$150 External harddrive recommandations?

violent · 03-20-05, 03:11 AM

alright, the crap is piling up on my laptop hardrive like there is no tomorrow, i watch that harddrive go from a healthy 33gb, to a 25 to a 20, and now finally a anorexic 16gb. and the problem is, it is all crap that i pretty much need, videos, photos, music, etc. and with a 5400 rpm notebook harddrive, that thing is having a hard time turning over with so much crap, it takes a noticeable ammount of time just to start adobe reader.
so i got m tax refund, i figure i gotta about $150 to blow on an external harddrive. now i want to get a firewire one, because this drive will actually be plugged into my laptop most of the time and be used just like a regular harddrive, not a backup only drive (meaning watching movies directly off it, so i dont want to deal with USB). does anyone have any recommandations? i am tempted to go for this one, very very cheap i know, i had to look twice at the 250gb too, but it is not a name brand, so i dont know about the quality, if anyone has ever used one of these acomdata before, please give me some feedback, goggle gave pretty much nothing but prices. i have until saturday to get 250gb for $170 bucks.
i was also wondering if any knows if there is a sort of external casing to convert internal harddrives to external usb+firewire ones. i've only seen usb only ones. but i was wondering if there are any usb+firewire external housings. if it is even possible.
besides that one i have linked, i really havent found any other suitable ones, i figure i should go for atleast 120gb and above, but no maxtor or western digital ones ever fall within my price range for that size. thanks for any input.

-george

03-20-05, 04:48 AM

You could go with this one that is both USB and Firewire.

tyrannical · 03-20-05, 04:54 AM

$150 is about what I paid for my maxtor 160 gig hd about a year ago. it's the one with the metal casing, 8 meg cache, usb2 and firewire.

francesco_q · 03-20-05, 05:01 AM

Funny. I was gonna start the same thread. Pretty sson (when I get paid) I will get myself either a Lacie or a Maxtor (I'm more keen on the Maxtor). I'll spend a nice GBP 150 (ca $300) and get me a nice 250 Gb... or more, I'm not sure what the prices are for these things nowadays.

violent · 03-20-05, 05:24 AM

wow never thought that IOgear would only be 130 with no rebates, now i am prob not gonna get that acomdata one, keep those suggestions coming, the future is looking brighter both for my wallet and my notebook's hardrive. thanks!!

gsteinb88 · 03-20-05, 02:22 PM

Just get an IDE harddrive an an enclosure. On Newegg, you can get a 200gb ide harddrive for around 105 bucks, throw a usb2.0 and Firewire enclosure around that, a nice one for 42 bucks, and with shipping etc, you have it for 150 (give or take a dollar or so). Of course, if you wanted to upgrade in space, for another 30-40 bucks, you can get a 250gb model. The reviews on the case (this one) state that it is nice and easy to install, and that the only annoying thing is the bright blue light, also easy to diable. From looking at prices of these things, it seems to be a lot cheaper to go the external enclosure route, but if you like the maxtors, etc. feel free to do that as well
-g

bigsmoove · 03-20-05, 03:24 PM

i got my maxtor onetouch 160gb, from dell.com actually, for about 160-ish... it's usd & firewire (i think)... the only complaint is the free backup software with it doesn't work on win2k server...

i use some free "syncback" software i saw in pcworld magazine .

pr5owner · 03-20-05, 04:17 PM

i would not get a 3.5" drive as they tend to fail more often when in an external enclosure, they REALLY were not ment to be mobile. if you get a laptop drive you can power it completly off USB (no power brick to carry around) its small, you can throw it in your laptopbag and off you go. currently i have an 80GB 5400RPM 8MB cache inside my laptop and a 40GB 5400RPM 8MB cache in an ext enclosure, its super fast backing up stuff from 1 drive to another

grizgza · 03-21-05, 12:22 AM

Two 160GB Internal 3.5" HDD's for $90, then buy 2 cheap enclosures for around $20 each, look around. 320GB space for $130.00.

http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthr...postid=0#post0

Or you could buy a HDD for $40-60 (80-160GB) and put it in an enclosure ($20), for a cheap solution - under $60 If you look around or wait for deals.

techbargains.com
slickdeals.net

ebelen1 · 03-21-05, 12:57 AM

Originally Posted by violent

wow never thought that IOgear would only be 130 with no rebates, now i am prob not gonna get that acomdata one, keep those suggestions coming, the future is looking brighter both for my wallet and my notebook's hardrive. thanks!!

I have two external HD's for backup purposes. One is Iomega that I bought a few years ago and the other is Acomdata. I got the Acomdata six months ago for $89 w/ MIR. It's 160 gb. I wonder why you say that you'd pass on it. I have had no issues and it works just as well as the Iomega that cost more with a lot less space.

violent · 03-21-05, 01:16 AM

well, i think i am just gonna go with the internal hd + external enclosure, i asked around some of the overclocker forums and they all say that it is not really an issue, and this week i can get a 160gb WD harddrive for $39 after rebate, can't beat that no matter what, and an external enclosure would run me up about $40 more dollars for a Firewire/USB 2.0 one. so $80 bucks would square away my problems, really can't beat that at all. i think i will go pick up the hd as soon as i get done with my crappy o chem final tomorrow. thanks again everyone.

-george

pr5owner · 03-22-05, 02:21 AM

a slow 3/5" drive will actually be ok since USB has a horrible bandwidth, same with Firewire, cant really do any LARGE file transfers, mp3s/700M movies and smaller files should be ok though

ocharlies · 03-22-05, 06:22 AM

If you travel a lot, 2.5" hard drives with usb connector are the only way to go. They are more expensive, but small. I can carry 5 2.5" drives in my laptop bag without using up a lot of space.

I have tried many different 3.5 and 2.5 enclosures, and finally settled on a small metal 2.5" enclosure barelly larger than the 2.5" drives. I can swap in any of my 2.5" drives easily.