Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

My laptop's memory being nearly full, I'm about to invest in a 1tb external drive to store loads of music, photos, etc.

Anyone have any good / bad experiences with these gadgets? I've read quite a few reviews which claim that they are quite prone to breaking down and losing everything, but I think I've found one which doesn't seem to self-destruct quite as often as some others.

Any advice welcome.......

My kids have a portable 500GB one each and seem to have no problems despite them being hauled around in pockets, backpacks etc.

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/r/portabl ... 0Gb/0_0_0/

They have the WD My Passport one if that's any help. (only because there are there are different colours so they don't get mixed up)

I have a Dell Inspiron 1100 and bought a WD passport to back up files.

It did not work.

As far as I can work out it was something to do with the power through the USB slot.

It works on my son´s ancient Toshiba and also on my Apple Mini, so it is a problem with the Dell.

If it´s to back up a laptop, take it along to try before you buy.

Depending on your required use, you may be better off with one that has its own power supply rather than relying on the usb port.

My son uses his fine and has had no problem, whereas I have had problems with work wiped out on a memory stick. (I lost all the back up files for the Old Blue, but still had the originals so was saved).

Now have the boys to ask and they both have HP laptops, one about 3 and half years old and the other 6 months old, and they have no problems.

We have had a couple of these, both were LaCie branded. The first was carried back and forth on the back of a push bike for a couple of years before it stopped working, the other has mainly stayed put and is still fine. There is a general problem with external drives and USB port power so that and second power cable (often from another USB port) or external power brick may be required. The power required for a 3.5" disk drives to start is more than the max allowed from a USB port, this causes some USB ports to shut down (others don't mind and allow much more to be taken). Not sure about 2.5" drives.

Thanks all. I'll be playing it safe and putting valuable stuff onto disc as well, so we'll seem what happens. I don't imagine I'll be carting the thing around very much, so fingers crossed......

Richard Ruck wrote:Thanks all. I'll be playing it safe and putting valuable stuff onto disc as well, so we'll seem what happens. I don't imagine I'll be carting the thing around very much, so fingers crossed......

You might find it a bit hard using the key-board, Richard !!

I have used Lacie ext hard drives for at least 5 years and now have about 7 250 gb ones and a 1tb one

(Computers are a powermac G5 and a macbook pro)

I have never had a problem with any of them (touch wood) but none have been carted around or banged about

My problem is I forget what is on which drive

I generally use one to back up the whole computer and another to back up just the several tens of thousands of photos

This means that even if one ext drive goes fut (or is that "phut") the photos will still be on the other one

To be really safe you could get 2 smaller ext drives so you have 2 copies of everything

The best advice (which I havent taken up) is to keep one ext drive at a separate address so if you get robbed and they take computers and drives you can at least retrieve your music, photos and everything else

This would be a pain if you like to back up often as I do...

When we run out of electricity all these hard drives are going to be useless anyway. Nothing is for ever.

What about God?

huntertitus wrote:What about God?

Well, I suppose I could ask him (if I actually believed in him), but I'm sure he'd rather I tried the hard drive first.

Har Har

I'm surprised you havent already got a ext drive - I was once scanning photos and the computer crashed and I lost 2 days work - now I back up very often...

huntertitus wrote:What about God?

Did some-one call ????

huntertitus wrote:Har Har

I'm surprised you havent already got a ext drive - I was once scanning photos and the computer crashed and I lost 2 days work - now I back up very often...

One of the reasons I like my Mac: it automatically backs up hourly. That, and never having to remember where I saved a file since it will always find it for me. As the frequency of senior moments increases, both are life-savers

I bought an external 1TB buffalo hard drive and an 8GB memory stick when I lost all of my A-level coursework. I have had no problems with either, and I have learnt my lesson- any uni work gets saved to laptop and memory stick, and everything goes on the external. Seems to be working very well, although i-tunes decides to loose anything that isn't on my laptop everytime I update it (big pain as I have 800GB of music that has to be re-added everytime).