What is a good affordable ext. hard drive?

mauve · Post by **mauve** » Wed Jan 31, 2007 9:24 pm

I am finally looking to get an external hard drive.
What is a good one for a reasonable price?
Thanks

Seyser Koze · Post by **Seyser Koze** » Thu Feb 01, 2007 2:05 pm

Get down to Maplins if you're in the UK, they're doing 500gig Seagates for £89.99.

digitalkettle · Post by **digitalkettle** » Thu Feb 01, 2007 2:08 pm

I got a Maxtor from Amazon.co.uk for a reasonable price in 2005.

mauve · Post by **mauve** » Thu Feb 01, 2007 6:21 pm

How important is buffer memory?Because some of the drives are 2Mg and some 8Mg.
Thanks

napalmskatterjazz · Post by **napalmskatterjazz** » Thu Feb 01, 2007 7:07 pm

I suggest building your own. get a case for a SATA with a firewire 800 plug(it needs to be fast or else usb will slow down transfer). and then buy a SATA internal HardDrive, I suggest at least 7200 rpm. I have a 500GB 7200rpm exhd and i built it for under 100bucks. if I was to buy it it would cost 300+.. it is easier than it sounds, trust me. DIY or die.

mauve · Post by **mauve** » Thu Feb 01, 2007 7:21 pm

Now, that sounds like a great idea!

spiral · Post by **spiral** » Thu Feb 01, 2007 9:18 pm

i second building your own

mauve · Post by **mauve** » Thu Feb 01, 2007 10:11 pm

I think I am gonna do that. the only thing is I don't know what to start with.
What case to buy, hd and so on...

napalmskatterjazz · Post by **napalmskatterjazz** » Fri Feb 02, 2007 7:01 pm

I used a SATA hard drive, Maxtor are good as are Seagate. Just look for a barebones hard drive at a good price. External hardrive cases are cheap and plentiful... just make sure it fits and holds SATA drives, which this is how they are clasified as well.
hooking it us is easy, just fit the smaller plug into the smallplugslot for power and the long one into the long one, just two. I suggest formatting to Fat32 because i move it around from mac to windows all the time and ive seen em crash when NTFS and going through recovery actions are no fun and usually stressful.. If you move around and take it with you, Fat32, if you need storage for one system then go NTFS.

ya know come to think of it, I wonder how the intel macs are treating hard drives... They might be nicer these days. that would be so nice....

mauve · Post by **mauve** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 6:41 pm

thanks, man.
I use iMac G5.
You think 16Mgb buffer is the best?