Replacement External Hard Drive

[ikissfutebol]

My nearly 10 year old 40 gig internal laptop hard drive converted to an external USB drive is sounding like it is almost dead.

Anyone have a suggestion for a good USB 3.0 compatible external hard drive? I keep reading that after the Thailand floods last year, hard drives being made are fairly shoddy (die after only a couple months), have shorter warranties, and customer service for them is a joke.

My current desktop only has a 250 gig drive, but I'm planning to get at least 1 TB plus an SSD when I build a Windows 8 machine.

 

[phil22]

I bought a USB 3.0 WD My Passport portable hard drive two weeks ago - the 1TB model. It's also available in 500GB capacity but the 1TB model is much better value for money per GB.

I also have two other WD external drives but they need mains power so aren't portable. The new My Passport one is ideal for taking on my travels with me (I bought a padded pouch for it).

It's working well and I would recommend WD over Seagate every time for external drives. The Seagate ones I had gave me nothing but grief.

 

[ikissfutebol]

I bought a USB 3.0 WD My Passport portable hard drive two weeks ago - the 1TB model. It's also available in 500GB capacity but the 1TB model is much better value for money per GB.

I also have two other WD external drives but they need mains power so aren't portable. The new My Passport one is ideal for taking on my travels with me (I bought a padded pouch for it).

It's working well and I would recommend WD over Seagate every time for external drives. The Seagate ones I had gave me nothing but grief.

Good to know. I was actually leaning the opposite way after reading some comments on Amazon. Of course, I'm not sure how stock to put into those.

My uses would be for a desktop backup so the power supply doesn't bother me. I do plan to get a Surface tablet when they come out, but I would mostly be using that with stuff that would auto-backup to my SkyDrive account anyway (yay for getting in before it went back down to 7 gigs for free). For my purposes, I'm almost wondering if I should just get a second internal drive as a back up that I only connect once a week/month. If anyone has an suggestions, that would be greatly appreciated!