external hard drive - dublin or online

conor.hogan.2

Hi.


I am looking for the best (relative I know but still) external hard drive to buy in Dublin or online.

Reliability is obviously important but so is price as I might buy a second later depending if i can compress my music down and upload online reliably.

It will be used mainly with my macbook so working well with the older 2ghz core 2 duo white pastic 13 inch macbook is best, but not only for use on that.

Speed is also important as I will be transferring 65 gigs of music and then I will probably back up the contents of the drive which is 120 gigs so I dont want that to take extra long.

Capacity wise 250 is enough - no need for more unless it is as cheap or more reliable etc.

Thanks for any input, much appreciated.

Sad Professor

Buy online. Try Komplett or Amazon.co.uk.

Reliability? I wouldn't hold my breath but stick to either WD and Seagate. There's not much difference between individual models except ports and outer casing. Personally, I'd just get a low end one (WD Elements, Seagate Expansions, etc) and put the remaining money towards getting a second.

Any USB external drive should work with a Mac. You'll just have to format it as HFS+ using Disk Utility when you get it. Takes less than a minute. There are "Mac versions" but the only difference most of the time is they come pre-formatted for Mac, or have a Firewire port.

The smaller notebook drives are USB powered, meaning they don't have to be plugged in. However, the capacity on these is much smaller and they are more expensive. Regular desktop drives come much larger, but it's probably best to avoid anything over 1TB as they are particularly unreliable.

conor.hogan.2

Perfect. I will check both and see which is cheaper.

I was thinking I should just format it and it would work - thanks for confirming. But is it worth it to get firewire speed wise over usb?

I will deffo get one with a plug.

Thanks Sad Professor - always good input.

Any more input anybody? Actual shops in Dublin?

conor.hogan.2

seagate or western digital? or much of a muchness?

Sad Professor

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

But is it worth it to get firewire speed wise over usb?

It depends what you are using it for. If you are just looking for cheap storage for backup, etc, then not really. However, Firewire 400 is still quite a bit faster than USB 2.0 and is less heavy on the CPU. It also supports chained drives and frees up your USB port for other things.

Sad Professor

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

seagate or western digital? or much of a muchness?

Whichever is cheaper imo. Some people will claim Seagate are less reliable, others will say WD. Experiences vary. Some people are just unlucky with certain brands. The truth is hard drives are unreliable generally - assume the worst and backup everything.

Might be worth considering which has the better warranty. I recall Seagate offering longer warranties in the past, not sure if that is still the case.

conor.hogan.2

Ok - speed is the only thing and after checking a bit 33% (sometimes faster) is not worth the extra price you pay for them from what I see.

Has anyone bought anything with pixmania - how is it?

Extended warranties?

Pixmania is cheapest.
wd is cheaper - 81.16 WD vs 93.66 Seagate - both 1tb and 5 yr extended warranties on both and 12 euro for 10 business day delivery.

93.16 euro for 1TB is good?

Sad Professor

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Has anyone bought anything with pixmania - how is it?

As long as you don't need customer service, great. If you do, not so great. They've a terrible, terrible reputation. I wouldn't touch them.

Extended warranties?

No. The regular warranties last long enough. But storage is so cheap now days it's usually not worth the hassle. Hard drives aren't really investments. When one fails you just bin it and get a new one.

conor.hogan.2

For 65 euro - its an investment for me!

Expansys and amazon are dearer by a bit.

So you wouldn't pay 16 euro for the extended 5 year? i suppose it is only an extra three years.

conor.hogan.2

What is Amazons customer care/warranty like?

amazon.co.uk have the same listed for 2 euro more and I think it is free delivery - so cheaper overall or roughly the same price.

I trust the brand more if I go Amazon as they are well known etc.

conor.hogan.2

57 pounds - less than 70 euro. free delivery for a 1TB from Amazon not bad.

I can easily archive my music and upload in case my ipod and macbook fail - because losing that music would be hard and very expensive to buy back.

Sad Professor

Go with Amazon. Although they will add the additional Irish VAT at the checkout, so it will work out a bit more.

Talisman

Check out Right-Click on Camden Street, they usually have good deals on hard drives.

conor.hogan.2

I bought it on Amazon but there is a problem with the card so I will check right-click while i am in town tomorrow and if nothing good there I will actually buy it on Amazon.

The whole cost was the same as listed above - no extra tax added on.

odd?