Hard Drive Help/Recommendations

Butcher_In_The_Store 12/04/12 4:09 pm

I don't know which route to take with my new laptop in terms of a hard drive. I have a Mac and the 500 gb hard drive won't be enough in the long run. I'm not sure whether to..

A) buy a new hard drive and install it into the computer myself, then making the original hard drive into an external with an external enclosure.

B) Buy an internal hard drive and make it into an external with an enclosure and leave the original one as is.

C) Take the easy route and buy an external hard drive.

I want something that is definitely 7200 rpm and at least 750 gb but I prefer a TB. I just started researching this stuff and am still pretty new to it so feel free to leave any suggestions you have.

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mattsox94 12/04/12 4:14 pm

Problem with option A is Apple can be a pain when it comes to adding your own gear into the computer. That being said, I have a 3TB seagate external hard drive and it's awesome. The only downside to it is it needs a power source to run it, you can't just plug it in to your computer and go. It has an insane amount of room, even for someone like me who has far too much junk on his computer.

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chris200w 12/04/12 4:20 pm

Yeah, I'd avoid tearing open a brand new laptop if I didn't have to. They tend not to be designed with users replacing components in mind. You'll probably get by just fine with 500 GBs of onboard storage.

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spaced 12/04/12 5:15 pm

Yes, agreed with both of the above. I would guess that 500GB is plenty for an internal; you should be able to fit everything you'd need to get to on a daily basis, and the rest you can access with an external as needed. I've only got 250 on my laptop and I have no problem getting by with that.

One more thing to add is that you shouldn't need to worry about getting a 7200 rpm drive if it's an external. The USB connection is going to be the bottleneck there, not the speed of the drive, so 5400 should be fine. I know the new USB 3.0 connections are a lot faster though, I don't know if that changes things (that's assuming your computer and your drive both have that capability).

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Butcher_In_The_Store 12/04/12 5:24 pm

Thanks for the help guys...I think I'm leaning towards the external or internal/enclosure I'm just not sure as to which in particular to buy. I've heard good things about seagate so I may go that route

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Penn42 12/04/12 5:31 pm

I've got 3 Western Digital MyBook's and they work fantastic. One I use as my main media hard drive, another I use to back that one up, and the third I use to back up my computer. I would recommend one of these, I have never had any problems with any of them. Even the one I have plugged into my computer on a daily basis that is 6 years old is still working like a champ! Also you can get a 2tb one for under a hundred bucks, so that's cool.

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