External hard drives...

[Phantom Warrior]

I'm looking for an external hard drive to back up the stuff on my computer, since I'll be gone to basic for four months or so.  I'll probably also use it to transfer everything to the laptop I'm planning to buy afterwards.

Here are my requirements:

Good quality (obviously)
100GB +- 20GB
No more than $150 (ideally less than $100)


It would be nice if I could find something relatively small.  Bus powered vs. AC powered isn't a big thing for me, since I'm not planning to use it heavily.  Just as a backup.  For the connection standard...  I don't have anything but regular USB 1.0 (my current computer is 4 years old).  I _could_ be sold on buying a Firewire or USB 2.0 card, but like I said, this isn't going to see heavy use.  And I don't mind waiting a while to get everything moved over the first time.  I'm not sure it would be worth the $20-40 to get a PCI card for one of those.

Your input is appreciated.

P.S.  Fantom's 80GB Titanium got really good reviews on newegg.com and I'm considering it...

[jefnvk]

Watch the Best Buy/Circuit City/Office Max/Staples ads.  They often have Seagates on sale for under $100.

[Justin]

Best I know of are the LaCie portable drives.  Will hook up via USB or Firewire.  Fast and built to be portable.  IIRC, they retail for $200 or more, though.

[Ben]

Take some advice from someone who has gone through four of these damn things. If you're working in an environment where they will be exposed to anything above about 80 deg, and you plan on leaving it on 24/7, get one with a built in fan (or two). All mine that died were passive heat dissipators (i.e., aluminum case), and they just couldn't handle higher temp conditions  I exposed them to in a constant on state.

I still have one, a Seagate, that's working fine, but I only turn it on for maybe a few hours a day. The ones that died were all Maxtors (and I generally like Maxtor stuff).

You can find fan cooled externals online, or better yet, buy the parts and put it together yourself. Cheap and easy.

Edit: okay, just actually read ALL of your post and see you won't be using it constantly. For price though, building your own via extremepcgear.com or similar will still be the cheapest (plus you get the fan)

[P95Carry]

My Western Dig' 160 Gb is free standing on tower - usually with A/C running in office - not too much above 80º - and tho on 24/7 it is rarely too obviously warm.  Got this one from NewEgg when I replaced my whole system - but forget price!

[Vodka7]

Depending on what you're backing up, a DVD burner and a stack of blank DVDs can be a cheaper, more versatile solution.

Otherwise, consider just getting a regular, high quality internal drive, and slapping it an a high quality external enclosure (they make em in USB2 and Firewire--if your computer doesn't have either of those, you'll need a controller card too.)  You'll probably save a couple bucks compared to a retail external.

www.newegg.com is a great place to start.

[Phantom Warrior]

I've worked w/ computers before, but I'm new to external hard drives.  Any recommendations for who makes "high quality" stuff?

[TarpleyG]

I am partial to I/O Magic myself.  I have had plenty of their off-board, external stuff before and never had a problem.  Backpack is another quality brand.

Get yourself an enclosure here and use a cheap hard drive:
http://www.iomagic.com/Products/show_all_results.asp?ProdID=I35USB2AE

OR, buy the whole enchilada right here:
http://www.seagate.com/products/retail/external/usb_firewire.html

Greg

[Vodka7]

Did a little searching around on NewEgg for you.  Hard Drives go in and out of vogue every year or two--back when I bought mine, Western Digital Caviar SE's were the rage, and it's treated me well.  (Of course, at one point IBM Deskstar's were the rage; they did not treat me well.)

Right now the Samsung SpinPoints seem to be getting all the best reviews.  Here's a 120 meg version with 2mb of cache that uses the ATA133 interface ($70):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822152005

Here's a Samsung with an 8mb cache and the newer SATA interface ($80):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822152017

As for enclosures, don't know much about em.  Just make sure the internal interface matches your drive (IDE/SATA) and the external interface matches what your computer has (USB2/Firewire)

The cheapest external HD's I could find on NewEgg were going for about $120, and for that price you could get an excellent internal drive and an excellent external enclosure.