External Hard Drive Wanted

[Geno]

Looking for a Hard Drive , budget is key , mostly photos and songs . Any ideas please ??

 

[(RIP) Kaister]

WD passport.

reliable and safe - which is what you want.

 

[Dansin]

If you want something that'll offer a lot more than just an external hard drive consider a NAS drive. I've just replaced our old homebrew NAS with a Netgear Stora and 2x 2Gb hard drives. It supports RAID 1 so mirrors your data across 2 drives. It also supports DLNA so if you've a DLNA enabled telly you can access your music, photo's and videos directly.

 

[Greg Masters]

2x 2Gb hard drives.

Tb?

 

[claw]

Don't go too 'budget' it may be worth paying a wee bit more if your storing photo's and wouldn't like to loose them.

Agree with Kaister, you can't go wrong with WD passport externals.

 

[Greger]

Have a 1TB Hitachi from Tesco, seems OK. Mains powered rather than USB. Also have a Netgear mains and a WD passport USB powered. Also put photos onto DVD.

 

[mikeTR]

If you want something that'll offer a lot more than just an external hard drive consider a NAS drive. I've just replaced our old homebrew NAS with a Netgear Stora and 2x 2Gb hard drives. It supports RAID 1 so mirrors your data across 2 drives. It also supports DLNA so if you've a DLNA enabled telly you can access your music, photo's and videos directly.

Hi Dansin

I have been looking at this NAS recently. Did you go for the ultra then? and do you think its worth the premium over the duo ? The key difference I can see is the DLNA capability? (& integration with other media devices like tivo etc)

what other features/ benefits did you see that led you to choosing the netgear solution?

Thanks

 

[skyenet]

Had reliability problems with a few WD External drives so now using Imoga USB Hard drives inlcuding Prestige Desktop and Mac Mini sized Drives. Some have been on 24/7 for three years now and no problems. Think you could get a 1TB Prestige drive for around £50 if you do a bit of searching. In fact I am sure I saw one in Currys for around £50 last week. I got most of mine from Tesco when they were the best priced. Have also bought direct from Iomega after getting offers via their emails. The following is a link to their last email offer. They also have had Network drives on offer recently.

http://www.iomega.com/email/eu/weekly_en_uk.html?rmlink=20110722_online_en_uk&rmtrack=20110722_en_uk

 

[Dansin]

Tb?

I think I regressed back to the 90's this morning. Yes, 2x 2Tb drives...

 

[Dansin]

Hi Dansin

I have been looking at this NAS recently. Did you go for the ultra then? and do you think its worth the premium over the duo ? The key difference I can see is the DLNA capability? (& integration with other media devices like tivo etc)

what other features/ benefits did you see that led you to choosing the netgear solution?

Thanks

It's this one with 2x these HDD's.

I use Ubuntu on a laptop and desktop and the previous NAS ran Freenas so I wanted someting Linux based. Out of the box it's quite restricted with a lot of features only available with a premium subscription. Fortunately there's a large community of developers who have hacked it wide open to provide loads more functionality than I'll ever need - Openstora. We use it to store/serve music, pictures, films and data to PC's, as well as to DLNA TV's. No faffing about turning a PC on the stream stuff to the telly, it just accesses them directly from the Stora. The barn is cabled throughout with cat6 so we can easily stream HD content. It also only consumes under 10w when running and you can set the disk spindown time to whatever you want.

 

[wessie]

Some have appeared on HUKD recently
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/wes...able-hard-drive-1tb-usb-3-0-red-69-pcw/990011
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/sam...-usb-2-0-2-5-hdd-59-99-dabsoutlet-ebay/989876
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/wd-elements-2-tb-external-desktop-hard-drive-amazon-61-99/989491

Read the comments for links to voucher codes etc

 

[Geno]

Thankyou all , might as well buy something decent as these computer things are going to be around for a while . Geno

 

[Myke Rocks]

A few problems?

Had reliability problems with a few WD External drives

In my life I have bought 6 western digital drives. All failed within 6 months.
(2 in desktops, 4 in laptops.)
In the words of Oscar Wilde: To lose one parent is unfortunate, to lose another smacks of carelessness.
I have now learned enough to know that is a wise move to buy any other make. Currently using Samsung 500GB with no problems whatsoever.
Myke

 

[Geno]

In my life I have bought 6 western digital drives. All failed within 6 months.
(2 in desktops, 4 in laptops.)
In the words of Oscar Wilde: To lose one parent is unfortunate, to lose another smacks of carelessness.
I have now learned enough to know that is a wise move to buy any other make. Currently using Samsung 500GB with no problems whatsoever.
Myke

Just ordered a samsung , was at 50% saving so hope I got good deal , Thankyou you all . This site always comes through strong no matter the subject matter , just wait till I try and use it , may need more help . Thankyou