Need suggestions for a 500 external HD

[chermesh]

Hi,
My external HD (WD MyBook 500) ceased to work. When I bought it, around a year ago, i read promising reviews, especially on its reliability. Well, no more. This HD is a crap. At least mine.
Could you suggest a dependable external HD of a similar size?

[unidentified]

External Hard drives gets damaged pretty soon from what I have heard so far. How did your hard drive crapped out btw? If it is in warranty then try to replace it if it is not physically damaged. Another option is you can go with a Maxtor drive.

[Shubodh]

External Hard drives life is depend on how you going to use it well warranty is important thing while buying hard disk.if looking for quality go with segate original hard disk which cost is little more.

[T.J.]

I will suggest you to visit this site as you will get various brands along with it's price list:

Hard Drive / Hard Disk Price List In India (Internal Hard Drive and External Hard Drive)

[MACY]

The 500 GB 7200 RPM FreeAgent Pro USB 2.0 / eSATA External Hard Drive. With this hard drive, you can automatically move your content to multiple locations, including sharing and uploading of the pictures online. It features a spindle speed of 7200 RPM and a data transfer rate of up to 3 Gbps for quick access of data from the drive. It supports USB 2.0 and eSATA interface for quick. about price it will cost you around $119.94.

[tloffman]

Last year I purchased a 500gb WD My Book external hard drive at Costco. A few weeks ago it crashed, but I was able to return it to Costco for a FULL REFUND! With the refund I purchased a 1TB WD My book for about the same money.

A week later I discovered Fry's was selling the Seagate FreeAgent Extreme 1TB drive for $20 less than what I paid for the WD. The Seagate drive gets better reviews on the net, so if I had it to do all over again I'd get the Seagate drive.

Also, I have tried, with no success, to use my WD My Book with TWO different eSATA PCI-Express boards. My computer doesn't "see" the WD drive but does work fine with the PCI-Express firewire card I installed using the Firewire 400 cable that comes with the WD drive. USB 2.0 will NOT work with the larger WD drives - some limitation with XP above 160gb.

So, I am currently able to use my new 1TB WD drive ONLY with the Firewire 400 cable, not the USB 2.0 and NOT the eSATA connection.

I can't tell if the eSATA connection problems are with XP not properly working with the eSATA drivers, or if the problem is with the WD drive not working with the eSATA drivers or XP. But, based on my experience, I wouldn't suggest the WD drive.

I am running XP on a Dell Inspiron.