[Jeffery Mewtamer]

I am in the market for a portable hard drive for back-up and archival purposes with a budget of 100 USD. I would like at least 1TB, but in general I want good balance between high quality and low $/GB. I will most likely format it in EXT4, allotting a 150 GB partition for small files with the rest for archiving video, so I am not interested in drives that come bundled with overpriced software for Windows or Mac. I would like a drive that is USB-powered and has a standard mini-b port so I do not have to hassle with additional cables.

Looking on Amazon, this appears to be a good option, but I want the opinion from those with more experience buying hardware.

[Polygon Jim]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822136505
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822136471

I would suggest one of these. You can get 2TB for $100, or 1.5TB for $70. I have the 120gb version and it works great, not sure if the higher capacity ones work as well but I assume they should.

[Overlord]

I have the 2TB one of those, not had any problems with it.

Brand-wise, I would recommend against either Maxtor (who are shit) and Seagate (who bought them).

[Spanner]

Western Digital is a brand I'm looking at for getting an external hard drive in the future. Probably going to end up sharing it on my wireless network due to laptop usage though. All I'd need is a print server, right? =P

This post has been edited by SOTI: 18 March 2011 - 04:48 PM

[SteelBrush]

I'd recommend trying this it's sold as a mac solution but works with pcs aswell. Cut the price down by buying your own HDD and then buy the enclosure, that's what I did.

[Covarr]

While I have no specific recommendations, I must agree with the general sentiments seen so far in this thread. Western Digital, though not the absolute best brand out there, is easily the best you'll find for a fairly low price. I've had a 500GB WD MyBook for a few years now, with partitions for my Wii and for general storage, and have not had any issues with it. Also, what Overlord said is 100% correct and Seagate should be avoided like the plague.

A friend of mine who used to work in computer retail told me that Seagate had more returns from faulty drives during her time there than any other brand, by far. If that isn't a warning sign, then I don't know what is.

[Lanzer]

I must be one of the lucky ones then because my seagate 500GB external has lasted me for 2 years and has never shown me any problems.

[Aerosol]

WD is indeed pretty reliable. I did run into a problem with my 320GB MyBook, though. Ended up ripping the actual HDD out of the encasing and plugging it up inside my computer to fix it. I forget the specifics. But I could always buy another enclosure if I wanted to.

[Travelsonic]

I had a new WD 500GB HD [not external] fail on me a month after I installed it, OTOH I had one of their Passport 160GB external hard drives that has seen a lot of use over the last 3 1/2 years, and still survives to this day.

This post has been edited by Travelsonic: 19 March 2011 - 01:23 PM

[Supakitsune]

I've had my WD 1TB external drive for about a year, and it's worked swimmingly, even surviving a few drops to hard tile (none of them intentional, of course!) with no problems.
But jeez, just a year ago that this thing was $100 and now you can get a whole extra terabyte for that price?