Rl'Halsinor
Explorer
Raevynn said:
Do you use them with your laptop?
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Anyone Use Portable External Harddrives? I Need Advice
- Thread starter Rl'Halsinor
- Start date
Do you use them with your laptop?
Amazing Triangle
Explorer
I use the 250 gb with both my laptop and my desktop to back both of them up. The synchronize function is actually pretty intuitive. Adding files is tough at first but it can be done. I haven't had any data loss yet.
I don't even take mine out of the carrying case now.
I don't even take mine out of the carrying case now.
Angel Tarragon
Dawn Dragon
I've been using a Maxtor 200 gig External Hard Drive with my PC for three years straight and I haven't had any problems with it.
werk
First Post
I'm a western digital guy. I used to sell parts for Dell, so it didn't take me long to figure out what brand I wanted to get for myself.
Probably have had something like 20+ western digital drives between home and work and no failures yet, ever.
As far as how you connect, firewire is generally going to be your best solution. Most people forget that they have multiple devices connected to their USB bus, so unless you get another USB controller, you're probably not going to be as satisfied as you would be on firewire. The benefit of USB is that you can just plug it into your friends'/wife's computer and have immediate access...everyone has USB since 1998 but not everyone has firewire (though they should). I get enclosures that support both USB and Firewire, win/win.
Probably have had something like 20+ western digital drives between home and work and no failures yet, ever.
As far as how you connect, firewire is generally going to be your best solution. Most people forget that they have multiple devices connected to their USB bus, so unless you get another USB controller, you're probably not going to be as satisfied as you would be on firewire. The benefit of USB is that you can just plug it into your friends'/wife's computer and have immediate access...everyone has USB since 1998 but not everyone has firewire (though they should). I get enclosures that support both USB and Firewire, win/win.
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XCorvis
First Post
werk said:I get enclosures that support both USB and Firewire, win/win.
Well, except in price. You're paying a lot more for enclosures with both interfaces. I generally advise people to pass on firewire unless they specifically need speed or are working with huge amounts of data, like if they're using the drive for video editing. USB only works just fine for backups and simple data transport.
azhrei_fje
First Post
I haven't seen that large a price difference in USB-only vs. dual-bus. I have three SanMax enclosures (HD-229-CBB) for my older 2.5" laptop drives (160GB, 100GB, 60GB; I have more drives, but they're not worth putting in an enclosure!).
I travel a lot and like to suck video off my TiVo and onto my laptop for viewing on the road. Using an external is a toss-up, though: use the external drive for storing/playing standard def video and pay for the power to run it, or clutter the internal drive with files of 1GB+ each (after transcoding from MPEG2 to MPEG4) and eat up my internal drive space.
I don't have my perfect solution for this yet...
The other issue that was discussed here awhile back, IIRC, was "Which filesystem to use for external drives" when the data will be shared with multiple operating systems. FAT32 has numerous issues but is very portable, while ext3 has journalling but only works natively on Linux, and HPFS only works natively on Macs. Yuck.
I travel a lot and like to suck video off my TiVo and onto my laptop for viewing on the road. Using an external is a toss-up, though: use the external drive for storing/playing standard def video and pay for the power to run it, or clutter the internal drive with files of 1GB+ each (after transcoding from MPEG2 to MPEG4) and eat up my internal drive space.
I don't have my perfect solution for this yet...The other issue that was discussed here awhile back, IIRC, was "Which filesystem to use for external drives" when the data will be shared with multiple operating systems. FAT32 has numerous issues but is very portable, while ext3 has journalling but only works natively on Linux, and HPFS only works natively on Macs. Yuck.
Sigurd
First Post
Care will help you most
There will be a much greater difference in drive longevity\performance based on how well you treat it rather than who made it. They are portable and that's a good thing but if you can spare them the risk its a good idea. I don't know that you have much chance of spotting a dud drive so its sort of beyond your control anyway. Duds are rare but they happen to every manufacturer.
I have one that I've used for 2 years. It probably has about 3 weeks of duty time on it. Mostly backup, power down, and store. Nothing is perfect - duplication is the best security you can get.
Sigurd
They're a reasonable protection for big collections of stuff.
There will be a much greater difference in drive longevity\performance based on how well you treat it rather than who made it. They are portable and that's a good thing but if you can spare them the risk its a good idea. I don't know that you have much chance of spotting a dud drive so its sort of beyond your control anyway. Duds are rare but they happen to every manufacturer.
I have one that I've used for 2 years. It probably has about 3 weeks of duty time on it. Mostly backup, power down, and store. Nothing is perfect - duplication is the best security you can get.
Sigurd
They're a reasonable protection for big collections of stuff.
werk
First Post
XCorvis said:
$10 is a lot more?
I and others I know have run into problem because we do a lot of music production and generally the USB bus gets all clogged up. It's a problem, and I just wanted to voice it in case it's a problem that the OP might run into as well. Sounds like you've never had this specific problem...or you didn't notice if you did.
Seriously though, ten bucks more is cost prohibitive? On a $200 device...oh man!
EDIT: also, I was told by a WD rep years back that WD was the only company to ever recall hard drives, which is testament to their dedication to quality. The drive components basically are all the same within a price/spec range, and the fact that a problem was caught and addressed by WD while the other companies just let their drives fail without protecting their customers spoke volumes to me.
Care is huge, but it doesn't matter how much you baby a HDD if it is junk.
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