Suggestions for External Hard Drive?

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Cram3601

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I'm using a Seagate XTreme external drive for my Velocity Micro ProMagix pc (USB or Firewire 400 connection). It's never worked well. I have Genie Soft BackUp Manager, which I prefer to use rather than the standard software that comes with external drives.

Can anyone suggest a different brand?

Thanks.
 
Have you considered getting an external HDD enclosure and a large-capacity HDD instead? Vantec and Antec, for example, make some pretty good enclosures, and they're no longer to "expensive" option (compared to external HDDs).
 
I went to the internet about this and it states, "The USB external hard drive enclosure is the perfect choice for the storage solution with high capacity." I'd consider something like this for backup but I honestly don't know what it is.

Does is it serve the same purpose as an External Hard Drive?

Thanks
 
Cram3601 said:
I went to the internet about this and it states, "The USB external hard drive enclosure is the perfect choice for the storage solution with high capacity." I'd consider something like this for backup but I honestly don't know what it is.

Does is it serve the same purpose as an External Hard Drive?

Thanks
Click to expand...

What tiraides is talking about is building your own external HDD. Buy a new, or use an existing, HDD and buy an external enclosure. Then install the HDD into the enclosure. ;) Voila! External HDD! Size depends on the drive you use, obviously, and external interfaces will determine if you use USB or eSATA (or even Firewire).

for example...
$85 - WD Caviar Green WD10EADS 1TB SATA300
$30 - Vantec NST-300SU-BK Aluminum 3.5" USB & eSATA External Enclosure
 
fyi someone reported in their review on there that the 1tb green hd's esata port wasnt working with the enclosure.
 
Mangudai said:
fyi someone reported in their review on there that the 1tb green hd's esata port wasnt working with the enclosure.
Click to expand...

The green HDD does not have an esata port. :confused: It has a SATA port. :p Link to your finding?

edit: found it...

Pros: Same as before. Works great with the WDC 640 GB drive that I have in there.

Cons: Does not work with the WDC Caviar Green 1TB drive. I took out the existing WDC 640GB drive and replaced it with the brand new 1TB Caviar Green drive, and have all kinds of problems with the eSata connection. It DOES work fine with the USB connection on that drive. Initially thought I may have to RMA the drive, but I had another one in my Rosewill case which I was able to try, and had the same eSata problems. So now this Vantec case is back to housing my 640 GB drive.

The symptoms I saw were:
1). After attempting to format all night long, it was only at a few percent. Via USB took a few hours to format.

2). Once formatted, copying info to/from the drive would go in bursts. It would copy 100MB or so, then get stuck for a couple of minutes, then resume.

Other Thoughts: If you want to use the eSata port, don't use the Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EADS.

As mentioned in my previous post, my Rosewill eSata/USB/1394 case would lose the eSata connection periodically. That was with the 640 GB drive mentioned above. Same behavior with the Caviar Green drive. IE there is nothing wrong with the Caviar Green drive.
Click to expand...

He's just having all kinds of problems with more than one enclosure and more than one drive in different combinations, lol. Sorry, I can't trust his review...
WD 640GB green/black/blue? + Rosewill Enclosure = problems w/ eSATA
WD 640GB green/black/blue? + Vantec Enclosure = works great
WD 1TB Green + Rosewill Enclsoure = works/problems?
WD 1TB Green + Vantec Enclsoure = problems w/ eSATA

... not enough data.

I'm using the more expensive Vantec NX3 enclosure ($38) with a 1TB Caviar Green, and it works fine. I'm using my Vantec NX.CX with a Seagate 250GB and it works fine. Again, all of these are anecdotal, but you get the idea. Find a HDD you like, and an enclosure you like, and put them together. :p
 
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The original poster ends by saying, "Can anyone suggest a different brand?" of external hard drive. I'm not sure if he's looking for an enclosure or to build his own. I think he's looking for suggestions regarding specific brands other than a Seagate External Hard Drive, although I could be wrong.

Western Digital?
Iomega?
Simple Tech?
Cavalry?
Etc...
 
Marc Ross Miller said:
The original poster ends by saying, "Can anyone suggest a different brand?" of external hard drive. I'm not sure if he's looking for an enclosure or to build his own. I think he's looking for suggestions regarding specific brands other than a Seagate External Hard Drive, although I could be wrong.
...
Click to expand...

No, you're right, but then tiraides suggests buying a separate drive and enclosure instead, to which the OP responds as if he's not sure what tiraides is talking about. Therefore, I go and explain what tiraides was talking about. :cool:
 
you can save anywhere from 50 to 150 dollars just buying a drive and external case.. theres really no reason to buy external drives like the mybook or seagates equivalent model or any others.. id rather know whats going in my enclosure then wondering what actual drive they used in a factory made external drive.. ive seen way to many bs things like external drives claiming they have a seagate drive in them.. but when you open it.. its just a rebranded maxtor drive.. since seagate owns maxtor they have the rights to put the seagate logo on it...

i currently have 2 1.5TB seagates for 180 a piece with a simple 19.99 airlink101 case for each drive.. the same comparable factory made external drive at the time with that much storage was over 250 dollars each.. and on top of that i know exactly what drives im using and i can open it when ever i want without voiding a warranty..
 
