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Cost efficient external drive

Trancendense
By Trancendense
in Storage Devices
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Posted

Hi guys,

 

I need a external hardrive for me and my family. Need to be compatible with both mac and pc and have around 1 tb of capacity with decent speed. What are the reliable brands I should buy from? Any recommendation? Budget is 100$.

 

Have a great day and thanks for your help.

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Posted

Hi guys,

 

I need a external hardrive for me and my family. Need to be compatible with both mac and pc and have around 1 tb of capacity with decent speed. What are the reliable brands I should buy from? Any recommendation? Budget is 100$.

 

Have a great day and thanks for your help.

WD has great ones. Just take a look at them: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&PMSub=414%203360%203236%20552&PMSubCP=0&Order=BESTMATCH&name=All-External-Hard-Drives&N=100006519%2050001306

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Not sure on what you should get, but don't get a WD external hardrive, iv had 2 different models and they both broke within a year 

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I've been using my thick old 500GB WD Elements for a few years now. Throughput tops out at 30MB/s over USB 2.0. Served me well. I've heard good things about LaCie drives also, but never owned one. From your description it sounds like you're looking for a thunderbolt-type of drive. I'd say you get a 2.5" SSD then buy a USB 3.0 enclosure for it - or get a massive WD red/black and get an enclosure for that.

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Been using my 1TB MyPassport from WD. I like it very much, never let me down.

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There's Toshiba, WD or Seagate. Statistically Seagate is said to be the worst but to be honest they usually sell the cheapest consumer drives, too.

 

Lacie, Sony etc. will not produce the HDDs themselves, so there's that.

 

If you want an external HDD, remember that 3.5 drives need an external power supply, while the 2.5 drives can be fed with enough power through USB alone.

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There's Toshiba, WD or Seagate. Statistically Seagate is said to be the worst but to be honest they usually sell the cheapest consumer drives, too.

 

Lacie, Sony etc. will not produce the HDDs themselves, so there's that.

 

If you want an external HDD, remember that 3.5 drives need an external power supply, while the 2.5 drives can be fed with enough power through USB alone.

Please, don't buy into that whole 'Seagate sucks' thing. I've been working at a Data center all summer and that's all they buy, so Seagate is apparently doing something right.

 

Anyway, back on topic, I have a 2 TB Western Digital My Passport for Mac (Not used for mac :P) and a 2 TB Seagate Wireless Drive, which you don't need but it's a cool toy :)

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Enterprise-level stuff is a different story altogether, though.

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  • Author

I think I'll get a WD passport they seem quite nice. Althought will it work on both mac and pc? Is it jsut the format that determines this? Or do i need to get a special type of hard drive?

 

I've been using my thick old 500GB WD Elements for a few years now. Throughput tops out at 30MB/s over USB 2.0. Served me well. I've heard good things about LaCie drives also, but never owned one. From your description it sounds like you're looking for a thunderbolt-type of drive. I'd say you get a 2.5" SSD then buy a USB 3.0 enclosure for it - or get a massive WD red/black and get an enclosure for that.

 

SSDs are too epxansive. Any other recommendations?

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I think I'll get a WD passport they seem quite nice. Althought will it work on both mac and pc? Is it jsut the format that determines this? Or do i need to get a special type of hard drive?

 

 

SSDs are too epxansive. Any other recommendations?

 

Seagate WD, Toshiba Lacie they're all pretty similar theses days go with what fits your budget and available. I have the older version of the this seagate as a backup drive I leave on my desk and it's served me well:

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Portable-External-STBX1000101/dp/B008R7FC74/ref=pd_sim_147_7?ie=UTF8&refRID=0QTZ4CAR6Y4498Q9JD8Y

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I think I'll get a WD passport they seem quite nice. Althought will it work on both mac and pc? Is it jsut the format that determines this? Or do i need to get a special type of hard drive?

 

 

SSDs are too epxansive. Any other recommendations?

 

The format is the only barrier (HFS+/NTFS/FAT32). You can change it by reformatting.

Speedtests

WiFi - 7ms, 22Mb down, 10Mb up

Ethernet - 6ms, 47.5Mb down, 9.7Mb up

 

Rigs

Spoiler

 Type            Desktop

 OS              Windows 10 Pro

 CPU             i5-4430S

 RAM             8GB CORSAIR XMS3 (2x4gb)

 Cooler          LC Power LC-CC-97 65W

 Motherboard     ASUS H81M-PLUS

 GPU             GeForce GTX 1060

 Storage         120GB Sandisk SSD (boot), 750GB Seagate 2.5" (storage), 500GB Seagate 2.5" SSHD (cache)

 

Spoiler

Type            Server

OS              Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

CPU             Core 2 Duo E6320

RAM             2GB Non-ECC

Motherboard     ASUS P5VD2-MX SE

Storage         RAID 1: 250GB WD Blue and Seagate Barracuda

Uses            Webserver, NAS, Mediaserver, Database Server

 

Quotes of Fame

On 8/27/2015 at 10:09 AM, Drixen said:

Linus is light years ahead a lot of other YouTubers, he isn't just an average YouTuber.. he's legitimately, legit.

On 10/11/2015 at 11:36 AM, Geralt said:

When something is worth doing, it's worth overdoing.

On 6/22/2016 at 10:05 AM, trag1c said:

It's completely blown out of proportion. Also if you're the least bit worried about data gathering then you should go live in a cave a 1000Km from the nearest establishment simply because every device and every entity gathers information these days. In the current era privacy is just fallacy and nothing more.

 

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