Couldn't find a current thread on this, but does anyone have any suggestions for a dependable external hard drive? Looking at roughly 120 GBs of space (just for docs and pics) as well as a good warranty. Pricing roughly $120.

Yes, buy an enclosure yourself and an internal seagate 3.5" hard drive with 5 year warranty. IDE enclosure will be cheaper than a Sata enclosure, but you can do either one. Buy a good enclosure .. it's worth it. Price will be around the same or cheaper, depending on how much you end up paying for shipping to Hawaii, and you get a better/faster drive with a better warranty for the money. They are simple to put together.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817145656
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148103

Note that's a 160G 7200RPM IDE drive. Drive + enclosure for around $100 plus shipping. The 160's are only a few more dollars than the 120s.

-David

Slippahs, look at the fatwallet or slickdeals forums for a deal. There are tons. Here's one at buy.com for $109 all in for a 320 GB external drive, though IIRC they charge extra shipping to Hawaii:

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.as...101&adid=17662

When I lived in Honolulu I waited for a CompUSA deal (by monitoring fatwallet and slickdeals) and picked it up at their Ala Moana store. It's small by today's standards, but I got an 80GB CompUSA brand hard drive already in the enclosure for about $50 after rebate, IIRC. I sometimes found it easier to just suck it up and buy there rather than dealing with shipping.

If this is a desktop, do you have room for another HDD? they are much faster and much cheaper. are not difficult to install. take off cover, cram hd into space, plug in 2 cables, put cover back on.

OR, take cover off, plug in two plugs, drop hdd on bottom of case. do stuff, then take the hdd back out. I swap 2 or 3 into my desktop.

Circuit City has a new flavor of external and internal (150-250gb)for sale each week. usually about $60 after rebate. they have free shipping(i do not see hawaii excluded).

last week, office depot had a 100gig for sale. $80, with $50 rebate. free shipping for over $50. so they shipped it for free, and i sent in the rebate. on the box, "20 free gigabites!!"". they shipped a 120 gig hd.

The other question that needs to be asked: will this external hard drive spend its life sitting next to a desktop computer? Or will it travel with you and your laptop? If the former, then it'll be cheap ($0.40-60/GB should be the target price) to get a good-sized 3.5" external hard drive. If the latter, you're looking at around $0.80-1/GB for a good deal on a 2.5" external hard drive.

A good reliable drive: http://shop3.outpost.com/product/5030955

250Gb Buffalo for $69 after a $30 mail in rebate.

I prefer the smaller, quieter, more portable and costlier 2.5" drives. Hitachi makes nice units. I buy the cases separately.

MisterNice

As others have commented, depends on what you need it for? I have several HD that act as purely backups for data and also with carbon cloner (mac user), can boot from backup HD if any of my macs crash.

If only backup, most brands will work well, and you don't have to worry re speed, etc. I have 3 Acom that are both USB and firewire that work well and cheap at the time I bought them. If on the other hard, you plan to access HD often, in effect using it as a second hard drive, then speed, etc. is key. And if you plan to travel with it, then size of course important.

Maxtor and LaCie are both top brands, but for my needs, generic brand has worked well. Do search on buy.com, amazon, compUSA or any of the other on-line shops to see what deals are available.

for 120, if you are looking for 100gb or 120gb, you can get a very small, 2.5" inch drive, for about that much.
check out fatwallet.com they had some deals in the past week

If you want reliability I'd avoid the 2.5" drives in an external enclosure. The 2.5" drives themselves are very rugged and reliable (designed and built to 'mobile' usage specs).

Buy my experience with the USB enclosures for these drives, (have some from three or four different manufacturers), is that the enclosures are the weak link in the setup. Two that I have short out if you press then the wrong way (a regular occurrence if you carry the enclosure in a laptop travel bag). The drive is held inside the enclosure with two micro screws. The circuit board in the enclosure sometimes needs two USB connections to get sufficient power to operate -- you'll usually get a "Y" cable, two USB ends in parallel, and one end that plugs into a connection on the enclosure. So you may end up using two USB ports to power this up.

I have to say, I have had none of these experiences with any of the five 2.5" drive enclosures, or drives that I have/use. Sony VAIO enclosure, Maxtor 2.5" enclosure, IOgear enclosure, and two simpletech enclosures.

None have failed, and none require additional power (although, I have heard that some require a second power in, that is usually based on either low powered ethernet ports, or older v1.0 USB. That isn't really an enclosure issue, more a desktop or laptop computer issue - the PORT not being powered enough.

I've not had such a problem though, with mac powerbooks, macbooks, IBM thinkpads from six years ago and newer, but it COULD happen.

just another data point. The real only downside I see, is that the $ for MB is a lower yield than larger 3.5" drives, but if portability is key, and size, and the gross capacity is not an issue, nor absolute cost/benefit, then the 2.5" inclosures fit a nice bill

I have had almost the same experience. I have 3 2.5" external drives, two of which are over 3 years old with nil problems even though dropped a few times, ridden on numerous TSA luggage belts etc. I have never had to use an aux USB power cord for power either. This week Circuit City has a very affordable SimpleTech 100GB 2.5" HDD complete with enclosure for $90 and a similar 60GB Maxtor for $60.

MisterNice

here is a nice one
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...Code=101205-20

160gb, 2.5", for 138$ shipped free. There is also a zipzoom coupon on the internet for either 5, or 10% off.

I've bought from them many times.

Have had this Coolmax model for about a month...

http://www.directron.com/cd311sata.html

I like it because it can do PATA or SATA drives AND it can handle USB 2.0 or FireWire (IEEE-1394).

I bought it from directron.com Have bought many things from there with no problems and their prices are competitive, even on the HDs. Got a 500gb Seagate SATA for this baby and one month later it's working great!

- HF

300G Maxtor 7200RPM external hard drive .. $119.99
Staples.com, free shipping, instant rebate deal, expires 1/27

http://www.dealcatcher.com/coupons~v...56~pg=23287766

I couldn't tell what the warranty is. I'm guessing 1 year.

-David