I just got the following external hard drive for Christmas. It cost $80. http://reviews.cnet.com/hard-drives/simp...l?tag=mncol;lst Could you help in answering these questions 1. How does this one compare to the best ones on the market? 2. What are the best brands for external hard drives? 3. What features should I be looking for in a good external hard drive? 4. Does this hdd have the option of being used with a DVR? If the one I received isn't that great, I can return it and put that $80 towards another, but I don't want to be spending much more than $80
Sorry let try this again. http://reviews.cnet.com/hard-drives...-hard/4505-3186_7-33204861.html?tag=mncol;lst
I can try to answer a couple of your questions. 1. As the price goes down, generally, so does the quality. From what I've heard, this isn't a bad drive. 2. I would have to say Seagate and Maxtor. I definitely would NOT recommend a Western Digital because I've already had 2 crap out on me. One with bad sectors and one just goes really slow and gives a 'hard drive failure imminent' error. 3. Honestly, it depends on your personal preferences. Personally, I don't really need the speed. I don't want a drive to be slow, but who does? I mainly look for the storage space. Generally though, the main things people will look for are: -The max transfer speed -The spindle speed or rotations per minute -The size (obviously ) -and the average seek time Most of those above relate how fast the drive can read, write, and transfer information. 4. Damn, I was so close to answering all four Unfortunately I know absolutely nothing about DVR's so I can't help you with that, sorry If you would like to return it and want some recommendations, please give me a price limit (before or after tax) and if the price is in USD or CAD. Also, a small list of places you would want to purchase it would be helpful. Hope this helped you, sorry it's so long
nomChairs, I appreciate your feedback. No message is too long. The more I read, the more I begin to understand. Of the features you mention, what is a good range of speeds and seek time that I should be looking for for the following features: -The max transfer speed -The spindle speed or rotations per minute -The average seek time If you don't mind helping me with these questions, you have my sincerest thanks. I am always open to recommendations. I would like to spend anywhere from $80-$120 and would like to keep it to Best Buy (because I have Best Buy rewards) only but I would be open to considerations from other stores/sites.
The max transfer speed isn't too much of a concern. I have never been able to get any of my drives up to the max speed potential. Maybe, it's just my computer, I don't know A good speed would be around 500mbps (though higher is always welcome). If I remember correctly, your drive was 480 as is the one I just purchased recently. A good spindle speed would be 7200RPM and personally, I wouldn't buy a drive that had anything less (in a 3.5" drive). For the seek time, honestly, I don't know too much. To learn more and to hopefully provide you with a more accurate picture, I compared some good drives. I found that between these drives, the seek time tended to hover around 9ms (most drives had 8.9ms) If your budget is in Canadian dollars (this is a bit over) I would recommend a Seagate drive. It's at BestBuy and one of my friend has one so I can tell you from close experience that it's not a bad drive at all. http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&sku_id=0926INGFS10087571&catid=26259 For USD, this drive really doesn't seem bad. There are 13 reviews for it and it comes out to a 4.5 star out of 5. If I don't know the brand, I check reviews. (The first one is really bad, but the rest are good.) http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8908621&type=product&id=1216424110187 I think this is the same Seagate as the first one but in USD and a different colour. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9019279&type=product&id=1218009475263 Here's one for 120 US, but it's a Western Digital. I don't trust them, but I may have just had a few duds. The reviews seem decent. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8475731&type=product&id=1185268652010 As always, hope this helps
