External Hard Drive Confusion

frank

frank

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I'm no I.T wizard so hopefully one of you guys can help, perhaps it's a age thing and I can't see it
I, looking to get a external hard drive as my 2 internal ones 250gb and 1 TB are filling up fast. As the prices seem to have come right down I think now is the time to grab one of these bargains.

Amazon have this one > Seagate STBV2000200 2TB Expansion USB 3.0 (apparently backward compatible with USB 2.0) 3.5 inch External Hard Drive £69.99

and PCWorld has this one > Seagate Expansion SGR39211 2 TB External Hard Drive £69.99

As you can see different model numbers but the same price, can someone tell me the difference between the two of them and what difference it would make to me, and if one would suit me better than the other. New HD will be only for storing photos/music

I have Win 7 64bit, USB 2.0 on a standalone desktop PC, I don't think I have USB 3.0 as I had this setup before USB 3.0 came out.
 
the latter isn't even referenced on the seagate site, I'd go with the amazon deal - I'd guess it was a newer model - but that is a guess - both USB 3 and 2tb - you can't really go wrong - other than choose which retailer will still be around to refund if they go wrong

have a look at the wd passport drives as well - more expensive , but bus powered so much more convenient and portable
 
How are you going to connect it? And what are you going to use it for. A USB2 drive will be a lot slower than an internal drive.

Do you have a backup in place? 1.25TB is an awful lot to lose....
 
Stick a USB3 card in your PC and pick whatever external drive you fancy.
 
Firstly I'd swap one of your internal ones for something like 1-3tb.

Do you use a desktop or laptop?
If it's a desktop, you can easily get a eSATA or USB3.0 card.

USB 2.0 is snail slow these days (35 MB/s vs 90+ USB3 5200RPM HDD, vs 500+ USB3 SSD)
 
Just to add to the confusion, I personally think an external hard drive dock with an esata connection using internal drives is the way to go.

I say this for three reasons:

1. Cost & Sustainability - every time you upgrade your external drive you're binning the whole lot and starting again. Using a dock you keep the same base unit and just replace the drive with another internal one.

2. Speed - I recently moved some stuff about on my system; getting about 90mb/sec with eSata v. around 40mb/sec with USB2.

3. Future compatibility - eSata is essentially a "straight through" connection rather than needing a USB interface between the drive and the PC. This will potentially help when you eventually start looking at 2.2tb+ drives in the future.


FWIW I have one of these which is used with 2 and 3tb WD Green drives to backup my system. The only down side is that since only one drive can be in there at any one time (and I have two to back up) I can't use automated backup programs. Although you can get double-bay docks).

The idea is to back up each drive periodically, then move the backups elsewhere to guard against theft / fire etc.
 
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