Looking for an External Hard Drive

[riffdex]

Hey. I'm looking for a good external hard drive. I want something standalone, one I don't need an external power source (should get its power from the USB port) and one that does not require me to install any software. Looking for at least 500 MB one but maybe even a TB if the price is right. Anyone have any suggestions? Features wanted in order of important:

Standalone
Small
Low price

 

[coolbone]

The ones that use power over USB almost always use two usb ports (weird cord with mini usb to split usb+usb) and you probably wouldn't get anything bigger than a 2.5" drive which are generally less capacious. You can always go to newegg.com and get an enclosure and just buy a compatible drive (whether 2.5" or 3.5" and sata or ide) Would possibly cost you less.


EDIT: LOL that was easy. on the front page of newegg was this seagate http://tinyurl.com/24qsb3u
Seagate, WD, Samsung = all good brands

 

[riffdex]

well I was currently lookin at maybe getting this one
Amazon.com: Toshiba USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive: Electronics
I might just get this, I'm just not familiar with external hard drives as i've never bought one before. Do you think there's a chance I'll get any better of a deal than that one?

 

[dphorr01]

I would suggest looking at Newegg. You can probably save some money and their customer service is generally very fast. I'm not in business with them, just a customer. Good luck!

--David

 

[riffdex]

well I was currently lookin at maybe getting this one
Amazon.com: Toshiba USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive: Electronics
I might just get this, I'm just not familiar with external hard drives as i've never bought one before. Do you think there's a chance I'll get any better of a deal than that one?

I ended up getting this one. Now the first thing I try to do with it is start backing up some ISO files that are taking up an unneccessarily large amount of space on my computer hard drive. I tried to copy them and it says there is not enough room on the HD. (They are over 4 GB each) After doing some research, apparently the HD is formatted for FAT32 and will not be able to have files larger than 4 GB unless I format it to NTFS. Now I've been reading about NTFS and a few websites are saying it's "risky" to format to NTFS. Does anyone know if it is safe to format as NTFS and what are the disadvantages? (What OS's support NTFS? Perhaps a shorter list would be to ask which ones do not support NTFS?)

 

[vandyblackandgold]

la cie

these things will take a beating. love em.

Amazon.com: LaCie Rugged All-Terrain 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable…

 

[riffdex]

Already got the HD guys. Thanks for the suggestions though It's working great, and I formatted it as NTFS so now I can put my large files on it too.