Recommend me a 250gb+ external hard drive

[iranu]

I am now at the stage whereby I can't be bothered to back up onto dvd and with storage costs of external drives getting lower and lower I in the market for an external drive.

Reliability is most important to me not speed as it will act purely as back up.

Does anyone have any recomendations or products to avoid? Thanks.

[Clunk]

Goes without saying to avoid Maxtor if its reliability you want.

Samsung drives have been great for me so far.

If you buy a ready made external drive, it is usually a gamble on what kind of drive will be inside, so I find that unless it is insanely cheap, then your best bet is to buy a seperate drive and a decent enclosure.

[EtheAv8r]

Samsung HD501LJ plus a suitable enclosure of your choice (eSata/USB/Firewire) to pop it in.

[Mossy]

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=410988

Purely Backup :-)

[StoX]

Goes without saying to avoid Maxtor if its reliability you want.

I thought things have changed since the Maxtor horror drives a few years back - same goes for IBM/ Hitachi...

I'd recommend a Samsung or Seagate. For pre-built external drives the LACIE drives seem to be quite decent.

[peterb]

Samsung drive and a case. Scan have a Sumvision case on Today only - I bought one last week and it seems OK (it is IDE - there may be a SATA version available, but I haven't looked)

[MarcLister]

Samsung hdd + the IcyBox SATA2 USB2 enclosure. http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=420926

Planning on getting me the Samsung 500Gb and the IcyBox soon.

[cotswoldcs]

I'd recommend at least 320Gb and more if you can afford it.

[Clunk]

I thought things have changed since the Maxtor horror drives a few years back - same goes for IBM/ Hitachi...

I've had 4 dead this year, all varying in age from 3 years to 6 weeks, and all with different faults. Personally, I will never buy another Maxtor drive.

Seems like I'm not alone either.

[arthurleung]

My friends say the Freecom 500G are awesome. (He got 3 of them)

Another friend of mine got loads of 500G WD MyBook, they're noisy so he doesn't like them. (He got 4 of WD500G, plus another 2 Seagate 750G, 4 Seagate 500G)

I have a Seagate FreeAgent 750G, the USB chip gets very hot when you transfer lots of files, the design is not stackable. But of course it looks very nice and everyone keep asking me "WTH is that?", as well as 5 years of warranty.