Page 1 of Looking for recommendations, isps and external hard drives :)

I`m looking to get a new external hard drive, and I had my eye on a Western Digital Mybook one, as they seemed pretty reliable and cheap. Anyone got one and can recommend them? I decided on one months ago, but now I come to buy it, it seems the 500gb ones are a bit dodgy, but the 320gb ones aren`t? Purely based on reviews I read at Amazon. So I can`t decide if I should buy the smaller one, or a different 500gb one?

I`m also looking to ditch my ISP, I`m with Orange, and have had slow speeds and connection dropping for a year now with no real improvement. I`m finally free of the contract, and I`m looking for up to 8mb with a decent sized cap, and more importantly, English call centres! I don`t know if my fault is an Orange one, or a problem with my line, but a year of it is enough, and if it is a line problem, I want an ISP who will get it sorted! Problem is, I really don`t want to stretch to higher payments, so I guess that counts out people like Zen who I`ve heard good things about.

I may not be back till after New Year :D so thanks in advance for any advice. :)

This item was edited on Sunday, 30th December 2007, 19:04

I would choose Seagate for the external drive. I believe that WD drives are generally excellent, but their external units have attracted so many adverse comments that I would be very wary.

I switched to Vivaciti about six months ago, and am delighted. I think all of the Entanet resellers are pretty good. Excellent UK based CS, not that you should need it. Range of plans with solid bandwidth and affordable quotas. I must admit that I am currently considering SKY as our exchange is enabled for the 16Mb service and £10/month is very tempting. However I haven`t really seen any feedback, good or bad.

Just had a look at one of the Seagate drives, and found they were getting the same sort of negative reviews on Amazon that the WD ones were! Now I don`t know what to buy, seems so many problems with all of them. I need something very reliable, as my laptop drive is so small I`m going to have to move a lot of stuff rather than copy it.

I`ve been looking at entanet resellers, I think they`re going to be the best in my pricerange, so I`ll probably go for whichever of them has the best contract (or lack of) and geographical/free UK based contact number.

Thanks for the advice, any more gratefully received. :)

Maybe buy a normal hard drive, and a caddy for it to make your own usb drive. probably a bit more expensive but at least you can choose a well respected hd make.

I`d recommend Samsung, they were well respected when I got mine a year or so ago.

Like a lot of things though brands seem to have their ups and downs. I bought an IBM deskstar hard drive years ago, and it lasted well, but I wouldn`t buy an IBM/Hitachi deathstar now.

Not sure I should admit this, but I`ve never had a great amount of luck with hard drives, the two I`ve tried to fit, one in a pc and one in a caddy, I`ve ended up having to get someone else to sort out. :D One of them I managed to bend all the pins on, so I`m not keen on experimenting with another one. :D

Just looking at this, apparently Buffalo drives use Western Digital, Seagate, Samsung or Hitachi drives. So, 1 in 4 chance of getting a poor drive I guess? I suppose if I use Amazon, and it is a Hitachi, I might be able to return it, but I`m not sure?

I can echo admars recommendation regarding Samsung drives. They have been getting consistent, excellent reviews for the last couple of years. I must have about ten now, and, although its tempting fate, I have nothing but praise for them. (This also includes a couple of 2.5" drives).

External housings - I have used several IcyBox and Sumvision external USB to IDE housings with no problems. However I did have a couple of IcyBox USB to SATA housings which were useless. They consistently caused `Delayed Write` errors which were almost definitely due to the chip-set/firmware in the housing. Currently I don`t know which housing to recommend for SATA drives, but I have purchased a Sumvision to test.

The other consideration for external drives is the interface to use, in order of decreasing perfomance eSATA > 1394b > Firewaire/1394a > USB. For convenience read the list the other way with USB coming top.

I have an `Office` connection via Vivaciti. You pay a little more but:
1) Upload speed is doubled.
2) `Guaranteed` (by BT) minimum speeds are twice that of standard `Max` service.
3) `Off-Peak` time band is longer.

This item was edited on Wednesday, 2nd January 2008, 00:48

Not got round to doing anything about either of these yet... I know, so efficient, eh! :D

Reading around a bit, I found a few people saying the BT business broadband hub is very good for staying connected on long lines, so I`ve just bought one on ebay. I`ll need a new router if I leave Orange anyway, as they`ll want the Livebox back, so thought I`d give it a try now.

Still dithering over what drive to buy, every time I think I`ve found a decent one, I find a load of bad reviews of it and change my mind. :D

Anyone got any opinions on Toshiba drives? Can`t find any reviews of them at all!

Or Iomega? I have to make a decision soon, I don`t even have the space to empty my camera at the mo :D

*Edit* apparently Iomega use Seagate drives, but strangely have fewer bad reviews than the Seagates I`ve looked at? :D And I`ve found one I can pick up tomorrow locally that seems pretty cheap. So if you know anything bad about them, please tell me now :D

This item was edited on Sunday, 27th January 2008, 22:13

One of them I managed to bend all the pins on

if your buying a seperate drive for an external caddy, go SATA no pins to worry about, + you get a little future proofing + if you ever end up fitting it internally you get the better performance.

another choice would be the less tangly 2.5" drive, a caddy for one of these is generally cheaper than a 3.5" caddy, due to you not needing a power supply unit (draws power from the usb socket, hence less tangly) i use a 160gig western digital drive this way on my mac mini, so i don`t have to worry about a psu buzzing the night away :)

the only downside is £ to gigs they are more expensive, my WD drive was £55, & a 200gig is £63, with a caddy coming in at around £5 delivered, this is the caddy i use (tho mines blue) http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/USB-2-0-SATA-2-5-External-Hard-Drive-Enclosure-Caddy_W0QQitemZ150210350972QQihZ005QQcategoryZ86759QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
works fine, never seems to get hot like some of my 3.5" drives, just slightly warm, you just gotta weigh the pro`s & cons & pick the one that suits your situation, better portability, smaller, less wires, lower power consumption, vs much cheaper (you`ll get a 320 gig drive & caddy with the 3.5" drive) but bigger, more wires, + psu etc.

anyway, i`ve confused you a little more, so my job is done :)

EDIT = IcyBox USB to SATA housings which were useless Ditto, i just had to pull 2 of these from my system, due to constant delayed write & system hangs, have gotta have 5 hard drives installed internally now because of these piles of crapp :( & at £19ea i`m not impressed :(

This item was edited on Sunday, 27th January 2008, 23:08