External Hard Drive (usb 2.0)

[denny_kyser]

I saw a 80 gig external hard drive at Kmart and am wondering if this

wouldnt be a good purchase and save from burning so many DVD / CD's

 

has anyone used a device like this or thinkiing about it.

 

Cost was a little over $100.00.

[bobmichaels]

Yes, yes & yes I use one.

 

They now seem to run about $1 per gig and are available everywhere. So buy one twice as big as you think you need.

 

This is about as easy a decision as 30 years ago when people wondered if they should have a hard drive instead of storing programs on one floppy and data on another.

[stephen_martin2]

they work great. I have a firlite (a little pricey $179). it runs on the system power rather than having to plug it in any where. it is a little slow when saving but it fine.

 

I use it to store my images that I'm working on at the office and when I need to go out of town I can easly plug it into my laptop.

[gv]

I am assuming that the Kmart drive includes a case. If you are handy with a small

screwdriver you can obtain the most gigs per buck by purchasing a bare drive and a

separate enclosure. I recently saw a 250GB bare drive at Costco for $130; a case will set

you back anywhere from $30-$175; the case I used to enclose a 200GB drive has USB 2.0

and Firewire, with a handy Firewire port on the front. It set me back around $90 because

of its dual functionality. Figure around five-ten minutes to wed drive and case.

[jon_austin]

Like G.V., I put my own together. Had an unused 80GB EIDE/ATAPI drive lying around, and installed it in an IO Magic IDE-to-USB 2.0 external hard drive enclosure. Kit included cooling fan, power and data cables. I paid about $70 around a year ago; they're down to $40 to $50 now. Check out:

 

http://www.iomagic.com/Categories/results.asp?cat=63

 

Best decision I ever made; MUCH faster and less trouble than burning optical discs. Also great for shuttling large amounts of data between systems.

[gv]

Not to mention that it makes backing-up a Drag-and-Drop proposition, it takes less time

and effort, so you are more likely to do it rather than put it off...

[denny_kyser]

Thanks guys picked one up yesterday.

[phule]

You should buy 2 for redundancy.

[mark_j._weber]

Unless portability is a factor, wouldn't either a larger C: drive, or a second (D:) internal drive be preferrable? Or am I missing something here.

Regards.

[jon_austin]

All depends on your application. I use mine to back up several machines, as well as to shuttle files between them, so a second internal drive in any one system wouldn't work for me. Also, the safest back-up is one that can be stored remotely.

[rich815]

Quick question related to this if I may. Based on this thread and a couple others recently I decided to get an additional external HD (firewire) for my WinXP system. I picked up a Seagate 200GB internal drive and an extenral firewire drive box kit. Installing the drive into the external box went good. Plugging it all in the drive installed fine and is recognized by the system. Using Disk Management I had it formatted NTSF and assigned a letter. However, it's only being recognized at 128GB. <b>I do have installed WinXP SP1 so it's not that issue, and it's not a IDE driver issue either as I also already have installed (from 09/03) another external Western Digital 160GB firwire drive that is recognized fine for it's full capacity.</b> I remember when I installed that WD drive it too was only 128GB until I did the SP1 update. But as I said I now have that update, already have another external 160GB drive being recognized properly but this new 200GB drive is only seen as 128GB in My Computer. Anyone have any suggestions on what to do next? Is there an extra step to get the drive recognized by the system for it's full capacity even though I already have SP1 installed? Thanks.