Hard Drives > by Type of Hard Drive

Advantages: Fast, nice design, prevents data loss and corruption
Disadvantages: slows down the start up time (unknown reason)

General Western Digital specialises in producing external hard drives therefore their products are of good quality. The My Book Essential offers 500Gb which is more than enough for a standard user (Family usage). You can back up your pictures, videos, documents and programs without running out of space. Design The HD has a slick design and the shape of a book; it is small however not small enough to be a portable hard drive. But this ...
...buying this HD think of it as your home HD. Performace It is fast and reacts accoring to the computer - when system is being shut down the external HHD shuts down as well. Data stored on the drive is really secure; it happened more than once that my mate unplugged the drive while being used - still no loss or corruption of data (very good!). With 7200rpm there is no delay when playing music or games from your hard drive. More Offers ... Read review

Advantages: Easy way to add storage
Disadvantages: More expensive than internal drives

...eventually settled on a 250GB Freecom drive, which at the time seemed the best balance between cost and storage capacity, at just under £100 at the time of purchase, though I notice you can now get them for about £70. Appearance: The external drive consists of a silver coloured plastic box, slightly larger than a conventional internal hard drive. As well as the drive a USB cable and power cable where also provided. To set it up is incredibly simple ...
...the computer and connect the power cable up to the mains, and the other end to the drive, stating the obvious here really, but just shows how easy it is to set up. Upon connecting the drive to my computer and turning it on, the drive was recognised by window, and within about 30 seconds was ready to use. To access the drive simply go to my computer and access the drive from their. The drive arrived formatted in FAT 32, and as a single partition, ... Read review

Advantages: fast, spacious and very quiet
Disadvantages: none really...

...the drive that contains some Freecom software but I haven't used it yet. Within minutes of installing the drive I was transferring over 300GB of data to it and in use I have found the drive to be almost silent, even when transferring gigabytes of data you can only just about hear the drive running and the transfer rates seem excellent for a USB drive (although I haven't actually checked what the rates actually are). The casing does get a little warm ...
...would recommend it without hesitation. I have had several external drives over the years and currently also have a WD MyBook 500Gb external drive but I would easily recommend this drive over the MyBook because I have found the Freecom to be quieter, faster, cooler in use and better looking. ... Read review

Advantages: High speed transfer, power consumption low, quiet
Disadvantages: usual HDD shock issues

The Hitachi TravelStar is the newly developed model from Hitachi Co. specifically designed for notebooks. It varies in storage capacity, but the important factors are: the rotation speed of 7200 RPM, S-ATA 1.5 GB/s interface, and what Hitachi says "a 22% performance increase". Let's see what are the improvements: -Having tested the model you get a random access time of 14ms which is extremely faster than it's predecessor and it's competitors; ...
...wow-it's very fast) -It's almost noiseless, you get a 42dB/A idle noise at 3mm distance from the HDD; -and it's power consumption was reduced(in full load it uses 3W and in idle mode only 1.1W), which means it is very economical. -the price is in reach; I think this motivates you in at least trying one ... Read review

Advantages: Easy to use, easy to install, no complications, very very stable
Disadvantages: None

Existing as the cheapest external HDD in the market, WD has really sweeped the market.. A perferct combination of performance, quality and good price.. It comes in 250, 320, 500 GB and just came out with 1 TB... The prices are incomparable.. This HDD is the most stable that I have ever used.. It has curbed the most irritating problems with HDD - that is stability issues.. No complications, just plug and play.. No installation of drivers, nothing ...
...photo management (Picasa).. The best thing is that it comes as FAT32 formatted, so it can be used in all (windows, mac and linux ubuntu).. As far as speed of file transfer goes, its good as per to USB 2.0 speeds... For better speeds, go for the firewire versions.. WD has also come up with data backup versions of the same.. I havent had a single problem with the HDD.. I would suggest this to everyone.. Take my word for it, it is the best available ... Read review