2010-09-12, 02:30 PM
Fiel Wrote:The important parts of an external hard drive are the ports it has (USB 2.0/Firewire preferred) and the portability of the enclosure (needs to have proper cooling on it to prevent the drive from overheating). You can buy the EHDD & enclosure as a combo pack or buy them separately. I prefer Western Digital as I have bought all of my hard drives from them. YMMV. Don't really buy EHDDs so I couldn't tell you which one to buy, but that's what you need to be looking for.
I second Fiel's Western Digital recommendation and advise you to stay away from: Maxtor, Hitachi, Samsung ... these three companies have shared production plants in the past and have a higher failure rate than western digital and seagate ... my preference is Wester Digital, as I've used them for several years in several machines with almost zero failure rate outside of the manufacturer's expected lifetime. Also, stay away from ANY Fry's Electronics warehouses for your items, as their products have an even higher failure rate across the board for computer-related products (except CPU's)...
If you want some exceptionally good backup software, might I recommend 2BrightSparks' "SyncbackSE" http://www.2brightsparks.com ... I use it on my clients' PC's for backups... best program I've found so far in terms of flexibility, power, and intuitiveness.