[wrenrj1]

Hi all,

I'm considering purchasing an 80GB hard drive from New Egg. I've narrowed it down to to drives that are the same brand. I don't know much about external hard drives but these two have good reviews.

They're the Western digitial Essential HD or the Western Digital Dual Option. They're within a few bucks of eachother. I like the hot swap of the essential, however the timed backup of the Dual Option is nice as well.

Any pros/cons either way? Here's the link to the website. They're the first two products shown when you scroll down:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...14+1035307792+4027&Submit=ENE&SubCategory=414

I'd appreciate any input, thanks.

 

[HAVOC]

Well first, all USB drives are hot-swappable. I have NO idea why they list that as a "feature" of one and not the other.

The "Essential" is just a hard drive in a box. If that's all you need, you could just buy a drive and a box and BYO. It looks like the "Dual Option" is about the same thing, it just comes with backup software. For $3 I'd go for the latter, the hardware looks to be about the same.

 

[RaiderRodney]

Just an idea, but you could buy an Enclosure and buy a seperate hard drive to put in it. All those in your list only have a 1 year warranty and I have seen them go out If you got a plain Seagate hard drive you could up your warranty to 5 years

 

[wrenrj1]

Originally posted by RaiderRodney
Just an idea, but you could buy an Enclosure and buy a seperate hard drive to put in it. All those in your list only have a 1 year warranty and I have seen them go out If you got a plain Seagate hard drive you could up your warranty to 5 years

Thanks for the replies, RaiderRodney, you have an interesting concept. I checked out the seagate internal HD's and you have a good point. Also, for the price there's a lot more storage capacity.

Two questions. First, I assume that HD boxes are around and I just need to do a little searching, but what a bout power supplies, and hooking up the HD to a USB port?

 

[RaiderRodney]

Far as I know they all come with power cords and USB cables. Here are a couple to look at:

HD Enclosures

At Newegg

zipzoomfly has some too but for some reason I can't get the search results link

If you will be doing backups fairly often I would get a mid-priced one as opposed to the cheapies. If it will be just once in a while you could always get this. I have one and they are great for getting data off old drives, testing fans....heck you can even run CD/DVD drives with it, but no cooling fans or anything like that

USB / IDE Adapter at Newegg

Good luck and have fun thinking it all over

 

[Dandapani]

I bought a good enclosure (supports both USB 2.0 and Firewire) and used a spare HD I had from a previous upgrade and us it as an external backup drive. Love it.

 

[Wingnut357]

If you want your external to be compatible with OS X, you need to make sure the enclosure has an Oxford chipset. Mine uses the 911 and works wonderfully.

I bought a Hiro from Tigerdirect, and the thing is so well built I could literally stand on it. Highly recommended.

 

[RaiderRodney]

For anyone that doesn't have one of those USB/IDE thingies I talked about earlier...they are on sale this weekend on newegg with free shipping. I can't tell you how handy these are

Newegg IDE/USB Adapter

 

[HAVOC]

Originally posted by RaiderRodney
For anyone that doesn't have one of those USB/IDE thingies I talked about earlier...they are on sale this weekend on newegg with free shipping. I can't tell you how handy these are

Newegg IDE/USB Adapter

Just a note... they've been "on sale" for months. And this looks to be the same widget with a different sticker on it for about $5 when you take shipping into acount. If you have a big order, the shipping will be less than the $5 listed, and be an even better deal.

 

[RaiderRodney]

It is the same price but with free shipping this weekend Hey...5 bucks is 5 bucks

 

[HAVOC]

Originally posted by RaiderRodney
It is the same price but with free shipping this weekend Hey...5 bucks is 5 bucks

Yes, yes it is $5... and the Syba I linked is $10 less, so there's your 5 bucks...

 

[Blitzer]

Originally posted by RaiderRodney
For anyone that doesn't have one of those USB/IDE thingies I talked about earlier...they are on sale this weekend on newegg with free shipping. I can't tell you how handy these are

Newegg IDE/USB Adapter

There is no box it is just a cable. No box makes it kind of dicey moving it around without an enclosure protecting the hard drive. :shocked:

This cable is usually used for bench work moving or recovering data from hard drives. It is rated for all IDE drives from a desktop to a laptop size drive.

I wish I would have had one a few months ago when a cheap internal cable smoked a drive I was trying to duplicate. :freak:

 

[wrenrj1]

Well I checked Circuit City on line today and they had a Seagate 160GB external hard drive for $69.99 after rebates. Since that was twice the space I was looking for, I went ahead and bought it.

I thought there was more to them, but they work just like a flash drive.

 

[RaiderRodney]

Originally posted by HAVOC
Yes, yes it is $5... and the Syba I linked is $10 less, so there's your 5 bucks...

Ah ok, I see the item now. It doesn't have its own power supply though Which really makes testing fans and stuff a lot easier.

And that was a good price on that ext drive you got