Hi George, The world of hard drives is growing daily and there are many choices to think about.
BRANDS I've spoken to many knowledgeable people in this field and the general consensus is that Western Digital and Seagate are the best. Their reasoning was that they were better constructed, ran cooler, and had been in the business many years. WARRANTY Seagate by far has the best warranty in the business with 5yrs. Remember, as in all warranties, it only covers the cost to replace the unit, not the information stored on it. So, if you have lots of important files, music, and photos they are on their way to cyber heaven. USAGE Personally, I have 1 Western Digital Drives and 1 Seagate. I prefer the Seagate. One Western Digital drive (160gb) I use for Norton Ghost exclusively. Norton Ghost is a program that takes a mirror image of your hard drive on a scheduled basis. If your internal hard drive fails, all one would have to do is run Ghost to the new drive. My second drive is a Seagate which is a 1 Terabyte which is also 1000 GB. I use this one for music and books of which I have a sizeable collection What shocked me was how small the Seagate drive is even though it's storage capacity is huge. It's only little over an inch thick and 7 inches by 7 inches. It can be stood on end and comes with a stand or you can lay it flat. If you choose to stand it on end, it takes up very little desk spance. I had a Western Digital 320GB and this Seagate is so much smaller at 3 tiimes the memory. OPERATION The Seagate comes with a great manager that is part of the set up process when you USB plug it in. I don't remember what format it comes in but there are two, NTFS and FAT32. In most cases you'll want to format in NTFS. If you format in FAT 32 it limits your file size to 4GB. This may not make a difference to you but if you are a gamer it may. You can have the Seagate Manager set up to a prescheduled time to copy files and even encrypt them. One unique feature is that you can schedule a time for your Seagate to "hibernate" just like your computer. I have mine set for 30 minutes. Because the discs in the drive aren't spinning, the drive stays cool. Maybe that's one of the reasons Seagate has a 5 year warranty. PRICES In the last year, the prices on external hard drives have really fallen as many members here have mentioned. Because of this get as much capacity as your dollar will allow because you will be surprised how quickly it will get filled and you may find that you want to kick yourself for not getting more capacity. I recently saw a 1 Terabyte Seagate for $100, now that's unbelievble BEST PRICE Of course, always Goolge to see the huge offerings by so many. There is a great place that I visit weekly called Sales Cirular.com, which posts tables of different items on sale in the newspaper from all kinds of stores. Just go to Salescircular.com and click on your state. You can then examine all the different categories and select the one that interests you. Then, just comparison shop. One last thing, when your current hard drive starts to get near full capacity, go out and buy a larger one and transfer all the current stored files to this new drive. Then take your now old drive and store it in your closet. Remember, there is no warranty on those priceless files that you have saved over the years and no way to replace them if they are lost. So, put the old drive in you closet and you will always have a back up. I'm not an expert. I just wanted to share what I have learned. Shannon Burle -- Original Message ----- From: "George Marshall" <marshall.geo...@gmail.com> To: <blind-computing@jaws-users.com> Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 08:02 AM Subject: Re: [Blind-Computing] Fw: External Hard Drive Hi: The HP mybook 500gb I bought is formatted fat32 and I didn't install the software that came with it. It was plug and play and you just copy and paste from your C drive. HTH, George R. Marshall marshall.geo...@gmail.com ----- Original Message ----- From: <acart...@juno.com> To: <blind-computing@jaws-users.com> Sent: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 1:29 PM Subject: [Blind-Computing] Fw: External Hard Drive > Hi Rogelio, > I just bought a Western Digital Elements external hard drive from the > walmart website for about the same price with about 640 GB. It all > depends how much you are going to put on it. > It has an USB cable and AC adapter. I haven't put it together yet, but I > soon will. > The only two things I wonder about is that there doesn't seem to be an > on/off switch on it, and it came pre formatted but doesn't say what the > format is. > I guess I'll have to connect it to find out the format. > Also, the instructions that came with it in the box aren't in English. :) > Thanks to the list for the discussion about the Windows Backup utility. I > didn't know that it existed until I read about it on here. > I now have it downloaded an installed. > AC > > --------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: "Rick Justice" <ricjust...@jaws-users.com> > To: <blind-computing@jaws-users.com> > Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 20:42:53 -0400 > Subject: Re: [Blind-Computing] External Hard Drive > Message-ID: <4d8e893d03cd47d8bb34e8300397d...@rick> > References: <7861d055092c4f9cb0fdbf52e3030...@rogelio> > > Hi Rogelio, > The 160gb that you refer to is not memorey, > instead it is hard drive storage capacity, there is a big difference. > Yes, the price you paid isn't bad for that amount of storage. > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Rogelio Terrazas" <rogelio.terra...@gmail.com> > To: <blind-computing@jaws-users.com> > Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 8:21 PM > Subject: [Blind-Computing] External Hard Drive > HTH,Richard Q. Justice-website owner > www.blind-computing.com > > > I just purchased an external hard drive with 160 GB of memory. I paid > $79.00 for it . Is that a good price? > rogelio.terra...@gmail.com > Visit the JAWS Users List home page at: > http://www.jaws-users.com > Visit the Blind Computing home page at: > http://www.blind-computing.com > Address for the list archives: > http://www.mail-archive.com/blind-computing@jaws-users.com/ > To post to this group, send email to > blind-computing@jaws-users.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to > blind-computing-le...@jaws-users.com > For help from Mailman with your account Put the word help in the subject > or body of a blank message to: > blind-computing-requ...@jaws-users.com > Use the following address in order to contact the management team > blind-computing-ow...@jaws-users.com > If you wish to join the JAWS Users List send a blank email to the > following address: > jaws-users-list-j...@jaws-users.com > > > Visit the JAWS Users List home page at: > http://www.jaws-users.com > Visit the Blind Computing home page at: > http://www.blind-computing.com > Address for the list archives: > http://www.mail-archive.com/blind-computing@jaws-users.com/ > To post to this group, send email to > blind-computing@jaws-users.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to > blind-computing-le...@jaws-users.com > For help from Mailman with your account Put the word help in the subject > or body of a blank message to: > blind-computing-requ...@jaws-users.com > Use the following address in order to contact the management team > blind-computing-ow...@jaws-users.com > If you wish to join the JAWS Users List send a blank email to the > following address: > jaws-users-list-j...@jaws-users.com > ____________________________________________________________ > Click here to become a professional counselor in less time than you think. > http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTOk5zoXfBACJPZNQI2O1H6aqZ1F6NsaEdxmBeeoYDcwUOyI37fBVO/ > > Visit the JAWS Users List home page at: > http://www.jaws-users.com > Visit the Blind Computing home page at: > http://www.blind-computing.com > Address for the list archives: > http://www.mail-archive.com/blind-computing@jaws-users.com/ > To post to this group, send email to > blind-computing@jaws-users.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to > blind-computing-le...@jaws-users.com > For help from Mailman with your account Put the word help in the subject > or body of a blank message to: > blind-computing-requ...@jaws-users.com > Use the following address in order to contact the management team > blind-computing-ow...@jaws-users.com > If you wish to join the JAWS Users List send a blank email to the > following address: > jaws-users-list-j...@jaws-users.com For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/ For answers to frequently asked questions about this list visit: http://www.jaws-users.com/help/
