[nivantj]

Unless you have large storage requirement (> 60 GB), in which case price increases exponentially for 2.5" drives, i would suggest 2.5" which is more handy, less bulky and convinient to carry in pocket....

[Nutta!]

I bought a couple of harddrives, 40gb and 80gb. The standard USB ones that you get in the computer centres.

Both have had problems (totally different problem incidentally).

When you take it back, they say they will repair under warranty, but that they will charge something like 2000HKD to recover the data!

Do you find yourselves becoming more and more abusive to shop keepers?

I bought good drives (toshiba, hitachi etc...) but the reliability is woeful.

Just a warning.

[nivantj]

Nutta,
Really seems your bad luck.. But im not sure if any company covers 'data recovery' under warranty..

[KnowItAll]

Well here's the problem .. most of these tiny drives are not spec'ed to run 24/7. They're originally designed as low end notebook drives.

So... leave them on 24/7 and they will eventually implode on you.

[nation]

Yeah use the external drive purely for backup and turn it off when not in use.. You can work off the drive but I try and keep it to less than a few hours.

As for building a drive I did that with the Seagate 300GB SATA I mentioned before. The problem though was getting an enclosure for a SATA drive. Not overly prevalent and the ones I could find were so pricey that I would have done better buying a pre made external drive. That was about 6 months ago. If it's a not a SATA drive you should do OK though.

[jayinhongkong]

I've been using external hard disks for a while now. I have an 80 gig IDE that I purchased with an enclosure - it never worked with the enclosure, go figure. I ended up just sticking it in an old, junky pc. It worked great and gave the PC a much needed storage boost. It had a 12 gig hard disk in it (I think).

I then purchased a 120 gig ide. ended up giving it to my brother - he purchased an enclosure for it and it worked very, very well until a few weeks ago. He now can't read it on any port on his laptop.

i bought a 160 gig external for myself after for the princely sum of $780. i loaded it up to about 160 gig...it then failed, wouldn't read and i lost all my data. the hdd wouldn't work right even after a format - neither in an enclosure or on a desktop pc.

recently i purchased a pretty nice enclosure for 250ish in wanchai computer center. it looks good..it has a lcd temperature display on the front and an 8cm fan under the hard disk to blow the heat out.....i stuck the old 160 in there just for a lark and wonder of wonders, it works fine again. i have some files on there but they've also been backed up onto dvds....

[Nutta!]

Originally Posted by jayinhongkong

I've been using external hard disks for a while now. I have an 80 gig IDE that I purchased with an enclosure - it never worked with the enclosure, go figure. I ended up just sticking it in an old, junky pc. It worked great and gave the PC a much needed storage boost. It had a 12 gig hard disk in it (I think).

I then purchased a 120 gig ide. ended up giving it to my brother - he purchased an enclosure for it and it worked very, very well until a few weeks ago. He now can't read it on any port on his laptop.

i bought a 160 gig external for myself after for the princely sum of $780. i loaded it up to about 160 gig...it then failed, wouldn't read and i lost all my data. the hdd wouldn't work right even after a format - neither in an enclosure or on a desktop pc.

recently i purchased a pretty nice enclosure for 250ish in wanchai computer center. it looks good..it has a lcd temperature display on the front and an 8cm fan under the hard disk to blow the heat out.....i stuck the old 160 in there just for a lark and wonder of wonders, it works fine again. i have some files on there but they've also been backed up onto dvds....

Now if i were doing trend analysis, i would say..."back your sh1t up on dvd"!!

(Speaking of which, you still want the simpsons???? - You need to holla during your lunchbreak)

[jayinhongkong]

heh, yeah, sorry about that! i'll give you a shout today if you're around and yeah, i think i will be backing up my most important stuff onto dvd from now on...

[shwetapershad]

So that implies, an external hdd is not quite stable. Which makes wonder, do I need it at all. Why dont I just burn data onto CDs. Only, that is such a pain....

[jimbo]

Originally Posted by shwetapershad

So that implies, an external hdd is not quite stable. Which makes wonder, do I need it at all. Why dont I just burn data onto CDs. Only, that is such a pain....

an external hdd is fine as long as its not being used to access data constantly.
Oh and burning cd's and dvd's is a total pain that I agree with.