USB External HD

I'm looking for a USB HD as a quick and easy external file store. There
are loads around and it's difficult to tell which are any good.

The iomegas appear to suffer from shoddy USB connectors.

The WD Passport seems stuck with pre-loaded, auto-booting software.
Though I run Ubuntu, so hopefully I could just plug it in and delete the
pre-loaded shit.

Nearly all of them state Windows/Mac as a O/S pre-req. WTF? It's a
portable disc. The O/S shouldn't matter.

Anyone have personal recommendations?

 

Buy one that fits your budget.

Wipe and format to your preferred FS

Store data.

HTH

--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
116 Giulietta 3.0l Sprint 1.7 GTV TS GT 3.2 V6
Triumph Sprint ST 1050: It's blue, see.
#www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

I think that's just a 'compatability' sticker, not an OS pre-
requisite.

Like catman says, buy the one you like the look of most, and reformat
it. Or buy an empty USB2 3.5" format or 2.5" disk box and put your own
disk in it. There's loads of choice on Ebay.

You could also consider USB3, eSATA or firewire connectivity depending
on your budget.

Cheers,

Paul.

 

Well, Santa bought me an iomega drive and it works. No probs with Linux
I have even formatted it with an ext4 file system.

 

You mean the stuff you delete, the moment you get the drive?

 

If not sooner, IME

--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
116 Giulietta 3.0l Sprint 1.7 GTV TS GT 3.2 V6
Triumph Sprint ST 1050: It's blue, see.
#www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

We have several of the big WD USB drives. They are excellent. Just format
them with your f/s of choice.

 

We have several of the big WD USB drives. They are excellent. Just format

+3

 

indeed, i have a couple.

plus who in their mind doesn't disable autorun on a windows PC?

 

Also...

Treat as disposable and don't rely on it.

 

Oh yes, missed that one. LOCKSS

--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
116 Giulietta 3.0l Sprint 1.7 GTV TS GT 3.2 V6
Triumph Sprint ST 1050: It's blue, see.
#www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

Samsung USB bus-powered 1TB.
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1tb-samsung-hxmu010ea-g22-s2-portable-25-e
xternal-hard-drive-usb-20-black

 

I've got a bunch of the Maxtor Onetouch 4 1Tb drives. Got some natively
formatted for Linux (ext3) and Windows NTFS, seem okay on both
platforms. Occasionally have a spin up time out when they've gone to
sleep on Linux though. For home use I tend to format the drive as NTFS
since Ubuntu works perfectly with it.

I'd just find the cheapest largest drive you can get and buy two of
them. Losing a terabyte of data if you accidentally knock the drive off
the table is a lot easier to bear if you've got a mirror sitting in the
cupboard .

Saying that I quite like the look of some of the drives which are
powered off the usb connector, saves lugging a power brick around as well.

hotukdeals have some 1Tb usb drives listed under £50.

 

+1. And, as ginge pointed out, you can get free Acronis for it.

 

I did, but in the disk cloning thread the other day.

Best product at disk cloning and PC imaging I've ever used, and I've
used most of them over the years.

 

These are the type that I'm looking at.

 

This is what I was banking on, but some numpty users reported problems,
which didn't make sense.

The moral is "don't believe everything (anything?) you read on the
internet".

 

Yeah, that's the stuff.

 

Sooner? You walk down the aisles of PC World with a FOAD
electro-magnet, don't you?

 

I've just recently used it based on that recommendation (I started the
thread) and would say it does exactly what it should .. very, very
good.