External Hard Drives

jamesj · Sun 08 May, 2005 18.50

Thinking of getting more space through an external hard drive and was just wandering if they were any good and if anyone knew of any good ones?

I'm looking at one of these

Dr Lobster* · Sun 08 May, 2005 18.54

i would never use a maxtor product - their drives are too unreliable.

you can get a ide to usb external caddy from cpc and stick whatever drive you want in it, it'll be a bit cheaper and you can choose a brand of disk which isn't prone to random failure.

James Martin · Mon 09 May, 2005 00.21

I have one of those hard drives for my music storage and I have to say that I've not had any problems with it so far. I know Maxtor's internal drives are notoriously horrible.

I am nontheless concerned about it dying on me though now!

jamesj · Mon 09 May, 2005 19.21

Well I just basically need more space - for videos etc. So if not an external hard drive, or at least a maxtor one, what would you suggest? Any good internal ones?

Orry Verducci · Tue 10 May, 2005 16.07

If your going to use it to stick files on it shouldn't be a problem.

Fireboy · Tue 10 May, 2005 17.02

Orry Verducci wrote:If your going to use it to stick files on it shouldn't be a problem.

What else (of use) can you do with a hard drive?

Anonymous · Sun 15 May, 2005 21.56

Fireboy wrote:
Orry Verducci wrote:If your going to use it to stick files on it shouldn't be a problem.
What else (of use) can you do with a hard drive?

Nothing, really. I just use mine to back-up any of my data if my original hard drive needs reformatting.

cwathen · Mon 16 May, 2005 16.02

Thinking of getting more space through an external hard drive and was just wandering if they were any good and if anyone knew of any good ones?

Depends firstly on how it will be connected - if it's USB2 (and remember that not only must the drive be USB2, but your motherboard must have USB2 ports too or else it will still run at USB1.1 speed) then performance will be fine, if not then you may find it a little sluggish when moving large amounts of data around.

I have to say though, unless you have a specific need for an external drive (needing to store sensitive data remotely, or needing to share the drive with different machines for instance) I see no point in having one instead of buying a second internal drive - you'll spend more pounds more megabyte for an external drive, and have yet another box to fit on your desk (aswell as yet another mains adaptor to plug in somewhere).

Yeah I agree Maxtor products have a very unreliable life. What do you need an external drive for? Just out of interest!

I have to say, despite many people slating Maxtor drives for reliability, I've never had any problems with them. I've been using them in all my machines since 1999, as well as putting them in every machine I've built, and never had any trouble.

My present drive has been spinning around virtually 24/7 since November 2001, and has yet to present me with any problems at all.

The only time I've ever personally come across a defective Maxtor drive was when my friend idiotically pulled a system unit out of a trolly and allowed it to drop several inches as the machine was on and the hard drive was working. I don't think you can blame the drive for aquiring bad sectors on that occasion, and the drive I replaced it with (another Maxtor unit) has been in for a good year or so now, without any reported problems.