External hard drive

[Dreaming]

Hi Scan / Scan forum followers.

I need an external hard drive to transfer significant (but not stupid) amounts of data. Though I've got two 'storage' hard drives in my PC and was advised by a mate a LAN party recently to just dump them in an external enclosure and use that.

Basically I have data that I want to transfer to my girlfriends PC and she's using up all my DVDs with silly obsessions. So, two solutions with prices would be ace.

How I can I:
- take two Sata2 HDD and put them in a caddy, or
- get some form of external hard drive and use it to swap data about

The advantage of the caddy is my PC is more portable, and my data is a bit 'safer' if my PC blows up (I've lost many HDDs to dodgy PSUs).

The advantage of the external hard drive is I still have 500gb of storage on my PC that can be accessed quickly and easily without windows having to fail at transferring 300gb from one partition to the next, and presumably it would be designed to be portable.

Although I have e(xternal)-sata on my motherboard, so I'm perfectly happy to use that (as it would be faster and presumably less intense on the CPU / OS / software.

Thankyou guys

[5cupa]

just going to move this to a possibly better section of the forum. if you want to move it back just drop me a PM. thanks

[charleski]

Just buy the largest external drive you can afford from a quality brand that offers a decent warranty (e.g. Western Digital offers 3 years). External drives can go bad as well if they come with a cheap PSU (like the Packard-Bell junk sold at PCWorld).

You ALWAYS need more HD space, so just buy as much as you can afford.

[Ne0]

I am also going to suggest an external harddrive. Go for a Seagate FreeAgent they come in many varieties. There are all sorts of sizes, e-sata ones are at a decent price however e-sata & firewire Seagate FreeAgent drives cost a little more. You also get 5 years warranty on top of that.

[JKL]

Another vote for the Seagate FreeAgent ... I'm using the 250GB version & it's really well built, runs silently with good read write speeds. 5 year warranty.

[Dreaming]

So you'd recommend just getting an external hard drive over an external HDD chassis?

[Dreaming]

For the record, I've got 4 hard drives in my PC giving me about 800 gb of storage, so even if I moved the two 250gb out I'd still have 320 in my pc.

But the external hard drive does seem quite cheap...

[charleski]

So you'd recommend just getting an external hard drive over an external HDD chassis?

If you want extra HD space and can afford it, you buy another HD. If you have an HD already and want to use it externally, you buy a chassis. I really don't understand your question, it depends on what you want to do.

[Dreaming]

I wanted to go with the most cost effective method. If I get massive external hard drives they're probably going to be really expensive, which I can't really afford. But £50 for the external Seagate is compellingly cheap. I just need the most effective solution at storing significant (300gb) of data outside of my PC. If an external hard drive is the best way, fair enough. If a chassis would be more cost effective (because I'd still have some storage space in my PC - enough to suit my immediate needs) then I'd use that.

You've all said to get an external hard drive, but nobody made the comparison to the chassis solution, so that's why I asked 'So you'd recommend just getting an external hard drive over an external HDD chassis?'.

[charleski]

Cost of external USB/eSATA enclosure: ~£35
Cost of internal SATA 320G drive: ~£48
Cost of external 320G USB/eSATA drive: ~£75

You save a bit buying the complete product, as always.

There is no 'best way'.

[Bob Crabtree]

Another vote for the Seagate FreeAgent ... I'm using the 250GB version & it's really well built, runs silently with good read write speeds. 5 year warranty.

I've got major issues with a 750GB FreeAgent - the eSATA port is so poorly engineered that you have to hold the back of the drive while you push in the eSATA cable with enormous force.

And, yes, I have tried a wide selection of cables - cheap and not cheap - and all of them are just the same, yet they fit easily and snugly into a cheap eSATA caddy I also have.

I've tried to get Seagate to respond to my queries about this issue and had no joy at all, so I struggle to see what earthly use a five-year guarantee is when that sort of situation prevails.

[Dreaming]

Oh dear.

Well I've not yet decided, thing is I've got a spare 250gb drive in my PC not doing anything at the moment. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

[Dreaming]

So, I think I'm going to get a caddy cos I've just got another spare hard drive too.

So what's a worthwhile caddy to buy for an internal sata connection and external usb or e-sata? There's 'jou jou' but it sounds like that may be chinese / korean for 'false economy'. Icybox is reassuringly expensive..