I plan on getting an 1 Terabyte portable external hard drive soon. (Sorry, I don’t know what to call them specifically.) I want a small, reliable, long-lasting external hard drive for my laptop… Hopefully under $100, if possible. Any recommendations?
Also, I have a few odd questions about external hard drives…
1. Some external hard drives can connect to the internet, correct? Is there anyway to make sure they DON’T? Or is it always obvious when an external HDD connects to the internet?
2. What’s the point of the data encryption programs that come with some external hard drives? I get it protects your files, but from who? The external hard drives can’t be hacked into can they? If they can, it could only be when you have it currently hooked up to a computer with internet access, right?
3. Many external hard drives have pre-installed software on them. Some of these programs I don’t want. Is it okay to delete/somehow uninstall these programs off the hard drive? Or would that cause problems?
4. Every external hard drive I’ve had did this at least twice: After I plug it in, a pop-up tells me that my computer has detected a problem on the hard drive and asks if I’d like to fix it (or something around that). I usually don’t, because when I access the hard drive’s contents via “My Computer”, everything looks fine. Of the few times I did let the computer “fix” my hard drive, it once corrupted a few of the files on it!
What do I do about this? Is there truly a problem with my hard drive? All the hard drives I’ve had have worked pretty well, save for a few problems that only seem to happen during a blue moon…
Sorry for the long post… and my lack of knowledge.
Thanks in advance!
Seagate " FreeAgent GoFlex" have very good and reliable 500Gb to 4Tb portable HD with usb3, also has Thunderbolt/Firewire connection plug which come’s in handy.
When I bought my external drive I didn’t want the preinstalled backup software so a quick and easy format cleaned the drive.
Some drives come with Wi-Fi I believe but I’ve not used one so someone else maybe able to provide some advice on that.
I have only ever had an issue with one external drive which was a Western Digital 2Tb usb3, warranty told me that WD had not/dont standardised their power consumption use and the drive was trying to use more power than what the usb port could supply ( got my money back and bought a Seagate )
I’ve own 4 WD Portable Hard Drives and I’ve bought an My Passport Ultra 1 Terabyte last week for $99 and I’ve never had any issue with their product for years, and you don’t have to used any software that comes with the WD External Portable you can format it to NTFS straight away.
Before you do a complete image backup download the latest WD firmware drivers for your new External Portable Hard Drives you need to connect your portable drive to usb first, because the WD firmware will automatically install the correct driver of your product brand you’ve bought and your correct OS. Than create a new boot-able rescue disk to allow to communicate your new WD External Portable Hard Drives after you’ve install the last WD firmware drivers.
Wow! Thanks for the recommendations and fast replies, guys!
Ironically, the two hard drives I’ve used were from Seagate and WD. But despite the few aforementioned problems I’ve had with them, they DO work well, and no product is perfect. I’ll take a look at you guys’ suggestions! Thanks again!
@craigb:
Uh… What is a Thunderbolt/Firewire connection plug? I googled it, but I still had some trouble understanding what it was. (Sorry, I’m slow when it comes to stuff like this… :-[)
Is there any way to tell if a portable external hard drive has wifi/the ability to connect to the internet? What are they called specifically?
I’d much prefer an “offline hard drive”.
1. Some external hard drives can connect to the internet, correct? Is there anyway to make sure they DON'T? Or is it always obvious when an external HDD connects to the internet?
depends what you mean..... you can sett it up so that you can access your HDD at home from wherever you are
HDD with WiFi i dont think exist...yet.
2. What's the point of the data encryption programs that come with some external hard drives? I get it protects your files, [b]but from who?[/b]The external hard drives can't be hacked into can they? If they can, it could only be when you have it currently hooked up to a computer with internet access, right?
from who ever you want to protect it from..... mother in law ;)
it can not be hacked if not connected and stored under your kitchen sink...
3. Many external hard drives have pre-installed software on them. Some of these programs I don't want. Is it okay to delete/somehow uninstall these programs off the hard drive? Or would that cause problems?
