What's a good external HDD to buy these days?

John Turco wrote
Rod Speed wrote
David Brown wrote:

edited for brevity

Why do you only do that to mine ?

while Win95 OSR2 and Win98SE were solid
enough to use if you were reasonably careful.

They were solid enough to use even if you werent.

So was ME if you had even half a clue too.

Albeit, I must admit that Windows Millennium did cause
a few minor headaches, in my roughly 33 months of using
it (before I replaced it with XP, in February of 2007).

One such annoyance (which is well documented, on both Usenet and the
WWW) was its refusal to shut down, gracefully...often, it would just "hang"
there, thus forcing me to employ my computer's power or reset buttons.

You sure that wasnt SE ?

John Turco wrote
Rod Speed wrote
John Turco wrote

heavily edited for brevity

Why do you only have this in replys to my posts ?

Now, regarding the subject of this thread (external hard drives). A
couple of weeks ago, inside a local "warehouse club" store, I saw a
Western Digital 1TB "My Book Home" (WDH1CS10000N), for approximately
$110 USD. That thing had gaudy specifications (USB 2.0, FireWire and
eSATA), at such an affordable price point. I was almost ready to buy
it, and yet, I was able to resist the temptation.

Which proved to be a rather wise decision, as my subsequent Googling
eventually led me to Newegg http://www.newegg.com. The customer
reviews of the WDH1CS10000N were fairly unflattering, there, with
recurring compliants involving overheating, flakiness and general
unreliability. (It received 3 out of 5 "eggs," overall.)

Further searching (via both Google and eBay) uncovered the Samsung
"Story Station" (HX-DU010EB). This 1TB baby is strictly USB 2.0,
but, Newegg's reviewers gave it a very solid rating (4 eggs).
Unlike its WD counterpart, the Samsung product seems to be much
less glitzy and far more dependable.

Additionally, it's currently $20 cheaper than the WDH1CS10000N, at
Newegg ($99.99 vs $119.99).

Therefore, I'll probably grab the HX-DU010EB, somewhere, after the
upcoming Christmas/New Year's holidays.

I've been buying 1TB Samsung bare drives and using them in a docking
station for PVR overflow. Up to 5 now. Next will be a 1.5TB drive,
better $/GB now.

Havent had a single failure and havent been cruel enough to drop one yet either.

Thinking about it further,

Dangerous business...

it seems Samsung took a wise approach, by putting one of its cooler-running
"EcoGreen" 5,400 drives, into the HX-DU010EB's USB-only enclosure;
because, as you know, USB is the real bottleneck, anyway.

Yeah, been buying those myself too, just because they are the cheapest.

On the other hand, Western Digital needed to use a 7,2000
HDD, in the WDH1CS10000N case -- as the latter also features
FireWire and eSATA, which are both faster connections.

My docking station supports eSATA too.

I dont care about the speed, I use them for PVR overflow.

The hotter 7,2000 device accounts for the WDH1CS10000N's
comparatively higher failure rate, most likely.

Yep, very likely.

John Turco wrote
Rod Speed wrote
John Turco wrote
Rod Speed wrote
David Brown wrote:

edited for brevity

Why do you only do that to mine ?

No, please don't take it personally.

I do.

I don't discriminate against anybody

A likely story...

and often delete extraneous text, simply in order
to confine my responses to relevant comments.

My comment are always relevant.

while Win95 OSR2 and Win98SE were solid enough to use if you were reasonably careful.

They were solid enough to use even if you werent.

So was ME if you had even half a clue too.

Albeit, I must admit that Windows Millennium did cause a few
minor headaches, in my roughly 33 months of using it (before
I replaced it with XP, in February of 2007).

One such annoyance (which is well documented, on both Usenet
and the WWW) was its refusal to shut down, gracefully...often,
it would just "hang" there, thus forcing me to employ my
computer's power or reset buttons.

You sure that wasnt SE ?

I'm certain. Well, I had used 98SE, before "upgrading" to ME;
in my estimation, ME proved to be somewhat of a downgrade.

On that shutdown question ? Thats the opposite of what everyone else found.