PCA Forums

my friend called me and is in need of an external hard drive, 160GB USB 2.0 { she reckons her PC is on the way out and wants to copy over her files asap }.

the last one that i bought for myself was over 2 years ago and is a Seagate, so i do not know what is out there nowadays that is considered "good".

recommendations, pls? { w/links, if possible }

thank* u!

I usually get a USB enclosure and put my HDD of choice in there. That way you can upgrade as necessary and you can have several HDDs but only one enclosure.

I personally like the WD ones if you just need to get something at best buy quickly.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136641

Just about anything will work. I assume your friend is a rush so find something at the local Office Depot, Staples, Walmart etc. Stick to name brands. Western Digital and Seagate are your best bets. I'd say Western Digital is a bit better right now. I would look for something with a 3 year warranty or better. If they're only willing to warranty it for 1 year it's probably crap.

thank u, RDuckie and FP : )

RD, ~ i have 1 external hdd in an enclosure, and the other is already encased. she is not up for dealing with enclosures.
the one you linked to asks you to pay for an addtional yr warranty and is a huge drive!.

yes, she is in a rush, FP.
but now i am somewhat confused, FP, ~ are you saying the warranty should be built in w/the price? or is it normal now to pay for warranties over 1 year??

thank** you.

I'd go with Western Digital. The Manufacture's warranty information should be printed on the box.

thank u, Err; have been Googling for WDs now, and i can see that some come w/3 yr warranties, inclusive.

Sorry for the confusion. I don't believe in extended warranties.

I prefer to purchase drives that have a 3 or 5 year factory warranty. Most of the cheaper drives only have a 1 year warranty. You get what you pay for.

ok, thank u, FP.

well, on side note, friend ran a cmd chkdsk; came back w/error~couldn't complete stage 5. goes into safe mode, ~ she gets black screen w/white wiggley things. reboots in safe mode, pc runs scan again,~ perpetual loop. finally did a hard shutdown, unplugged everything; replugged everything, powered up, - which resulted in no hdd light indicator, and her monitor is not working now either, ~ some sort of graphics error according to light indicators,,
late last nite she drove her pc to a recommended person in hopes of recovering whatever lost data possible. he is hopeful, since the scan had gotten to stage 5, but the drive will have to be replaced in any event.

in meantime, i have told her to continue searching for drives that come w/3+ yr warranties.

Yeah, hard drive failures aren't to be taken lightly. As soon as I get errors, I save any pertinent info (literally will drop everything to do so) & never use that drive again (usually RMA). Odd that the monitor stopped working though. I've seen a defective hard drive stop a computer from posting though.

i had not spoken w/her for few weeks prior, but yesterday she said she had been getting BSODs recently, which is why she called me the other day asking about external hard drives so she could back up her stuff. i just hope they can recover her work folders,,

It does sound good that it seems to be slowly dropping sectors.

*fingers crossed*

possible she fudged up something while she was plugging 'n' unplugging the cords, too. i do not know,,. will just have to hope for the best and see what the guy tells her,,

Oh, that'd do it too.

You can easily remove the drive and connect it via a USB on another PC to recover the files.

good thing to know for future FUBARs, Exec, thank u ~ tho honestly, i do not think she would be comfortable removing drives. now if she were a pro like you guys,,, : )