Where to buy an external USB Hard Drive

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lakebum431

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You guys seem to know where to find the best deals on everything. So here goes: I'm looking for an external USB hard drive (somewhere between 150-300GB). Anyone know where I can find one pretty cheap? Thanks in advance.
 
Try Buy.com, I get email offers from them almost daily and they are very reasonable now.
 
Any recomendations on Brands or features I should be looking for?
 
or maybe newegg, ive been through alot of hd's maxtors seem the most unstable complete drive failure within 6 months most times id go for western digital or seagate but maybe thats just me
i prefer firewire to usb1.1/2.0
 
Ah, yes, but, The dish boxes are going to support USB not ethernet...
 
I purchased one from newegg.com about a year ago. It was a Maxtor 300GB. I use it for my downloaded DVDs. I also have my computer backed up on it with a Nero compression file. It has two Ethernets and one USB. I have it connected by USB. When you go to the site you will have a variety to choose from.
 
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I bought a 250 gig West Dig HD (external} on ebay for $110. I thought it was a good deal. Almost all HD's come usb 2.0....but if your computer doesn't have a usb 2.0 port you will have to buy a 2.0 card and have it installed or install it yourself.
 
lakebum431 said:
You guys seem to know where to find the best deals on everything. So here goes: I'm looking for an external USB hard drive (somewhere between 150-300GB). Anyone know where I can find one pretty cheap? Thanks in advance.

I'm surprised no one broached the idea of making your own USB drive. I do that all the time. Find a high capacity drive on sale (even with a rebate), buy a decent enclosure ($50) and you've got yourself a better deal than if you get in many other ways. Takes about 10 minutes to put together and then all you have to do is format it. Making a 400GB external drive for 175 dollars is always nice. :)

Just another option if you're feeling like getting your fingers dirty.
 
You can register with dealmac.com and they will email you the best deals they find on the internet for whatever you are looking for. I currently get several updates every day on HDD's. I'm keeping an eye on prices and have been watching for about four months now. Do your research so that you know which brand you are looking for. I had heard that LaCie and Maxtor were two of the better ones and that Western Digital had trouble with overheating. Several professional digital photographers I have read articles about use 250gig LaCie's for storage. I figure if a pro photographer trusts LaCie, then its a safe bet. Prices have been coming down slowly.
 
There's also lot's of bare enclosures at:
www.geeks.com

They don't have it anymore, but I found one with an internal PATA and external USB2/S-ATA ports.

On the my computer at home I can use the S-ATA and get full performance out of the hard drive (USB 2 does not keep up with the hard drive speed).

When I burn DVD's using the USB drive I'm limited to around 10-12x.

here's a similar combo box:
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/cooler-express/me740u2si.html
 
The most economical way is to buy the enclosure and hard drive separately. I have done this twice and used newegg.com each time.
 
I am going to move thise one out of our Private Pub Forum and move it to the Gadget forum for others to see and hopefully they will join in as well. :)
 
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