what external HD to buy?

[bruns37]

Hello and thanks for your time. I'm looking for a 400 to 500gb external hard drive to buy and don't know what's reliable and what's not. I don't want the top of the line million dollar one, by that I mean a friend said seagate barracuda is seagates next to best model. So I'm looking for a reliable 400 or 500gb EX HD. Anybody got any suggestions in maybe a $200.00 or less one?
THANKS
bruns37

[Freakitchen]

I'd get this external enclosure (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817362002) and install this drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148288) in it.

Comfortably under your budget, and you can easily swap drives in and out of that enclosure, which cannot be done with pre-made units.

[Cricket]

I'd get this external enclosure (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817362002) and install this drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148288) in it.

Comfortably under your budget, and you can easily swap drives in and out of that enclosure, which cannot be done with pre-made units.My recommendation would have been the same. I have 8 external HDDs at home and they're all home built using an external HDD housing and whatever HDD I had lying around.

:) Cricket

[inflames988]

ill second that. this is a more cost efficient way to get external storage space, and is also much more flexible; if you ever want to make it an internal drive you can do it easily.

i have that same exact enclosure and it worked great for a while, but just stopped working as of a couple days ago. Either way, Apricorn is a good brand of enclosure, and it is generally agreed upon around here that it's the best. other brands tend to be problematic.

I also just ordered two of those seagate 500gb drives w/ 32mb cache. If theyre anything like the other seagates I have, they're great and will perform well.

HTH