external hard drives

[Debaser]

I’m thinking of buying an external hard drive.

Only trouble is, both Maxtor and Freecom are out of the question as I have had two Maxtor’s, both of which lasted a total of 3 months before failing, and a Freecom that lasted an entire year lol, I guess a year is good in my experience.

Mind you, they do say that as advanced as Maxtor are, they are shoddy bits of equipment, and Freecom, well they say its better not to even look at one in case it overheats.

So, I need an external HD that will run 20/7, and last for at least 5 years, and look half descent.

I heard that WD are very good, but can I trust one to last?
I’m starting to wonder if these things are even supposed to run 20/7, or are they just to store stuff, but not keep hooked up?

PS, when I say 20/7, I mean that it will need to run almost daily while hooked up as a shared drive on the likes of WinMX, and so at times it will be uploaded from at a gradual speed.
If it cant even hack that, I have no use for an external HD, although I am in desperate need of one that can do this!!

Cheers for any suggestions

[loverboy]

I know how you feel!
I've had abysmal success using external hard drives & yes, I believe they were all Maxtor. the best one was (is, because it's still going) the older type in a plastic case sitting what I call, the right way up rather than dangling on it's side. Downside is it's only 40gb.
My present external is a Maxtor 400gb..........quality appears to fall somewhere between crap & piss-poor & it sounds totally deranged when being accessed, hence I only use it for storage. My experience is get what you can inside the PC case........I run two drives that have never given any probs. Obviously dependent on having a spare IDE channel though. I can't work out why though they last longer inside the PC than in an external enclosure as they're usually the same drive.
When I'm rich (if ever!), next PC will have a collection of monster SATA drives inside!

[ARTHORIUS]

yeah external are so easy to use...personally i prefer internal HDD

now i've 2 HDD one of 500gb(this is partitioned into 2 parts of 250MB each ones..1st part is used for Windows Xp system and other programs, 2nd is used for Emule temporary files and Games) one of 750gb (used for my shared folders movies and for my archive) but i am thinking to buy a 3rd...of 1 Terabyte(looool)....(1000GB for the newbies)...

But...for now is only a thinkin'

[Debaser]

Thanks for your comments guys.

So I was right, externals are pretty crappy at the moment.
Ill wait until they get better!!

Internal isn’t an option for me.

I stupidly purchased a Dell computer last year, and of course it only has two SATA HD bays, and only two SATA sockets on the motherboard.
I have two 300GB drives in those.

I thought perhaps I could fit an old fashioned IDE cable type hard drive instead, and simply hook it up to one of the IDE cables running from my disc drives, but of course I cant because you cant fit a hard drive in the optical bays on this Dell computer: (1) they are in use, (2) Dell computers have strange optical bay slots that don’t allow for adapters anyway.

Piss poor or what!!

So I now wait for an external drive that will last as long as an internal one.
How hard can that be???

[ARTHORIUS]

So i am maniac of PC and i am personally assembled my machine

[Amadeus]

Well, if it seems apparent every External HD you get will crash from running 20/7, perhaps finding a quality X-HD is not the answer; but finding a garbage X-HD that you can either replace at low cost, or return every 3 months like this one . http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product. ... id=5691568

Not saying Seagate is garbage, but you have 90 days to return items to Walmart. Satisfaction guaranteed.

Oh, and there is also this option:

http://www.google.com/products?q=128GB+ ... fox-a&um=1

[loverboy]

I don't think it's the cost/warranty issue but the catastrophic effects of precious data loss that concerns.

[Debaser]

Yeah, guess cheap is an option, but its the hassle of reloading movies from CD.
(Yes I back-up each and every film to CD religiously)
Iv spent literally weeks reloading movies to a single hard drive and id like to avoid that again.
For now im just un-sharing more and more movies every day as I have no more space

I wonder why they only make rubbish externals and good internals.
I guess its obviously really - profiting from people that keep buying them.

[loverboy]

I think it's the pcb within the enclosure that's the problem.........I've dismantled every fu**ed external I've had & it always seems to be the board that's cooked itself, usually wiping out the hard drive in the process. I reckon Maxtor/Seagate/Western Digital etc. hard drives are fine........they seem to perform perfectly well within the PC but dislike the shite quality external enclosures they're installed in. Probably not even made by the hard drive manufacturers anyway. I don't think transporting them around improves the situation either. After all, you don't normally take your PC for a drive around on a regular basis! The answer?...... Possibly find a top quality bare external enclosure & fit the hard drive of your choice.

[ARTHORIUS]

so...for example...how do you pay an ext HDD???

external 320GB is 99 Euros

internal 320GB 109 euros