External HDD recommendations?

[shinobivs]

Hi Guys,
I'm in need of a reliable portable external hard drive for home and office use. Its mainly going to be used to carry web sites, flash, illustrator and photoshop files back and forth between my home pc and the one in work.

Essentially i don't really need it to be large in capacity but more portable, reliable and fast.
Ive never bought an external HDD before and i know there cant be much to them but would love to get some good recommendations.

The max I'm willing to spend is around £80. For some reason i am loving the look of the Samsung S2 but they are just out of my price range.

Thanks for your help/advice

[Grey M@a]

I bought myself one of the Seagate FreeAgent Go's from PC world for £39.99 in their sale about a week ago. I got the 500GB model and its small, usb powered and I take it everywhere with me if I have the netbook or not

I can highly recommend the drive.

[PeteSmith]

WD Passport Portable range is worth considering too.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would go for a Buffalo Ministation. I dropped my Shuttle SFF PC on mine and it is still working years later.

[shinobivs]

Thanks both

WD Passport Portable range is worth considering too.

USB powered... Very nice!

Keep them coming though

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This Ministation has the same case as the one I have and is decent value for money too:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?W...source=froogle

It is USB powered too and has a faster than average USB controller too. I have dropped my Ministation many times too and TBH if it can survive a computer falling on top of it then it should survive the odd bump.

It is important to look at the housing of the portable hard disks rather than looks as this is very important as they are much more fragile than flash based storage. I take my Ministation upto work every day and it has done the job very well and TBH I have not looked after it very well either(I just chuck in the front pocket of my rucksack).

[shinobivs]

I just had a chat with a good friend of mine and he has recommended i just buy an internal HDD and case it.

I already use Samsung Spin Point F1 HDD's and they are cheap as chips at the moment!
As long as the case is eSATA im sure i cant go wrong

[TooNice]

eSata will give you more performance, but do you value speed over portability/convenience? You won't be able to bus power a 3.5" drive, and aside from a bigger drive, you also need to deal with a power adapter (and associated cable).

For me anyway, I find 3.5" drives too bulky to carry back and forth on a daily basis. I do have two that sits next to my desktop for backup purpose, but when making short trips, I much rather take the WD Passport.

It may be close to half the speed of eSata, but I would not have to wait too long if you are only transferring 1-2GB at a time.

[simonw]

I just had a chat with a good friend of mine and he has recommended i just buy an internal HDD and case it.

I would agree with that as I am also doing the same, I think the price probably comes to about the same as a pre-fitted model. The advantage is that you can replace the HDD by yourself, which isn't always the case with a pre-fitted model, sometimes their cases are hard to open up.