I have a home office with 2 computers. I'd like to purchase a large external
hard drive to backup the data of both. I'm looking for something in the
neighborhood of 250 gig.
Anyone have any suggestions as to a good drive? Is their something wrong
with my idea? Thanks in advance.

Marty Shore

Marty Shore <mshore@nyc.rr.com> wrote

I like Samsung's myself. Unfortunately they dont make
a packaged external drive currently, so I would buy a
decent external housing that cools the drive adequately,
which doesnt include a drive and add a drive to one.

That way you get the full 3 year warranty on the
drive. All the manufacturers that do sell packaged
external hard drives only have 1 year warrantys.

That means that there is no nice tidy thing to recommend tho.

Nope, its a very decent way to do backup.

"Marty Shore" <mshore@nyc.rr.com> wrote in message
news:gJP2g.26396$nA3.5912@news-wrt-01.rdc-nyc.rr.com...
Not at all! I just started doing exactly that last week with a 250GB'er.

I picked up a Samsung (P)ATA SP2514N from newegg.com (measly $95, including
shipping) and couldn't be happier with the drive.

It is an internal drive though. Initially, I planned on using it internally
but after coming across the 137GB BIOS thing (for Win), and then re-thinking
what I actually would mainly use the drive for (media and backups), I just
made it an external deal with a case I already have. (ADS Dual Link Drive
Kit)..

I'm using USB2.0 with it and it works just fine. I've also used it,
externally, with WinXP/98 and Linux with no problem at all.

250GB, at first, seems like it will be a "bottomless pit", but the more HDD
you have, the more you want to use it! With media and backups, I've already
used ~160GB on the drive. I'll probably be getting another drive (same
one) in the relative near future.

The SP2414N lives up to Samsung's repupation for quiet HDD's as well. It
runs a faint whisper. The fan in the case, quiet also, is louder than the
drive. If it weren't for the activity led, I wouldn't even know when the
drive is in use.

Previously Marty Shore <mshore@nyc.rr.com> wrote:
The idea is fine. Stay away from Maxtor. Therir disks need to be
cooled very well to be reliable. Their own external enclosures
are _not_ well cooled. If you don't mind a little screwdriver
work, then get an enclosure without disk (make sure about cooling,
best get one with a fan) and a disk. Personally my impression
with current Samsung disks is very good.

Arno

Marty Shore wrote:

Just buy a 250GB hard drive and put it into an external
enclosure. There are ones for USB and ones for SATA
and ones for both USB and SATA. The ones made by
Kingwin have built-in fans and wall-wart power supplies
to keep the hard drive cool:
http://www.kingwin.com/pdut_Cat.asp?CateID=27

*TimDaniels*

On Sun, 23 Apr 2006 18:30:36 GMT, "Marty Shore" <mshore@nyc.rr.com>
wrote:

I've had good luck with Iomega externals over the last year or so -
several network drives and a USB2 external. They've been reliable and
run cool, though one of the bigger network drives has a somewhat noisy
fan.

I don't know who's drives are in them, but whatever they are, they've
worked well for me.


--
Neil Maxwell - I don't speak for my employer