External Hard Drives

[joestacey06]

Who makes the best one? I'm in the market for a 500 or 750 Gb. I need it to be compatible with XP, Vista, and 7.

[tnthub]

Consumer made drives are all pretty much the same. You either get a good one or not, regardless of what the sales and marketing literature claims.

What I look for is 7200rpm and 32mb cache minimum, and then price. I would stay away from anything "green" that has slower rpms and a 64mb cache as those drives tend to power down and be very slow in actual use.

Obviously, the ability to utilize eSata or USB 3.0 is important going forward in terms of performance, however you need a computer able to utilize those technologies in order to see the benefit.

In my opinion, you should expand your stated size enough to find the best bang for the buck.

If you are planning on using the drive to save stuff that is important to you, like home finances, family pictures, tax information, or anything like that, you should buy two drives and copy one to the other in some manner so you always have a backup in case one drive fails.

[tremiles]

Find an internal drive that meets your storage/budget needs, then get a bare external enclosure.

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