Need advice on buying an external hard drive

C

Chadilac

Joined
Jan 10, 2006
Messages
611
Hey. I need a few recommendations on a decent external hard drive for backing up my laptop. I would like to have something in the range of 200 to 300 GB with an easy click-and-drag operation. Of course, I'd love to keep the $$$ as low as I can for 200GB. I am NOT a computer geek, so the easier it is to use the better! Any thoughts??? :)
 
Thats a great question and I am wondering the same thing so I will sit back and wait for the answers.
 
I bought a Western Digital one about 6 months ago, plugged right into a USB port and that was it, Windows assigned it a drive letter and as long as I use the short USB cable it came with, I don't even need a power supply.

Haven't had one problem, my system backs up everyday at 5AM and I store MP3's on it also.
 
An external hard drive is like a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE pendrive.


I want one too.
 
Just bought a Western Digital My Book Essential Edition 320GB. I was getting errors during downloads and crashes while playing an online game that was loaded onto the My Book. Turns out it's a known problem with USB 2.0 and XP.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/908673
I've tried finding the hotfix for download but come up empty handed and customer support hasn't gotten back to me
Thank God for costco's generous electronics return policy.
 
I prefer a Maxtor HDD to a WD, but that's just because I've had to use both of their customer support and I liked Maxtor's better. (Drives that were DOA in the box or within a month in both cases.)

I just use a standard 3.5" drive and put it an external adapter, whatever is decently priced with at least a partially a metal shell. If you can turn a screw driver, read directions and don't touch the exposed bits on the bottom of the drive, you can't screw it up. Plug it in, and any modern, consumer level OS will take a few seconds and go "oh, I know what that is". And you'll be in business.
 
Seagate external hard drives are my poison. I've got two of them (120 and 200 gb) which I purchased three years ago. They are easy to set up and very quiet. I like to backup my main internal drives to my external drives. So when I need to do some disaster recovery, it is very easy to bounce back.
 
It may really be preference but at my work we swear by Seagate.

There is nothing complicated about external drives , the included directions will answer any questions you have.
As long as your USB ports are in working order it should be plug and play.
 
Thanks everybody. I am looking at a Maxtor 300GB at OfficeMax for $99. I am probably gonna pull the trigger soon...
 
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