Thank you to you all.

But I have no idea as to how to build an external hard drive (I'm not "handy"). Is it just a matter of buying an external hard drive and of then fitting it into the enclosure?

Thanks again.
 
Is it just a matter of buying an external hard drive and of then fitting it into the enclosure?
Click to expand...

Seriously, there's nothing to it.

The drives just slide in the case and there's usually a coupla screws to hold it in position.

Even a cave-man could do it! :D
 
Building an external hard-drive is easy. It will make toilet paper look like a hard process.
 
One more question about a Hard Drive within an enclosure: in addition to saving some money, are there other advantages compared to buying an External Hard Drive? Would it display more/better information?

Thanks again.
 
Marc Ross Miller said:
One more question about a Hard Drive within an enclosure: in addition to saving some money, are there other advantages compared to buying an External Hard Drive? Would it display more/better information?

Thanks again.
Click to expand...

The main advantage is being able to choose whatever enclosure and hard drive you want.

Cosmetic differences aside, an "External Hard Drive" is the same thing as an internal hard drive + external enclosure except that everything comes as a package with no assembly required.
 
Many retail external drives use the lower end drives. So, if you wanted a higher end drive, you have that option if you buy the two separately. Assembly is extremely easy.
 
I use WD mybook drives, the 2.5" ones. Got 2 at work setup with synctoy and scheduled task to sync backups to it.

I got one at the house I use for moving large files from a machine I am working on for a customer.
 
Another thing to note is that the 2.5" drives are generally much slower than the 3.5" drives if you're using eSATA. If you're using USB, both are limited by the bandwidth of USB2.0 anyhow, so this would be irrelevant. Personally, I'm very impatient, so I go for eSATA external drives/enclosures. The nice thing about the 2.5" drives is that they're typically powered by USB (instead of an external AC adapter).
 
One more question, and you'll have to forgive me for asking this but I know very little about PCs. I have 2 250GB Western Digital WD2500KS 7200 SATA/300, 16MB cache Hard drives in the pc. Would I be a similar hard drive plus an enclosure?

Thanks.
 
If the enclosure has no fan, your hard drive could get quite hot.
 
MrF said:
If the enclosure has no fan, your hard drive could get quite hot.
Click to expand...
You have a point and that is why my external enclosure is sitting on top of my Antec 900 (over the big fan).:D
 
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If you could suggest some recommendations for a hard drive (within an enclosure) I'd appreciate it. I DON'T have an eSATA connection but I do have a Firewire 400 connection. Again, I have a Velocity Micro ProMagix PC and it has two 250GB Western Digital WD2500KS 7200rpm SATA/300, 16MB Cache. I'm looking for at least 750 of external memory.

For an enclosure I'm thinking of the Vantec NexStar 3.

Thanks.
 
The Vantec NexStar3 is nice -- I have a couple. A Samsung F1, Seagate 'cuda.12, or WD Blue or Black would be good choices for the HDD.

For retail external HDDs, I'd go for something with eSATA. A $100 1TB mybook is not a bad deal, but its USB2.0 only... pretty slow when dealing with 1TB worth of data. :( If your system does not have eSATA, you can buy an adapter to turn one of your internal AHCI enabled SATA ports into an eSATA port. ;)

Personally, I'd upgrade the internal HDDs to something faster and throw the two WD2500KS drives into their own enclosures -- but thats totally up to you. The main reason for this suggestion is because those 250GB drives are slow and old, so if you upgrade them, your system should speed up a bit. Though, this would require re-installing everything and backing up all your data, which isn't an easy task.
 
Although NexStar3 has no fan, (it's just an aluminum shell & circuit board) they work great. I had 7200rpm drives in them for two+ years without failures.

But I've dumped all my enclosures and started using Antec's Easy SATA docks in my machines. More convenient than enclosures and no power bricks.
 
Thanks enginurd.

Do these hard drives have a firewire 400 connection or a USB port? I don't have an eSATA drive on the pc.

Thanks
 
The enclosures have USB and eSATA. As I mentioned, since USB is so slow, I'd recommend converting one of your interna SATA ports into an eSATA port, but that may be more work than you're ready for. I get similar speeds between both USB2.0 and Firewire400, so I don't bother with Firewire anymore.
 
enginurd said:
Though, this would require re-installing everything and backing up all your data, which isn't an easy task.
Click to expand...

Nah, just image the drive and port it over. Not hard at all.
Of course you have to have somewhere you can store that image.
 
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