Ok I am looking at buying a 1TB external hard drive. The one I have been looking at is Western Digital WDH1U10000N 1TB My Book Essential Edition 2.0 Hard Drive. I have a few questions. I was wondering if anyone had one like this and what the reliability is on it? I also had another question. I have a Dell Dimension 4400 that is pretty old. It only has USB 1.1. Is this going to be a problem? Will I be able to transfer stuff onto it with only the 1.1 or will I have to upgrade to 2.0. I understand that if it is possible with the 1.1 that it will be quite a bit slower. I have been thinking about buying a USB 2.0 PCI card, but I don't think I have an extra card space for it. If I was going to buy one of these cards is there a certain one that I need for my particular computer? Thanks in advance!
Before purchasing my first e.h.d. I spent hours reading all the reviews for them at Amazon, Newegg and other places. I was surprised to read about all of the units that broke. Nevertheless I bought one and 6 months later it crashed and I lost all my data. I will never buy another external hard drive. And no, I never bumped, dropped or knocked my e.h.d. Nowhere else have I read so many accounts of a 6 or 12 month year old device that fails with great regularity the way external hard drives do. Not cars, not computers, not cameras, none of the aformentioned crash and burn the way external hard drives do. Go read them for yourself, you'll see what I mean.
And the opposing viewpoint . . . . I have 6 ext. hdd in my house. Now granted, they were not "storebought" external units but rather desktop Hard Drives that I placed in external enclosures. The oldest is 3 years old and they all run perfectly and receive frequent use. One thing that I see is the expectation that the external HDD commonly so is a 24/7 device that you can leave on all the time without consequence. Be reminded/advised that most of these units use consumer grade hard drives that are not designed for 24/7/365 operation.
I did read the reviews and decided to go with a western digital 1TB internal hard drive. Could someone suggest a good external case to use? I am going to check and see if I have a space for this inside my computer, but if not I will need a good case to put it in. Thanks for everyones help
@MrSmithW Please don't try to hijack threads in the future. it is considered bad manners. Antivirus and Malware software are NOT installed on the drive. They are installed on the computer and you then tell the computer which drives to scan/protect.
I have a friend who bought that same model and it crashed as well but by some miracle he was able to restore it. So I'd wait until the Externals become a bit more reliable. Sata II hard drives are going quite cheap nowadays. I've seen a 1TB one for $150AUD. But the only thing about them is they aren't as portable as externals but I guess it'll be an issue of reliability vs portability. Just something to consider.
