External Hard drives

[Spacecadet]

I've been contemplating one of these:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digi...326350&sr=8-28

but having read the reviews the failure rate seems higher than i would like

What does the panel recommend?

[Platypus]

Personally I use Seagate and find them to be very reliable indeed (I'd never use Western Digital or Maxtor having had problems with these brands regularly in the past).

e.g. try this
http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...ey=11157,50410

[Ardesco]

My experience is only with internal HD's but I have never had any problems with Western Digital. I have received 1 faulty Western Digital disk in 10 years and I had a replacement the day after I filled in an RMA on their website, can't ask for better service.

Maxtor I have found to be cheap and cheerful but not particularly robust and I have only ever had problems with Seagate drives.

Of course YMMV

[Spacecadet]

Personally I use Seagate and find them to be very reliable indeed (I'd never use Western Digital or Maxtor having had problems with these brands regularly in the past).

e.g. try this
http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...ey=11157,50410

thanks for that
I should have mentioned though - its for the laptop and so i need/prefer one with a USB power supply

Still for £70 thats a lot of storage!

EDIT - I had the wrong link on before... its the WD passport i wanted
http://www.dabs.com/ProductView.aspx...1003&InMerch=1

[MrRobin]

That's quite a lot for 320GB

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digi.../dp/B000WP0NM8

This is 500Gb for almost £40 less. Same retailer, same brand...

OR

For your hundred bucks, you could get 750GB!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digi.../dp/B000SKJDWI

[Moscow Mule]

WD Passport = 100% failure rate.

Well, for me anyway. I've had 3 of the buggers. First one wouldn't work from the outset.. Second one failed after a week. Third, same issue as the first.

Of the two iomega portable drives I've had, both have been excellent. I only had to get the second one as some scrote nicked the first out of my bag on the moscow tube. Thieving Chechen scumbags.

Edit: I've also got a WD Mybook - which hasn't failed at all - which is handy as it's my time-machine drive on my imac.

[ladymuck]

I've got two Freecom external USB jobbies. One is 400GB and the other is 250GB. Both have proved themselves highly reliable, no bad sectors, no loss of data, no problems at all. Bought the 750GB Seagate Freeagent Pro for the boyf a while ago and that has worked great too.

If you want something of a decent size that doesn't need additional power, I would go for either Amacom (I've had the Flip2Disc for donkey's years and it's great and easy to upgrade) or a Maxtor (have a very good returns policy for rare occasions you need it). Alternatively, depending on the size drive you need, you can get stupid sized USB memory sticks these days.

[moorfield]

WD Passport = 100% failure rate.

Strange - I have a 120GB WD Passport, has worked fine for me, never any problems.

I'm currently contemplating getting a Freecom FSG-3 wireless storage gateway as I'm getting tired of fiddling with USB drives at home and just want something sitting on my wireless setup I can dump everything onto (music, photos etc.)

Incidentally - slightly O/T - bytestor are doing a 32GB pen drive now - now that rocks ....

http://www.amazon.co.uk/ByteStor-32G.../dp/B000WZQ1KQ

[PAH]

For high capacity I got a seperate 3.5" caddy and hard drive of my choice.

For portability I got a 2.5" one that gets power from the USB.

[PAH]

Incidentally - slightly O/T - bytestor are doing a 32GB pen drive now - now that rocks ....

http://www.amazon.co.uk/ByteStor-32G.../dp/B000WZQ1KQ

How do the flash drives compare to hard drives in regard to transfer speed these days?

I had a 2gb flash drive that was very slow. Replaced it with a 4gb 1" hard drive based one that's a lot quicker. Has flash progressed a lot in speed as well as size in the last 6 months?