External Hard Drives

I'm looking at getting one as a Xmas gift for someone, and I was wondering what the tech gurus here had for personal preferences???

I have used WD hard drives on everything I have done, internal or external, with the exception of one Fujitsu that was crap. I have really been happy with WD, but I'd like to get some more opinions. I know some that swear by Seagate and some that hate it, same for WD for that matter, lol. I'm open to suggestions.

I'd like to get a 500gb or larger capacity external, it doesn't need to portable, as I expect it would never leave it's spot on the desk.

ive always had probs wit wd
i've had many different drives in all different sizes
i actually have an old 3.6gb fujitsu thats still works to this day witout probs

i've only ever had 2 harddrives that seriously failed on me
both have been wd's


i prefer seagate

im runnin a maxtor rite now wit no probs
(i think maxtor is quite popular in terms of external hds)

I like Seagate and WesternDigital as hard drives, I use both.

I also have Maxtor drives as well in two computers, as well as a Maxtor external HDD for backup and storage. I think the Maxtor is a pretty nice external HDD and has been a reliable internal as well.

If you are planning to buy an external case and put your own hard drive in it, then get whatever HD you like. (This is a good way of getting the brand/size you want.)

If you are planning to buy a pre-built external HDD, there are only so many HDD manufacturers, so most of the externals you see will have a hard drive built by one of those manufacturers. You may be able to find out what brand of drive is in the external unit. If the external is built by one of the major manufacturers, it will, of course, have their brand of HDD in it.

As far as brands go, I've had good and bad results with almost every brand. Overall, I would recommend WD, Seagate, or Samsung.

As a side note - Fujitsu had a batch of bad controller chips a few years back. It wasn't really their fault, but they had so many failures and had to replace so many drives that they basically left the consumer HDD market. Nowadays they mostly sell enterprise SCSI drives and laptop drives.

hmmm, maybe Fujitsu isn't all bad then? hehe, I think I'll get whatever is priced best from a major brand and just make sure that it comes with a decent warranty. Thanks for the input guys.

WD passport (up to 500g)
I really wanted an external that needed no power supply.

I got the 500g one, and love it. Silent, and fits pretty easily into my pocket

the WD passport is nice, but I wasn't looking for a portable... not when they cost more money anyways. lol I just received a Seagate FreeAgent 500 GB from Newegg. I think it will make a nice present, and the price was really good, which is what I wanted the most.

*all of my "Adoring Fans" out there can send me the same thing for Christmas XD*

I'm by no means a "tech guru," but I use a 500GB WD Pro-Version and haven't had any issues with it, severe or minor. They're getting pretty cheap too.

Just make sure you get an 3.5 inch drive instead of the 2.5 inch. Since the 3.5 has a faster hard drive speed than the 2.5 one.(3.5=7200 RPM-10,000 RPM---2.5=5400 RPM)

Actually, the USB2 buss is more of a limiting factor than the speed of the hard drive.

However, in this case, since the OP said it doesn't need to be portable (just external), 3.5" would be better in general.