External Harddrive for Backup / Laptop Memory

[Nabobalis]

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?



Thanks

[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.

[Nabobalis]

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.

Ok thanks.

So would this ram decent enough for a laptop?

Thanks for your help!

Edit: Would I need to buy a cable?

[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.

[Nabobalis]

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.

Again thank you very much!

[-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

[Nabobalis]

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

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