cruel-c0re
Hi ,i am running out of space on my computer and i want to get an external HDD, i want it a 1.5 or 2 TB with an acceptable price comparing to other HDDS without ignoring the quality ,of course.
i found the "Seagate Expansion 2TB 7200RPM USB3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive" on PcAndParts website 112$ .
anyone recommend it ,or have a better offer ?
Thanks .
shant
Don't get anything other than western digital,thats all i can say
Metalloy
get something with rugged construction, even the smallest fall can mess up your external hard pretty bad.
AvoK95
First thing's first. There are two types of external hard drives. There are portable ones which use 2.5" laptop drives and desktop ones which use regular desktop hard drives. The difference between these two are that portable drives don't need an external power supply/adapter/or brick. They just run like a USB thumb drive (Power is taken from the USB port) However desktop external drives need external power adapters because they use 12V power. The USB only has 5V so you are forced to use an external adapter to provide it with 12V. Desktop drives aren't as portable as small portable drives, since it has about 2 or sometimes 3 cables running through it, whereas the portable one has just 1 cable. But both are very fragile like any other drives. I think desktop drives are just a bit more durable, though I could be wrong.
Brands don't matter. Some people have had bad experience with Seagate drives and others with WD. These are not the only two brands in the market. There are tons of other brands like Transcend or LaCi or LG etc. The difference between all of them is just price and features. For example, Seagate has the Backup Plus, which backs up your photos and other media from social media websites such as Facebook or Twitter. They also have another model called GoFlex which is just a regular hard drive but with its SATA to USB more easily removable to use as a SATA drive rather than a USB drive. They also have the Expansion which is the most basic one they have for "Expansion" WD has some great stuff too. They have the Elements SE which the Second Edition of their old Elements series, which is basically a WD edition of Seagate's Element drive. They also have the My Passport and the My Passport SE. These models come in smaller form size (Size of your passport obviously) The difference between the SE and the non SE version is that the SE version looks slightly different. WD and Seagate are the best and cheapest brands you can get because they produce the hard drives and the enclosures themselves.
Get a USB 3.0 drive (USB 3.0 is also backwards compatible with USB 2.0) because USB 3.0 is the future of USB. It also copies as fast as your SATA drive and it also costs exactly the same the USB 2.0 drives. If there are any left in the market that is.
After buying a hard drive, the first thing you should think about is to buy it a rugged case like Metalloy suggested. Why you would want this ? Well, A rugged case will protect the disk inside from shaking and damaging itself. I dropped my 1TB WD Passport drive in summer and lost 800+GB of data just because I dropped it and because I never used a rugged case.
If you don't care about portability, then I guess a desktop drive is your best choice.
If you really want to spice things up, you can buy the hard drive and the enclosure separately and build it yourself. It will cost a few bucks more, but it will be much more reliable and most importantly it would be much easier to upgrade to a bigger drive in the future.
shant
note that wd has a rugged case specially designed for its own portable drives
AvoK95
But I don't think it's available in Lebanon.
cruel-c0re
thank you guys for the help .
-AvoK , the thing is i do care about portability so i want to get a portable hard drive and i know that a desktop one is a better choice.
I'm going to call a computer shop tomorrow to check what brand they have and if they have ones with rugged construction or enclosure ,because the ones i saw on PcAndParts seemed limited .
also if anyone suggests a certain HDD please share . i still have time to buy i am not in a rush .
dp0001
i suggest getting a desktop hdd and an enclosure
