External Harddrive for Backup / Laptop Memory

So I'm looking for an external hard drive to buy.

I need to back up work and music etc (in total around 120Gb) so I can reformat and do a fresh install of Vista with sp1. So it doesn't have to be portable or anything, I just want it to do its job. However I'm not sure if I go with a 500Gb or something smaller. Plus I'm not sure what brand is work getting and if e-sata is worth the extra cost.

For example:

500Gb Seagate FreeAgent Desktop 8Mb £68.00

or

500GB Western Digital WDH1U5000E My Book2 Essential £73.23

Both usb only and I found the second one for about £68

But e-sata:

320GB Western Digital MyBook2 Home Edition - 3.5" USB 2.0 / FireWire 400 / eSata £68.66

or


500Gb Western Digital MyBook2 Office Edition - 3.5 USB 2.0 / eSata £86.30

So I don't know if the extra is worth a faster transfer method.

Will shop around to see if I can find cheaper.

Your thoughts?



Also I have a Fujitsu Siemens - AMILO Pi 1505 Laptop. It has 512Mb of DDR2 Ram. I want to add more ram to it and I found out that it can take up to 2 sticks of 1024Mb DDr2 533/667Mhz ram.

So do I just buy 1/2Gb of ram and slot it in? Or do I have to take account of something?

:help:

Thanks

You can buy the HDD and external case separately for a few pounds less. eSATA is really handy for large file transfers, just today I backed up the contents of my laptop (to re-install vista for SP1 funnily enough) via USB and it took forever, was much faster when I backed up a desktop machine with eSATA a few weeks ago.

Laptop ram is as simple as adding another stick, however I'd advise you to go for a dual channel configuration, buy a matched pair since they don't cost very much, a 2GB kit costs less than £25.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DDY

You can buy the HDD and external case separately for a few pounds less. eSATA is really handy for large file transfers, just today I backed up the contents of my laptop (to re-install vista for SP1 funnily enough) via USB and it took forever, was much faster when I backed up a desktop machine with eSATA a few weeks ago.

Laptop ram is as simple as adding another stick, however I'd advise you to go for a dual channel configuration, buy a matched pair since they don't cost very much, a 2GB kit costs less than £25.

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Ok thanks.

So would this ram decent enough for a laptop?

Thanks for your help!

Edit: Would I need to buy a cable?

This RAM is what you're looking for, the one you linked to is for a single 2GB stick.

Note: you have to dump your old 512MB module to make room for the 2GB I linked to.

I'd be surprised if the external case didn't come with cables. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DDY

This RAM is what you're looking for, the one you linked to is for a single 2GB stick.

Note: you have to dump your old 512MB module to make room for the 2GB I linked to.

I'd be surprised if the external case didn't come with cables. :)

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Again thank you very much!

just to clarify, you'll appreciate the faster speeds of an eSATA drive if you use it to regularly transfer files. If you're just after occasional backups, i suggest this :)

Western Digital Elements 500GB USB2.0 External Hard Drive - Retail - Ebuyer

Quote:

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Originally Posted by -iceblade^

just to clarify, you'll appreciate the faster speeds of an eSATA drive if you use it to regularly transfer files. If you're just after occasional backups, i suggest this :)

Western Digital Elements 500GB USB2.0 External Hard Drive - Retail - Ebuyer

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I read that the Elements is a cheaper version of the My Book2 Essential.