External hard drive recommendations?

I've been thinking about buying an external hard drive for a while but I'm not sure what I should be buying. Is it best to spend more money or will the cheaper ones do just as well? What kind of external hard drive do you currently use?

 

Buying a caddy would be cost effective long term.
You can then update the harddrive in the future.

HARDDRIVE PRICES HAVE BEEN FALLING.

 

I'd invest in a hard drive if I were you, a good one! You are buying a hard drive because you can to safely store your precious files instead of sending them to the trash bin, right? If you buy a cheap external hard drive, you could be doing the latter without even knowing it. I recommend you brands like Seagate or Buffalo.

 

I have been using a Seagate hard drive for a few years now and it has never failed me. I like the brand because they are reliable. Nothing is more annoying than a failed hard drive.

 

Just as Somethingback said... Get a hard drive... and a Caddy.
Hard drive... choices...
320GB Samsung SpinPoint M8 HN-M320MBB SATA II 2.5" Laptop Hard Drive - HDD - £30.70 inc VAT.
or
1 Tb Hitachi Travelstar 2.5" Laptop HDD - £47.87 inc VAT

and an external enclosure (Caddy) - many available, but I tend to use this one...
ARIAnet U25BS 2.5" SATA USB 2.0 Hard Drive HDD Enclosure / Black - £5.99 inc VAT

There is an U25SM SATA/IDE enclosure which will accept EITHER an old IDE HDD or a 'normal' SATA HDD - if you still have any oldIDE HDD's still hanging around, (Cost £9.79 inc)

All from Aria.co.uk (I think postage was around £8.00)

AND THEY ARE ALL BRANDED UNITS NO KNOCK-OFFs NO CHEAP RUBBISH.

 

You can buy a WD hard drive. They are famous for making the best hard disks available today in the market. I have read several reviews about the hard drive and I must say they are really good and affordable.

 

I can offer some help and personal stories on this since I currently own 4 external harddrives and have used each quite extensively.

Seagate Expansion drive - This one fell apart after a year. First it was the connectors that broke, I decided to open it up and stick the drive into an external case. I was actually advised this by a rep at Seagate who said they'd make a note on my serial number (or something, idk how it worked..) that if the drive needed assistance in the future, they would help me even though it was removed from the case. Long story short, it died 4 months later and the RMA procedure was annoying but worked out and I received another drive that is working for 1+ years (knock on wood), I'm always paranoid about it though.

Seagate Goflex 1tb - I bought this during the drought of HDs, when everything was expensive and this was the only deal out there. Has awful reviews but works fine so far. I noticed a scan of the drive locates a few invalid sectors which is worrying.

x2 Western Digital 2TB Elements drives - I love the look of these, just seems to have much better build quality than the Seagate drives and have worked well so far. One is 2 years old the other is almost a year old. Used very infrequently. I have two friends that bought Passport drives, one had it break down completely within a year and the other friend's drive works fine but I needed to use a repair tool online to fix it up since the computer stopped reading it after a while.

I would say go with Western Digital but anything can happen, perhaps go for the best deal in your area. Hope this was helpful.

 

All of the WD drives I have purchased seem to have failed in the long run.

 

Basically get the cheapest one you can buy from WD or Seagate. Every harddrive will eventually fail, but these are two brands that stand behind their product. Currently there is a 4 TB seagate external drive on sale for $139.99