External Hard Drive

Hi !
My computer's getting super slow... I need to buy an external drive. Is there something I should know while buying such a thing ? My bro recommended at least 1 TB. What do you think ? and Are they any brands that are an absolute no-no ?
(I'm on pc if it's any relevant)

Tags: drive, external, hard

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Permalink Reply by Carol Langsford on January 21, 2010 at 8:26pm: I have a Maxtor 150GB - it is a good brand and easy storage - they do come in larger capacity; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Mao on January 21, 2010 at 9:03pm: Ah thx Carol !
I did some research and found this very interesting !

The Lightroom Lab

I also found a special for the Iomega 1TB at my nearest store but for my second one, I added this on my wishlist :

LaCie 500 gb rugged hard disk; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Claudcw on January 22, 2010 at 12:03pm: Well I personally would recomend the iOmega, has firewire ( faster) and 3 of my friends are using it and no problems at all; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Matt Johnston on January 22, 2010 at 2:38pm: Western Digital drives are the best IMO. There are different hard drive speeds that you should take into consideration. For a decent read/write speed you should look for one that is 7200rpms or higher. Otherwise it will take forever to transfer files.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Mao on January 23, 2010 at 11:27am: Thx guys !
ok.
firewall = check !
7200 rpms = check !

I found a good price on the LaCie 1 TB rugged hard disk and ordered it. It's so weird that the 500 gb is like double the price ?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Adam Labbe on January 25, 2010 at 10:41pm: If your computer used to be fine, but is now getting slow, it could be for multiple reasons. Drive space is typically the last thing that's an issue. If you are less then a couple hundred MB's(megabytes) of space, then yeah, it can be an issue. But, as opposed to popular opinion, having a bunch of stuff on your HD (hard drive), unless really short on space, won't make your system significantly slow. Or unless your HD is really fragmented.

Sometimes Windows just gets screwed up. And needs a wipe out and reload. (Note: not sure about Macs.)

A lot of times, computer slowness is due to: Programs running in the background that you don't see, viruses, spyware, antivirus software, or some failing service that doesn't know what it's doing anymore, and is taking up a majority of the cpu cycles.

This is not to say an external harddrive isn't a great idea!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by VJEKO on January 26, 2010 at 4:29pm: I have Western Digital with 1TB.But this is not enough.Maybe you remember when I not have aces to external drive.My power cable have been damaged.I like to say that you need one back up more.CD will be great.I not understand why you can not burn images on CD.What kind of program you use for?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Mao on January 27, 2010 at 8:56am: Yes I just got 2 LaCie rugged 1 TB. They are soooo cute !! From the article of Lightroom Lab, (see higher) I've learn to have a backup of my backup.

I want to put on cd the snapshots I did before I fell in love with photography that I know I won't use anymore. I don't know why such a simple action is so difficult to do. I did some research and seems like I'm not the only one having problems with window xp. I first use Nero burn and it gave me a slideshow ? with the images partly recorded with lines in them. Then, I tried a simple copy-paste but it said that I had no disk ? I downloaded the free imageburn and it seem to have worked but when I check the cd afterwards, it has nothing inside ? (I used CD-R) On the net, it says a simple window should pop up asking what to do with it when I put the cd in but it's just isn't so.

I'm going in my hometown but when I come back I will set up my computer. I'll first plug the externals and move all my documents. Install Window 7 and re-install my programs. (and my new Cs4, yeah !) I'll see then if burning on a cd is still a problem. My bro is a computer geek genius. If anything, he will help. I just want to try and do it by myself.

I tell you, all of this almost made me want to switch to Mac but since I just bought photoshop for windows... I stayed.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Mark P on January 28, 2010 at 1:51am: I brought a Western Digital Elements 640GB after 6 months of use the power adapter died in a blaze of glory. Well lots of smoke and stench (lucky someone was home). Sometime after replacing the power supply I was plugging the USB cable into a hub and notice a slight spark, zap wiped the harddrive. More recently the same harddrive decided to stop altogether. After unplugging and re-plugging the harddrive a couple of times a day, for about 12 days it finally come back to life long enough to retrieve all the information. That is now stored on about 5 different machines till I sauce another External Harddrive.. Interestingly enough I was in a store selling 1T Western Digital 'Elements' External HDD for under $100 Aust.
I walked straight bye...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Mao on January 28, 2010 at 10:12am: (o_0)
Gosh... Hope this doesn't happen to me and that it lasts more than 6 months !! Seems like problems often occurs with power cable and power adaptors ?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Sandy on January 29, 2010 at 1:43am: You also might want to consider storing images, documents and so forth in the so-called cloud of the internet. You can usually do so for about $5 a month. I believe Google offers this service as do other companies. I've been using a WD drive with the included Memeo backup software. So far so good, but if the drive dies, as they all are said to do, then it's me for the computing cloud.

Mao said:
(o_0)
Gosh... Hope this doesn't happen to me and that it lasts more than 6 months !! Seems like problems often occurs with power cable and power adaptors ?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Stephen Coiner on January 30, 2010 at 11:20am: Sorry to hear about your experience with WD Mark, I have been using WD drives since 1992 and have never had one crash maybe it was just faulty from the beginning.

Les, I back up to cd's or dvd's and put in a fireproof "sentry" safe, about $20 or more at walmart just according to how large of one you want. Also have multiple backups on different drives on multiple computers.

Mao, Adam is indeed correct about your harddrive not being the problem if you are running slow. As long as you have at least 1.5 gig free space for your swap file (window's virtual memory) then it is more than likely hidden spyware or fragmentation that is slowing down your system.
The best defragmenting program to use is Diskkeeper. And if you have a free antivirus program like McAfee, Norton, or MicroTrend that came on your system, get rid of it and install "Akira Antivir", it is "the" best free antivirus program ever. It will very easily clean your system. Also when you are done with that down load "Ad-Aware" by lavasoft, and scan your system with that to get any remaining spyware or malware off your system.n And in case your wondering how I know all this am a Microsoft Certified computer geek like your brother.; ▶ Reply to This