Thread: Ext HD's

Originally Posted by Mickey

With all the recent discussion with Doug it had got me to thinking about need to get another HD to use as a back-up drive where I could store an image of my principal drive.

Did some looking on-line, New-Egg, and did some looking between Seagate and WD. From all the owner reviews it looks like in general the WD drives have a better reputation.

Wasn't looking for a pocket model as this is for my desktop machine. Larger capacity and lower prices. Stopped by Fry's last night as they typ have sales on HD's every week. Sorta had my mind set on getting a model with triple IO interface Vs the single USB so common nowadays. No sale this week and prices seemed high compared to what I saw list on New-Egg. Later I stopped in to Costco and saw they had WD 500G ext drives, one of their My Book models. Had the 3 IO's USB/1394/SATA. Came with 3 yrs warranty. Price was $100. I walked out with one. Price was 60% lower than at Fry's and somewhat cheaper than New-Egg.

Drive came with cables for USB & 1394. Plugged in the power supply, hooked to the desktop and all was well with the world. Upon booting, could read/write data to the drive. Drive is quiet and cool.

Drive comes with drive formatted to FAT and I wanted to use NTFS. Not an issue. Ran DOS command convert.exe. Entered in short command to say which drive I wanted to convert and in 2-3 min all done and data that came on the drive, still intact.

Now have a cloned image of C: & D: Will update the image every week or two. I do a daily bkp of all files that change and they have been stored on the 2nd drive in the machine. A copy of those files have been copied to the new ext drive.

I feel more comfortable now that in addition to the bkp files and have an image of C: so if it goes out, I'm only an hr or two away from having a new replacement drive and fully back n operation.

Oh, while in Fry's I saw 2G thumb drives, Kingston, for $10.

You would make a lousy client Mickey! You wouldn't need me at all.

Dougster™

I'll throw in my other 2 cents and answer your original question more directly. I am not a big fan of buying external hard drives. I am a fan of buying internal hard drives and housing them in an appropriate external hard drive enclosures. The reason for this is that I can pick and choose the exact components I want and avoid getting cheap, obsolete and/or unknown hard drives in a pretty, ready-to-go enclosure. This all goes back to when I was shopping for externals last year and became very disenchanted with what I was finding... on the inside.

I think this has improved lately and as long as you know specifically what you are getting on the inside, I have no gripes. In terms of brand, I have no strong preference among the top 4 or 5 name brands. They are all good... and, on the other hand, I have replaced them all in both premature and old age failures. In my limited experience, the single most important thing (beyond performance) is obtaining the longest consumer warranty available by shopping carefully and always buying "retail box".

Dougster™

Originally Posted by Mickey

We have no issues on the choose components and build approach. This current desktop is the first commercial built machine I've had in many a year.

Not sure what you know that I don't about these external drives. If one buys from one of the top brand drive makers, would one find something other than one of that brands internal 3.5" drives inside? Are the problems you've seen due to drive issues or PS/interface components?

This WD My Book external drive I bought is in a sealed enclosure so no way of opening up and taking a look see but it is easy to see it is a 3.5" drive. As it comes with a 3yr warranty, should one expect it to be a different drive than a stand alone internal drive from same mfgr that also has the same warranty period?

Wasn't aware at the time of purchase but son says he has the same My Book model attached to his computer at work. Everyone in the group has them. He said they had these for about 6 months and he did not mention any problems anyone has had. I expect those computers/drives are running 24/7. Doesn't mean mine won't fail tomorrow.

I guess my questions are to try and understand why so many people have had bad experience with external drives. Not talking the small pocket models.

Buying this drive from Costco, I have 90 days to change my mind and 3 yrs of warranty coverage. Since this drive is only a back-up drive, it will not contain any data that is exclusive to this drive. After a few weeks use, this drive will not be turned on other than when writing new archive data to it. Tis possible this drive will let me down at exactly the wrong time, when I'm needing it to restore and image to the principle internal drive.

In no way am I criticizing your decision to buy a WD "My Book" model. I believe you did just fine by buying an external drive package from a top-shelf hard drive manufacturer and getting a three year warranty with it to boot. It doesn't get much better than that!

My poor shopping experience (reported above) was related to some "bargain shopping" I was trying to do for another "dirt poor" friend... and my frustration at not being able to tell the brand, type, model, specs or date of manufacture of the hard drive contained in certain external packages offered by companies other than OEM hard drive manufacturers. In effect, you were buying a hard drive blindly... totally on faith... based on cost and packaging alone... and I didn't like that one bit. There are certain second and third tier hard drive manufacturers that I do not wish to deal with (mainly due to warranty response concerns) and heck... I couldn't even verify that the drives inside were brand new vs. refurbished. Given the practices of some companies I'm aware of, I wouldn't put anything past them.

In other words, I am a hideous, suspicious old SOB and I need to know exactly what I am getting in an external hard drive. And as far as I know, the only way to guarantee that I am getting exactly what I want is to buy an internal hard drive and house it myself in one of the many good external hard drive enclosures that are available.

Dougster™

Originally Posted by Deanster

I bought a WD 2.5 inch external drive & removed the drive from the housing to install in my laptop. The reason was that it was $20 cheaper to buy the external than the equivalent internal drive. I was surprised to find a Seagate laptop drive inside the Western Digital housing.

Yep! Quick story: I had a laptop in for repair and the lady wanted to know why I had to order in her replacement drive for X dollars while BJ's was selling an external 2.5" drive of the same size for Y (cheaper) dollars. So off I went to BJ's only to find zero information on the packaging about what it really was on the inside (brand or otherwise) and if it could be used. Turned out it was a PATA drive whereas she needed a SATA drive... Wonderful!!!

Originally Posted by Mickey

Doug, wasn't thinking you were being critical of my purchase. You're not the first person that has criticized prepackaged external drives and I'm trying to educate myself on why these are less reliable than internal models when we are talking the externals with 3.5" drives.

When you read owner reviews on sites like NewEgg, you find all kinds of commenters. Sometimes it's hard to separate the valid from the others.

Again, I make no judgement here. I'm seen them all last and I've seen them all fail. But when I want a particular make and model hard drive with the longest possible consumer warranty, buying two pieces and putting them together is my only guaranteed option. And beyond speed, it's all about the warranty and how well/fast a manufacturer will honor it.

Dougster™