How to choose an external hd

S

sven556

New Member
I would like to purchase an external harddrive to use with my laptop while I'm deployed, but I really don't know much about them. I do know that I want one that only uses one cable, the usb or firewire; no AC adapter. What brands are good and reliable?

By the way, I'll be using the drive to store music and movies. My laptop has Vista and my desktop has XP, will I be able to go back and forth between the two computers?

I was looking at this Western Digital model on newegg. Is this one a good choice at a reasonable price?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136139

Thanks,
Sven
 
Powered by usb nice! That eliminates worry about an external power source for the laptop application. WD makes top quality drives as well. With XP and Vista each installed as stand alone OSs here on two separate drives I can load one and have ready access to files and folders other then some system types created by either version.

For the external drive both will have ready access once the partition type will NTFS. But you may want a look at a slightly lowered priced and faster 7200rpm 400gb model over the 5400rpm 250gb seen there. The WD Elements 400gb model can be looked over at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136079
 
You know you don't have to buy ready man external hard drives. They are rip off I think. I think you are better off getting a 2.5" laptop drive then get a cheap external 2.5" enclosure for it off ebay or your local computer store. In about 10 minutes you will have an external drive at a fraction of the cost.
 
So you came to the same conclusion I did when first looking over the WD Workbook models to increase capacity here. But for access to files stored on a separate drive from either version of Windows I do that all the time here with a third drive used for storage and backup only. I can also copy files onto the Vista drive into custom made folders created by Vista and vice versa. Choosing the make, model, and type will be upto you there.
 
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