Travel Technology - Need a good Terabyte External Hard Drive

This Cavalry seems like a pretty good deal:

http://www.pcnation.com/web/details.asp?affid=305&item=Y95705

Any other suggestions or better prices out there?

I am mainly just going to use it for storage of photos/movies/music files.

Go to Newegg, select hard drives -> external -> 1 TB -> sort by best ratings.

The top two are from Fantom (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150414%20131021336&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=True&Order=RATING), both cheaper than your drive.

Scroll down about 15 or so units and you'll find your Cavalry drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822101121)for $92, $82 after a mail-in rebate. Pictures look slightly different, but the mfg. product number is the same.

$134? That is about $50 too much. External 1TB's should cost no more than $80.

Check the deals here:

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/934340?highlight_key=y&keyword1=1TB

Thanks guys - really appreciate the help. I had a feeling I was about to overpay!
I owe you guys a beer for saving me ~$50!

^

YMMV but I had a Fantom drive which suddenly became a Phantom drive - dead as a doornail, no warning.

I am using 2 Cavalry 1TB ext drives and both run cool and flawlessly. Cost was about $90 each incl S&H from Newegg.

MisterNice

Hmmm..... I clearly paid too much for my Lacie "Eye of Sauron" 1TB drive (though it does do Firewire which is useful to me).

I use a WD My Book. Very happy with it.

if i may piggy back on my beer-buddy's ;) thread....

i have an i-mac (intel/ 500gb hd) and i've just inherited goalie-mom's mac g4 667mhz laptop (it's a dinosaur but hey, it will run leopard ;) and for web and e-mail on the road, that's all i need but i digress....)

my current back-up drive is my old lacie fw drive but it doesn't have enough space to back up both machines so with that, i'm going to need a new back up drive (1tb) to handle both machines and was wondering about speed-which is faster

both machines have fw and usb ports with the imac usb 2.0 and both fw 800 & 400 and the laptop usb 1.0 and fw400.

firewire?
usb (is it backwardly compatible and how much slower is usb 1.0 vs usb 2.0)?
ethernet connection to my wireless router?

if i may piggy back on my beer-buddy's ;) thread....

i have an i-mac (intel/ 500gb hd) and i've just inherited goalie-mom's mac g4 667mhz laptop (it's a dinosaur but hey, it will run leopard ;) and for web and e-mail on the road, that's all i need but i digress....)

my current back-up drive is my old lacie fw drive but it doesn't have enough space to back up both machines so with that, i'm going to need a new back up drive (1tb) to handle both machines and was wondering about speed-which is faster

both machines have fw and usb ports with the imac usb 2.0 and both fw 800 & 400 and the laptop usb 1.0 and fw800.

firewire?
usb (is it backwardly compatible and how much slower is usb 1.0 vs usb 2.0)?
ethernet connection to my wireless router?

First, regarding the OP's query -- hard drives are technologies that you largely plug in and forget about, unless you run applications that really thrash the drive (engineering, photography editing, video, etc.). The exception is when the drive fails, in which case life can get complicated. So I'd tend to stay away from the cheapest possible drive, and get one with good reviews and a history of reliable performance. Won't guarantee anything, but I'd rather pay a bit more if it buys me a longer mean-time-to-failure.

Second, for the quote above:
Firewire 800 is faster than Firewire 400 which is faster than USB2.0.

USB2.0 is rated at 480 Mbps, while Firewire 400 is rated at, well, 400 Mbps. However, the FW protocol has less overhead, so most of the time, it achieves more sustained performance than does USB2.0.

BUT. If you ever want to plug the drive into a different computer, especially a PC, you might want to go for a USB2.0 drive. Every PC has USB2.0; only rarely do they offer a FW port. So a USB drive will be more interchangeable, should the need arise.

USB1.0 or a wireless connection are both lousy in bandwidth and shouldn't even figure in your comparison, if you're going to want to back up lots of data.

So for your purposes, I'd look for a FW800 interface if I cared about performance; I'd look for a USB2.0 interface if I could sacrifice a bit more than 2x the performance in exchange for portability/interoperability. And once you do the initial synchronization/backup, each successive backup is not going to be all *that* much data, so the performance hit of going to USB2.0 is probably not huge.

Hope this helps.

If you have to Macs buy a TimeMachine harddrive from Apple. Not the cheapest but definitely the easiest backup method for Macs.

I bought a WD MyBook for my Mac and use the TimeMachine software but if I had to buy another external harddrive for my Mac I would buy a TimeMachine Harddrive from Apple.

If you have to Macs buy a TimeMachine harddrive from Apple. Not the cheapest but definitely the easiest backup method for Macs.

I bought a WD MyBook for my Mac and use the TimeMachine software but if I had to buy another external harddrive for my Mac I would buy a TimeMachine Harddrive from Apple.thanks to both of you ^ and i messed up just a bit.....the old laptop is fw400 not fw800 (post fixed).

my folks have a 500 gb time machine and while it's nice as it's both an airport base station and hard drive, it is just so bloody slow backing up wirelessly (even after the initial back-up ;)) and at&t just sent me a new wireless router as my (really really) old dsl modem couldn't see anything wireless so that's why i'm looking at an external drive (and then backing up with time machine as i do now).

i think i'm gonna start looking at fw drives* and even if it is fw 800, i have a fw400-fw800 cable which i could use on the old laptop


*my existing external drive has both fw400/800 and a usb port so who knows, maybe i'll get lucky

If you have to Macs buy a TimeMachine harddrive from Apple. Not the cheapest but definitely the easiest backup method for Macs.

I bought a WD MyBook for my Mac and use the TimeMachine software but if I had to buy another external harddrive for my Mac I would buy a TimeMachine Harddrive from Apple.

Do you mean Time Capsule? I believe Time Machine is the name of the software that does backups...

I personally wouldn't use a wireless scheme for backup, but I can see the ease-of-use such a thing provides. If my non-tech-savvy parents needed such a solution, for example, I might push that kind of hardware...

Do you mean Time Capsule? I believe Time Machine is the name of the software that does backups...

I personally wouldn't use a wireless scheme for backup, but I can see the ease-of-use such a thing provides. If my non-tech-savvy parents needed such a solution, for example, I might push that kind of hardware...yes, you're right as it is the "time capsule" which is an external h/d (500gb or 1tb) and router combo and "time machine" is the back-up software (which i currently use via firewire to back up my i-mac and it works great and is much faster than via ethernet and/or wireless)

So for your purposes, I'd look for a FW800 interface if I cared about performance; I'd look for a USB2.0 interface if I could sacrifice a bit more than 2x the performance in exchange for portability/interoperability.

And if you really want speed, you go with an eSATA drive, which is basically going to have the same performance as an internal drive.

to bump this back up, here's the drive i was looking at as it has usb 2.0, and both fw 800 & 400 (pretty much the same as my lacie ext 180 gb minus eSATA). not gonna buy it from apple ;) but though i'd put it out here for some feedback and possible purchase locations.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/TV402ZM/A?fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&mco=MzgxNjQ5MA

And if you really want speed, you go with an eSATA drive, which is basically going to have the same performance as an internal drive.

+1 on eSATA. Many drives have both an eSATA and USB interface, so you can use the USB interface for compatibility with all PC's, and then switch to eSATA when you need the extra performance. I have an eSATA ExpressCard for my laptop and my external FreeAgent Xtreme drive screams on it.

To repeat myself. Take a look at the My Book series from Western Digital. I'm really happy with mine.