move their music and the like to it to free space on their local drives.

With external drives you have two options:
1 - Buy a good branded one like MyBook or the like.
2 - Built yours in wich case you buy a nice drive with plenty of warranty and then get very good enclosure for it. Make sure ventiliation on the enclosure is ok. Most of the time their fans are cheap and could use some better ones.

cheers

 

[Ian_Coleman]

An easy to fit cheap answer!

I have a normal internal hard drive connected externally and not in a case. I bought something on ebay that comes with a USB connector and a mains power adapter. I've been using it for more than 2 years with never a problem. I can't remember who sells them, but it was very cheap - only a few pounds! It deals with IDE and SATA drives, and is able to be connected to 2.5, 3.5 and 5.25 drives.
Because the drive is not in a case, it doesn't overheat!

Ian

 

[clam1952]

Why not just add another internal drive, they are usually a lot cheaper and work at their designed spec not the slow / poor performance of USB2 externals which is what most are, USB 3, firewire or eSata are OK for externals as far as speed is concerned.
Most PC's have space for at least one additional hard drive, most have 4 or 6 and most motherboards these days have at least 4 Sata ports often more. Don't need jumpers for Sata Drives so its even easier to fit.

Over the years I have been repairing other peoples PC systems, I seen a lot of failed USB externals, usually it's the IDE or Sata to USB interface that packs up, drives are usually OK if removed and mounted as internals or put in a new enclosure. I personally wouldn't advise USB externals for continual use.

 

[JCitron]

Why not just add another internal drive, they are usually a lot cheaper and work at their designed spec not the slow / poor performance of USB2 externals which is what most are, USB 3, firewire or eSata are OK for externals as far as speed is concerned.
Most PC's have space for at least one additional hard drive, most have 4 or 6 and most motherboards these days have at least 4 Sata ports often more. Don't need jumpers for Sata Drives so its even easier to fit.

Over the years I have been repairing other peoples PC systems, I seen a lot of failed USB externals, usually it's the IDE or Sata to USB interface that packs up, drives are usually OK if removed and mounted as internals or put in a new enclosure. I personally wouldn't advise USB externals for continual use.

That's interesting to know regarding the interface. My usual findings is the drive its self croaked due to overheating. The external cases don't quite have the same cooling and airflow that the drives should have and receive inside a tower PC. This is why I too don't recommend them for continuous use and only use them for backups and data transfer.

What is interesting is Seagate is moving away from mechanical drives and towards SSD-technology for their GOFlex series external drives. This is great on the speed, but I'd be even more paranoid when it comes to data loss. SSDs are getting better but they're not quite there yet for the consumer-grade hardware.

John

 

[Red_Rattler]

Why not just add another internal drive, they are usually a lot cheaper and work at their designed spec not the slow

Because I believe if it's still in warranty, that you void the warranty in most cases.