Right, next project is buying an external hard drive - but which one?

[Polgara2]

When I was at work (long time ago!) we used to use Seagate or Iomega. However, have noticed there are a lot of cheaper makes of which I have never heard - so are they any good or do I need to stump up for the dearer ones?

Ive had my Freecom for a year, itis a 80gb, DS and DDIL bought it for me last year for Christmas, think it wa quite dear then, but have never had any brobs with it, I keep all my photos on it.

Bought Dh a 120gb one this Christmas, paid £40.00 from ebay, he is usuing his for music, am think ing of getting one to keep DVD's on (if thats possible havnt spoke to my Computer guy yet ) as my PC is now hook ed up to th eTV.

Things to consider are size, portability, speed and cost. You can get a terabyte now, and I would recommend you get more rather than less. Portability - not needed if for a desktop, but possibly for a laptop. Speed - not usually important for photos or music, but can be an issue for games or movies. Cost - very competitive now; more money gets you a longer warranty, but that is not much use if the disk fails. Seagate and Iomega are still high quality manufacturers, but you can get better valeu for money, e.g.
PC Pro magazine says:
"The most obvious attraction of the Samsung SpinPoint T series - and especially the HD501LJ model - is that it's great value. At the time of writing the 500GB SpinPoint T can be had for £51 exc VAT - just 10.2p per Gigabyte, some 20% cheaper than its A List predecessor, the SpinPoint P120.
Verdict: A fast, capacious and big-value hard disk that's equally at home in either a PC or a home server "
(latest price £62 for 500B).

They give it 6 stars, their highest rating.

Ok CK I understood none of that guess mine isnt that great then at 80gb

Some are powered through the USB cable, which saves an extra plug in the wall,

Right oh. Wasn't thinking of getting less than 320gb but the prices of the larger ones were limiting me. It is mainly for storing my photos on to connect to both my desktop and my laptop so I guess portability is a slight issue but none of them would be that cumbersome would they? CK - I usually avoid Samsumg due to previous experiences with their products and them not being very good! Have they improved then?
Hmm do I need a terabyte for photos I wonder - possibly not?
LL - have seen lots of Lacie ones advertised at reasonable prices but had just never heard of them - you would recommend then?
I have gone for cheaper priced things so many times and then wished I had gone for the 'branded' product so I just need to be sure before I do it again!
Thanks

Where did everybody go?

Polgara (this is CK), I trust the PC magazines. If you have had bad experiences of Samsung, then avoid them. You can see reviews here:

PCPro

PCW

or Which? magazine

Ok thanks Sciolist - am not member of which so can't see that one but will peruse the others! Had a quick dip and interestingly one of them suggests the freecom over the seagate.

Hah - just had to look up sciolist -'superficial pretender to knowledge'. Hmm so should I actually be listening to you then

I have this one but in black. It works brilliantly.

if I were you I would get one of these

www.dabs.com/ProductView.aspx?Quicklinx=4HMF&CategorySelectedId=11026&PageMode=1&InM erch=1

250GB made by Seagate (one of the top HDD manufacturers).. best you can buy for the cash (trust me)... also it is powered via the USB bus so you wont need an extra PSU...

Also it looks nice and is small.. and DABS are a very safe online company to purchase from (this is very important)..

another vote for Lacie here too

be careful of the freecom unit.. it is a very good drive but its small formfactor is more designed to be taken on the road for backing up and occasional use.... if this things is connected for extended periods of time then it will get quite hot..

Also the freecoms are 4200rpm and the Seagate is 7200rpm.. this makes a big performance difference

LaCie pro range... ...have 3 Lacie drives and they're all fine and dandy.. ..Seagate drives have caused me probs in the past...

Oh thanks everyone. Now see I'm confused again (not hard I know) on this what is the 8mb referring to? Some of the dearer ones say 16mb - is this highly relevant?
Sorry to keep firing more questions, but I like to know what I'm doing (or at least appear to )

that is just the internal buffer for the drive controller... wouldn't worry about it too much.... just look out for drive speed.. anything below 7200rpm will be a little slow when moving lots of data around...

Ah - thank you