Looking for reliable External HDD

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kilgore777

Gawd
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Sep 12, 2005
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What the title says.... I am seeking a good reliable External HardDrive. I have had a Western Digital MyBook that failed, so I won't be getting another.

Any suggestion are welcome.
 
well the WD Passports are great, but i have heard about your experience not being an uncommon one with their MyBook series. I have had 2 Passports myself both 250 GB's, they are very solid ones.

From what my research has indicated, it seems that WD's externals over 500 GB are not of good quality as their usual reputation has been known for.

I would recommend their 250 GB passports without reservation. They are reasonably priced, and also, once you get one (if you decide to) make sure you format it, because for some odd reason, WD sees fit to have FAT32 as the default file system.
 
Thanks for your response. I will look at the Passports - I like the fact that they are small. And thanks for the heads about formatting (FAT32 - wtf?).
 
also I might find it invaluable to suggest that you CAN buy a regular hard drive and place it in an enclosure if you wish, that might or might not be better for you depending on what kind of use you have for it. I think with an enclosure they are fairly big, i think maybe as big as the MyBook is, if that didn't bother you then that's a feasible alternative. That way you can get a reliable hard drive you trust and you can also remove it from the enclosure to place it in a desktop when you no longer need it for it's external use.

Barring that you can recycle an old hard drive with good capacity you might have and use a USB to serial/IDE cable and use it as an external in that fashion. Just some alternative suggestions.
 
kilgore777 said:
What the title says.... I am seeking a good reliable External HardDrive. I have had a Western Digital MyBook that failed, so I won't be getting another.

Any suggestion are welcome.
Click to expand...

Are you sure the drive failed or the enclosure? I would install the drive in a pc and test that. There is absolutely nothing special about the drives in these enclosures. They are normal sata drives. Sometimes not even from the same manufacturer but I am pretty sure WD will put their own drives inside..

If it is the enclosure you can get a new one for $20 to $30 and plug your drive into it.

John
 
since you didn't mention if it had to be portable or not...

grab one of the hdd docks with usb/esata connections and use whatever drive you want (too bad the newegg shellshocker deal is done)
 
Been on my original Samsung Story 1TB drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152178) for around ~6 months so far without issue (*knocks on wood*). Liked it enough to pick up another, which is also working great.

They both came formatted FAT32; turned one of them into NTFS for general storage (I leave this drive on pretty much 24/7) and left the other as FAT32 to play media files on my 360/PS3.

They carry 3 year warranties and look pretty slick. For whatever reason though, Samsung made 'em so they don't stack lol.
 
Fail said:
because for some odd reason, WD sees fit to have FAT32 as the default file system.
Click to expand...

That's because every OS can read a FAT32 formatted HDD, where as NTFS is Windows only, and HFS+ is Mac only.
 
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