Need help with a search for an External Hard Drive!

[Starguard]

I have an old Compaq Presario 5000 Desktop that has just been revived from a major software "near death" experience. Now that its back up and running again (just barely), I want to get EVERYTHING off of it now while its still in operation. Each time I try and move from website to website, it takes a very long time to do anything, and the hard drive sounds like someone rattling a can full of nails around :eek:. It doesnt take much for me to know that this things going down like the titanic, so before it takes its final bow, I want to take everything off right now. :eek:

What is the best type of external HDD avaliable that will allow me to do this with simply the use of a USB cable? Any recommendations? :(

[Canon]

There are all kinds of drive enclosures available off of NewEGG and other places as well where you can just put a desktop hard drive in them. I have an Enermax Unit and I have a 200 gig Seagate HDD in it and it works great.

I'd have to ask you the question though... How much do you value your data? If you value it I'd be turning that system off right now and pulling the drive and getting it inserted into another computer system as a slave drive so that you can simply copy the files over... The time it's going to take windows to install the drivers for your drive (it does have drivers but still has to go through the drive detection process) your drive could pick up and die... If it sounds as bad as your describing it's amazing you havn't gotten any BSODs or a corrupted registry yet...

[accidentalsuccess]

well anything will do for THAT. The question is what do you want to do with your new toy afterward? Why not grab a 40 gig drive (internal) on the cheap and just copy the stuff over? It'll be a TON faster than usb (even 2.0) and then you have a new drive.

If you HAVE to go external I don't have a ton of experience but I DO have an 80 gig ximeta netdisk (so I can plug it into the ethernet at a poor man's NAS). I love it, though it is a bit more expensive since you are paying for ethernet connectivity. For run of the mill stuff I recommend WD or seagate. I loathe maxtor. I'm sure there are other's out there who have different opinions but generally the "big three" (maxtor, WD, and seagate) are about equal overall though certain product lines may be problematic. Lacie is huge into external drives and I believe almost all of their drives use one of the above three in the enclosure (maybe some samsung. . .which isn't bad . . .i have a 10 year old 8 gig samsung still kicking /end rambling).

Give the internal thing a thought, though. . .. the thought of even 10 gigs over USB makes my skin crawl.

/me shudders. . ..

[Starguard]

That sounds like an excellent idea. I'll simply go out, buy a good internal HDD, install it as my new master, make the dying one the slave, then copy everything over to the new drive :)

Thanks :cool: