which harddrive would u recomend out of these

[slimpickins]

hi, going to buy an external hard drive, which would u recomend, they are all 250gig, one is packard bell (84pounds) one is seagate (90pounds) and the other is freecom, but there are 2 freecoms, one is an extra 20

ive looked everywhere and i carnt find reviews

[slimpickins]

or the toshiba which is 320gig

[ROF]

Depends on model. Some hard drive lines are made with more quality parts, smoother, quieter operation, or data is stored in a different manner.

[slimpickins]

Packard Bell C041593001

250GB Storage Capacity

3.5" External Hard Drive

7200rpm Spindle Speed

Stylish and Compact Design

Near Silent Operation

Lightweight and Easily Transportable

Includes Data Secure Backup Software


-----------------------------------------------

Seagate 512GB USB2.0 External Hard Drive

Model: ST3250824U2-RK

USB 2.0 Interface

7200RPM Rotational Speed

Whisper Quiet Operation

Plug and play

Store 4165 hours of music

Drag and drop file transfer

Fast heat dissipation

2MB Cache

------------------------------------------------

FREECOM 25636 Classic SL Hard Drive

250GB Drive Capacity

USB 2.0 Interface

Simple Connection through USB Port

Hot Swappable Capability

Fast and Low Noise Drive

Ideal for Backing Up and Sharing Files

Sleek and Small Design for Portability

Includes USB Cables, Manual and Driver

Two Year Warranty and technical Helpline

----------------------------------------------------
another freecom

Freecom 250GB USB2.0 External Hard Drive

Model: Hard Drive 250GB

USB 2.0 Interface

Add extra storage capacity to your PC

Noise Free - no cooling fan

With LED hard drive capacity indicator

Includes Freecom Backup Software

Hot Swappable, no need to turn off PC

Stylish Aluminium Design

[nic2k4]

Check the warranty, but I believe Seagate is the better choice in regards to that.

[ntscuser]

Seagate, based on personal experience.

(kim)

[SLK001]

Seagate (who would even consider Packard Bell?).

And why do they weigh so much (84 and 90 pounds)?

[TBoneit]

For 6 pounds you double the storage space with the Seagate.

SLK001, You are kidding? Pounds would be a form of currency.

[SLK001]

Pounds would be a form of currency.

Pounds of what? Rocks? Grass clippings? Garbage?

[edsmith77]

That would be Pounds Sterling.

[Denvers Dawgs]

I would recommend the seagate.....drives are very reliable, and come with great warranties.....IDE drives have 5yr, not sure about external ones?

Now are these already in external cases? If so, you could save yourself a lot of $$ if you just buy an internal hard drive and then buy an external enclosure and put the drive into that. A lot cheaper, which means you can spend more money on more GB.....

[SLK001]

That would be Pounds Sterling.

Yes, I know. Also, GBP.

SLK001, You are kidding? Pounds would be a form of currency.

Yes, I am kidding. But the OP says he is in the US.

[lacywest]

Seagate (who would even consider Packard Bell?).

And why do they weigh so much (84 and 90 pounds)?

slimpickins
Member

Joined: 03 Feb 2006
Location: United States

I guess he is in the States on tour ... kind of confusing,

And yes ... skip thinking about the Packard Bell ... did any of you ... look inside a Packard Bell tower ... geesh ... terrible

[JohnnyMalaria]

Well, some do consider the UK to be the 51st state...

Anyway, given the list of names (Seagate, Packard Bell - , Freecom), it would be a no-brainer to go with the Seagate. Wouldn't touch anything Packard Bell with a barge pole and I ain't heard of Freecom.

I've always used Seagate, Maxtor or Western Digital for the 11+ years I've been using PCs for video work (when a 1GB drive and a 486DX2 was pure luxury) and never had a single problem.

[SCDVD]

Packard Bell and Freecom aren't drive brands. Joints like this buy OEM drives and resell them. They also switch brands frequently usually based on one specification --- price. So just because you have a buddy who bought a Belchfire 400 (or whatever) with a XYZ brand hard disc in it doesn't mean yours will be the same if you buy one.

[slimpickins]

too late, i bought the packard bell, im proper gutted, it said one of the drivers was errored or something, not sure what that means, oh well, ill take it back and say it doesnt work, ill go for the seagate, i do0tn understand, how can the packard bell be so bad, does it fail, all it does is store video clips, it either stores them or it doesnt, can it worsen the video clips or make them corrupt?

[dnix71]

The enclosure has to have hardware and firmware to support the drive inside. I made the mistake of putting a hd inside a usb 2.0 enclosure that apparently was meant only for cd and dvd atapi drives. The backups made to that hd looked okay and no errors were reported by my OS.

But, when trying to play some music from the drive, it sounded like s**t. Mp3's can be corrupt, but still play. Then I tried to open zipped archives of programs and the unzip program reported errors, too.

When I opened the box up and looked close, I found only 39 pins on the ide controller. HD's need 40. I had burned cd's and dvd's in that box with no trouble.

If you get a really large drive, like the 250GB, firmware matters, too, if you don't want to partition the drive before you use it. I have a firewire 300GB with a 7200 rpm Diamond Max. I got the enclosure from someone I know and have bought from before and he assured me the enclosure bios could deal with at least a 350mb drive. So far that one works perfectly.

[slimpickins]

so if i bought a seagate 400gig har drive, am i gona have to worry about firmware, it will be ready made external
p.s if i saw dvd's to it will it be ok, i.e no degrade problems

[Cobra]

Moved this to the Computer forum also. Please try to post in the relevant forum!

[TBoneit]

Any manufactured external will be ready to go. The only problem would be if you are using the older USB1.1 (Slow) or something like Windows 98 and your OS says XP. Keep in mind that there is a drive size limit on the original XP release and you really should be at Windows XP Service Pack 2 with a 400gb drive to kame things easy. With SP1 you need to apply a patch to support drives tht size.