Small External HD vs Larger Ones??

[ront]

Hi all, I am thinking about an external hard drive again. I see that Costco had the WD 500G Elite portable hard drive on sale for $100. My question is how do these compare with the larger portable HD's? This one would run off of USB.
Thanks for any info.

Ron

[kenwae]

I was looking into this myself. I ended up with a WD 500GB (actually 2 of them cause it was a great deal on ebay) rather than 1 TB. It just seemed a bit better to have the double back up...I can take one and keep it out of the house if I want. I'd also heard that the fans on the 1TB tended to be much noisier...not that the 500GB is unnoticeable!

[ront]

Yours is not the small one then is that correct?

Ron

[kenwae]

No, it's not the small one, it's the.....My Book. It's big. I don't know how it might compare to the Elite.

[Stercus Vultus]

Aside from providing more storage (duh!), bigger external hard drives are cheaper per GB.

[aram535]

And most of the bigger name brand drives have more cache, which means faster reads. For $100 you were better off getting a 1TB drive and getting a cheap USB enclosure for $28. The entire functionality of "My Book" is fully and freely available and yet people keep buying it. I guess it's more convient since it comes in one box, but come on we all download software and drivers, why not this?

[swampler]

I got the same size external drive as my internal drive...1 TB. I keep my photos and other critical data on my internal 1TB drive, then backup to the external. The odds of both going out are remote, so I'm not worried about the external being large. I also keep it on a switched hub, powered off, when not backing up to keep virii, etc from being able to infect/damage it, so noise is also not an issue.

Not sure what I'm going to do when they fill up!

[aram535]

I have absolutely no proof of this, but it always seems like a very bad idea to turn a drive on and off. I feel like I'm shortening it's life if I do that. I don't even turn off my external DVD writer. No idea if it's fact or tale.

[swampler]

Originally Posted by aram535

I have absolutely no proof of this, but it always seems like a very bad idea to turn a drive on and off. I feel like I'm shortening it's life if I do that. I don't even turn off my external DVD writer. No idea if it's fact or tale.

I doubt once a week will hurt it, though I wouldn't want to do it hourly. Plus, backups that are constantly connected can very easily be wiped out by a virus or accidental format.

[aram535]

I don't have any drives attached. My backups are nightly across the LAN to a "backup server" which is really a linux box in the basement with 6 - 1 TB drives in USB enclosures hanging off of it. The backup partitions are mirrored across the drives.

I also do a CD/DVD of my original raw files whenever I bring in a card, so I'm good on backups.

[swampler]

Sounds like it! I wasn't sure if the OP was asking in regards to backups or normal use. For normal use, I would also leave on all the time.

[iconoclast]

ront,

From the sound of it you're looking for a good price, I don't think this drive is your best option unless ultra portability is a big factor. But without further details about your setup and desired uses of an external drive I can't advise further.

I can say that there are much better deals to be had at newegg

I'd also advise that if you intend to transport an external around you should have backups. External drives are more prone to failure due to knocks 'n drops and heat issues. I would definitely recommend turning off such a drive when not in use for heat issues and longevity. For instance I leave my computer on all the time and after a while Windows will turn off my hard drives etc. However, I believe, most(perhaps all?) external USB drives are on constantly and don't get turned off like the internal drives,