Best external hard drive for dell laptop

Hello Claire_33;

HDDs are a bit expensive these days. How much are you willing to spend?

Some options:

Western Digital My Passport Essential 500GB Portable Hard Drive (Black) $80 use promo code EMCNHJC52, ends 2/20

Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 500GB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive $90

BUSlink 80GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive $49

Here is a review of the WD My Passport Essential 500GB USB 3.0 External Hard Drive

Thanks to all of you! This is a terrific site. I ended up purchasing a WD My Passport Essential SE 1TB for $140 on Amazon. Hopefully I will be able to figure out how to use it properly. At this point I have backed up my data to it, but have not had time to check out the user manual properly or work with moving some files to clear up some space (am a CPA and busy with tax work right now) on my laptop.

I did encounter a problem with the 'Safely remove...'; it came up with a msg 'Cannot... because other programs are running' -even though there were none running. I found on-line that others have had the same situation with My Passport and it may be caused by anti-virus pgm or other. Am going to use the recommended advice to 'unmount' when my Windows Defender finishes its scan (if & when it does -it seems to take FOREVER!). If the techie advice I read doesn't work I will probably be back here to ask for advice since other posters with the same problem said talking to WD tech didn't help.