best external hd?
 

looking for a 1tb external hd. what are the better options out there. is westgate good?

best umm ... go with the one with the ports, features, and style that fits you. my personal opinion and experience they all suck. The larger the HD the greater the risk of disc failure and the cost for data recovery is insane.

if you buy and external drive for regular use and not as a backup... then i'd purchase two, and use one as a mirror backup. I'd stay away from Western Digital, they only give a 1-2yr warranty for a reason. Seagate will give a 5yr or more depending on brand. I believe there barracude (sp) drive gives a 5+ yr warranty since its more of a server/raid HD and its built better.

Western Digital Caviar Black. Best bang for your buck without sacrificing performance. I buy them in bulk and drop them into a rack data cluster. Never had one fail me yet.
If they're for infrequent backup use, go with the Western Digital Caviar Green. There's a performance hit, but lower priced than the Blacks.

:2 cents:

Edit: these are OEM drives, not portable enclosures. Just occurred to me you're probably looking for something in a case.

They all SUCK!

and it gets worse when using windows 7.

That said - get an interface that works for you. I prefer external sata or firewire but they tend to be a bit harder to find. Never ever ever keep critical data only on 1 hard drive - you will loose it! I run 12 1.5TB seagate freeagent drives (the firewire version is no longer available) for master capture archives - everything on two drives (plus I still have the original tapes). I keep the backup locked in the safe at the office and the working disks here in the basement. I've had one drive fail so far and figure it's just a matter of time till they all fail.

I'll be moving to something like this soon: http://www.supermicro.com/products/n...50x200_2ps.jpg

hmm, its not vital info but not something i want to lose either. i have never had a hard drive fail on me but i've also never owned an external harddrive. maybe i should just stick to dvds for now..

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/pro...nal/freeagent/ We use the portable drives. Very happy thus far.

I really like my WD external :thumbsup

ive got stacks of WD passport drives, only ever had 2 fail

Got a couple of WD's myself.

I use a WD Raid with esata like this: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...2533&CatId=136

do you not realize that internal and external drives are the same?

Go with a Seagate or Hitachi.

using WD MyBook 1TB an a smaller wd passport, sure wouldn't recommend those as a backup, very handy if one travels though.

seagate or western digital imho

yeah i figured. just seems like a lot of people have the externals fail. do most people experience hd failure? in my 15 years of using PC's I've never lost one.

As for 2.5"
I had WD Passport and some Seagate model and both died.
Now I have Maxtor Black Armor and it's really rock solid...

as for bigger ones I'd go with WD MyBook...

I have been running the hell out of a Iomega 1.5TB Prestige External Hard Drive without any issues. I don't count on it for backup though. As already suggested in this thread get two and mirror the other.