Best External harddrive for laptops

[usmcluke]

Ok in the past when I deployed I just took a bunch of dvd and cds and whatnot with me but I have decided to step it up a notch. I will be taking 4 external drives with varying purposes. My machine is an HP dv600z (64bitx2 2/2gig ram, 3xusb 2.0 and 1xfirewire), I doubt I will ever need to have all of the drives connected at once but would be nice to have the option.

1. Base image of my machine (75 gig or better). You never know when you are going to hose a machine so I want to be prepared to restore my machine to a working state with all the applications I use.

2. Music drive (roughly 100 gig). Have to have my music this will be the most used external drive, should be both compact and tough.

3. Video drive (the bigger the better). This drive will house all of my porn and every movie I can rip from now until Jan (suggestions on dvd ripping software would be nice too).

4. Photos drive (400gig or so should do it). This will house the photos I take as well as anyone else's I can get my hands on. It will also have pics of my friends and family for those homesick days.

So let me know what you think. I thought about getting something firewire with 1tb or better and putting it all there but having all my eggs in one basket doesn't sound great to me. I will also buy one more GP drive for backup to any of the above. Space is a premium so the smaller the form factor the better.

[8mpg]

geezz... You are gonna dump some cash on hd's...

check out www.doom9.org for dvd ripping info. Also www.afterdawn.com

[Mach1Nut]

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8353881&type=product&id=1176507039221

These right here are nice. I have the Red 160gb one for work and it fits nicely in my laptop case.

[SOHC]

they're all very similar, and most people will probably will be all over seagate's balls, but they're all similar in design and function. just look for multiple intefaces and highest drive speed if you're looking for the "best".

btw, if you want to get some really freaking good deals, western digital just released a whole new line of drives, so go check local best buys/fry's etc (when I was still working at best buy, we were making ridiculous price cuts on the previous gen models) and you're sure to find a pretty good deal.

simpletech makes a really cool "pininfirina designed" 500gb hard drive that's actually pretty small for a full size drive.

other thing to look at is that most of the large capacity drives (anything that's not designated "portable") will generally require you to plug them into a wall socket, as opposd to the smaller capacity (and smaller size) drives which can be usb powered.

[BottleRocket]

[QUOTE=chsretiredathlete]they're all very similar, and most people will probably will be all over seagate's balls, but they're all similar in design and function. just look for multiple intefaces and highest drive speed if you're looking for the "best".

btw, if you want to get some really freaking good deals, western digital just released a whole new line of drives, so go check local best buys/fry's etc (when I was still working at best buy, we were making ridiculous price cuts on the previous gen models) and you're sure to find a pretty good deal.

simpletech makes a really cool "pininfirina designed" 500gb hard drive that's actually pretty small for a full size drive.

other thing to look at is that most of the large capacity drives (anything that's not designated "portable") will generally require you to plug them into a wall socket, as opposd to the smaller capacity (and smaller size) drives which can be usb powered.[/QUOTE]

Seagate has some of the best engineering of the major HDD brands. Have you taken apart a WD or Maxtor lately?

[SOHC]

[QUOTE=BottleRocket]Seagate has some of the best engineering of the major HDD brands. Have you taken apart a WD or Maxtor lately?[/QUOTE]

I won't disagree with the fact that Seagate drives are very well engineered (can't say i've taken any of them apart), but what does it net you? Your data may be (slightly) more stable, but I'll 4 years into my Wester Digital, and I haven't had a single problem. And if you want to go the "best engineered" route, it's Hitachi from what most people say.

Granted price is negligible between most of the major brands, but I just don't see the whole appeal personally. I may just not like them because the segate rep that came to my store was a pushy and annoying, but I guess that's his job.

When it comes down to it, price>brand.

[joshstang]

just get a 1 tb :) 1000 gigs :D

[ThreeFingerPete]

[QUOTE=chsretiredathlete]When it comes down to it, price>brand.[/QUOTE]


WD hard drives of 4 years ago are far better quality than those of today. Maxtor is crap too.

[ceyko]

OP, I never "deployed" but I did work in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan for many years. I made a lot of damned mistakes with external drives too. Every drive from cheap to expensive failed on me. One made it 1.5 years in Iraq and then failed in El Paso at the hotel on me. :)

Anyway, the drive that made it that long was a Maxtor drive with a SOLID aluminum case and decent cooling. What I would do is....

1. Stick with 3.5" drives and avoid the smaller lappy drives in an enclosure. I had 3 or 4 of them, everyone is defunct now.

2. Find a solid aluminum cased drive...maybe with a built in fan. (either way, you'll need to clean them out every now and then) Right now I have a Maxtor HDD and a WD (My Book) drive sitting right in front of me. I can squeeze the sides of the Maxtor and it does not budge. The WD is squishy.

3. After you find the case that works, buy the drive. If you find them both in one, you're good to go.

The reason I think the case is vital is for traveling. I assume you're going to be packing these in a suitcase or duffel as well. Either way, the way they strap those down so hard in the C130s - you need to have drive cases that can hold their own against pressure.

Also, have you thought about trimming 1 or 2 single purpose drives? That'll allow you to buy a 1 or 2 TB drive and backup the other drives to it incase of drive failure. If you get a private internet connection over there, let me know....maybe I'll setup an FTP server for everyone to put pr0n up for ya. 400 gigs really is not THAT much for a long deployment. lol (problem is when all your buddy's suck up my bandwidth...)

Take care

[Osiris]

Borat (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0056187/): [[color=black]to [color=black]Uzbek[/color]istan Embassy in New York[/color]] Fuck you, Motherfuckers!