Hi,
I am trying to buy a portable external hard disk.Space and speed are primary concerns.I want em from 1TB onwards..

i am thinking of the below please check and post ur suggestions.
1)Western Digital 1TB my passport essential SE

i have also seen 3TB hard disks .. can you please suggest anything better ???

If you want speed, forget USB 2.0 (by far the most common external drive interface around now). Firewire is a bit better, but still not great. eSATA is the only choice for speed. USB 3.0 might get better over time, but right now, eSATA is much faster-

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/02/05...ast-right-now/

@cascade9 - yeah .. i've already noticed it.Just wanted to get some inputs from u .. like specific hard drives.
i've digged through and found out that Western Digital and Seagate are good .. only seagate offering esata facility.

Any specific suggestions ?

You could also get an e-sata enclosure. It would also have a usb-2 or usb-3 port for when you connect to another computer.

It this drive is for backups, consider an external unit where you drop the bare hard drive into a slot. When it is full, eject the device, turn off the power, and replace it with a new drive. Keep the antistatic envelope the drive came in, and put that in bubble wrap (like a bubble wrap envelope) for storage.

The WD caviar blacks are prety much the fastest SATA HDDs around now, apart from the *raptors (overpriced and undersized, better to get a SSD over a raptor). Though some hitachi drives can pass the blacks on some tests, and the seagate momentus XT is quicker in some situations as well, thanks to being a 'hybrid' drive.

The caviar blacks have 2 main models, the 'normal' blacks and RE* (enterprise) models. Not that much difference between them for desktop use, though if I was building a RAID array I'd got for the RE* models.

The only thing that you might want to be careful of is the advanced format drives (4096k sectors, not 512b), pretty much everybody is doing that now. Best of to using GPT to partition the drive.

+1 to 'get an enclosure'. Without checking the exact model number, its hard to know what drive model is installed. You wouldnt want to get what you think is a 7200RPM 'fast' model then ind out that its a 'green' drive (5000-5900RPM depending on model and manufacturer). BTW, not all eSATA enclosures have a USB2.0/3.0 port.

I'd doubt that this is for backups, but if it is then speed is far less important IMO. If it is for backups though, the external 'slot' attachments are a good idea though.

@cascade -- i think what u have referred to is an internal drive ! my requirement is to store data not to backup.

In '06 I purchased a Western Digital My Book Essential 250GB External and still using it since without any issues. But since then, I started putting together my own external drives, by buying an internal drive and enclosures. Just get quality parts and you're good to go!

As far as I know, thereis not 'external only' drives. All the external drives are internal drives in an enclosure.

If its just data storage, I wouldnt bother with pure speed. A faster drive might make a minor difference compared to a slower drive, but its not that huge a difference. The 'wrong' setup could well end up slower anyway (a faster drive on USB2.0/USB3.0/firewire will be slower than a slower drive on eSATA).

cascade was replying to another post, which mentioned buying an enclosure (a box that has built-in USB, FireWire, or eSATA interface, in which you put any hard drive you want).

Actually, I was replying to dazzlinggopi. But I probably wasnt clear enough. I'll try to be more clear now.

If you want the fastest external drive possible, its best to get an internal drive (like I said above, there are no 'external drives, just internal drives in an enclosure), and an enclosure that supports eSATA. Most of the external drives use SATA 5000-5900 RPM drives that are slower than SATA 7200-10,000 RPM drives.

The whole problem is if he is going to use usb the speed and cache of the drive will make little difference because the data transfer speed is going to kill him.

True.

just having eSATA wont make the external any faster, you need to be using it LOL.