So Christmas is coming up, and I want an external hard drive this year. Preferably a big one.
My problem, though, is that I don't know where to look for one. I found 50GB models by Seagate, but I hear those hard drives have a problem of going [B]*click*[/B] and being wiped of everything.
To re-iterate, anybody here know a good external hard drive to buy?
My suggestion is just buy your own enclosure and fit a laptop WD Blue or Black in there.
The problem with many retail external drive solutions is that they stick an internal desktop or laptop drive in a housing that has little or no airflow around the drive. This causes the drive to operate hotter than it normally would otherwise, and already hot running hard drives to start overheating, resulting in premature failure.
Another issue is that most external drive solutions have piss poor quality SATA to USB converter boards. These boards are as bare bones and cheap as they can possibly get without outright not working. The heat from the drive often causes these to fail, and they often work themselves loose from not being attached to the drive properly and make the drive stop working.
Like B!NARY said, you should buy your own external enclosure (preferably one with a good fan) and a drive of your choice. However, I'd recommend a WD Green or a WD Red and not a Blue or Black drive.
The WD Green runs at 5900 RPM, draws less power and produces much less heat. It is a bit slower than a Blue and definitely a Black, but it will still saturate a USB 2.0 link, making the latter two drives a waste of money to use in an external enclosure.
The WD Red is also a good choice because it's specifically designed for NAS applications where the drive is expected to be run 24/7/365.
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;42341416] it will still saturate a USB 2.0 link, making the latter two drives a waste of money to use in an external enclosure.[/QUOTE]
There are a tons of enclosures out there that uses USB 3.0, this won't necessarily has to be the case anymore.
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