Thread: Buying External HDD --> Need advice

Hi...

I'm planning to buy an external HDD of 1 TB capacity. I have heard a lot of talk from people about this and I'm confused about external/portable/RAID storage.
What I require: I just need storage (a HDD which sits besides my comp where I can store all my stuff and then access it directly from that external storage when I need it)

Now initially I thought I would purchase a portable HDD of 1 TB. I did some research on the internet about portbale drives of 1TB. I came across the segate 1TB and WD 1TB portable drives. However they both have more disadvantages than advantages.
Segate is virtually out for me because all their drives are CRAP. Everywhere people are complaining about their FreeAgent 1TB portable drives;HDD failing very fast. (Check reviews on Amazon.com - More 1 star reviews than 4/5 star ones..lol)
Seagate used to be good earlier but now they are useless. People are having issues with their normal hard drives as well.
Maxtor is good but now they're owned by Segate.

Which brings me to the WD portable 1TB drive - MyBook series. WD is really a good brand when it comes to HDD but their portable HDD has got their custom software which I dont want. It is also a pain to get rid of.

So after all this I have decided to go for ext HDD. I need plain storage and I dont want any fancy company software. I am not going for seagate. I have zeroed my choices to the WD. They have a external HDD series called WD Elements. I am looking forward to buy WD Elements 1TB HDD. It has good reviews on Amazon (Atleast much better than Seagate)

I need some opinions about this drive guys. Anyone purchased this drive?
Also I heard some people mentioning that ext HDD will fail sooner or later and it is better to have a RAID array. Any insights on this are welcome too.

Thanks

have a look at this drive:
WD 1TB USB 3.0 drive

RAID is when you have multiple HDDs. Only seen then with internal drives, not external ones. They have multiple setups. They (drives in RAID)always have a risk of failing and in that case you will lose all your data, but then you get really good speeds.

Any reviews on the WD Elements 1TB/1.5 TB HDD ? I need some opinions on this one...

I purchased an external 1 TB HDD from Maxtor. It is external powered. I have had this for over six/seven months and faced no issues so far.

It does not come bundled with any software, etc.

you can just buy a normal hard drive and put it in an enclosure.....i recently got an portable hard drive with a 320GB Seagate Momentus drive, really fast i must say, much faster than the transcend i had....