I have an Intel® Desktop Board DH55 mobo (don't know which DH55 like DH55HC or TC etc.) with an Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU 650 @ 3.20GHz. Appears from here http://ark.intel.com/products/42409/...p-Board-DH55HC that it has USB 2.0 not 3.

I am looking to get an external drive to backup my data. Speed is not that important that I am going to buy a USB 3 card. I have patience.

That said, what am I supposed to look for? I presume any drive will work, it's just a matter of the quality. I will mail order in Israel where I live. Here http://tinyurl.com/cuvo5ph is a shopping comparison site in Israel. It's in Hebrew, but all the brand names and models are in English, so if anyone wants to have a peek there and recommend a product, I would be happy to hear.

The price is not critical, nor the size. I think 500 G is plenty for me.

My friend bought this "My Book World Edition II" product: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=290 but I think that's overkill.

Thanks!

Hi there,

I'd rather look at it as a matter of price/quality ratio. And then, what exactly is quality?

Look for physical features. Do you prefer a pocket-friendly 2½" drive, or rather a bulky, but cheaper 3½" one? They both have their assets. If you pick a 2½" drive, make sure there is at least a jack for an external power supply, even if it says it is USB-powered and doesn't need extra supply. Fact is that many PCs aren't able to supply a maximum of 500mA for a USB device, though the spec says they have to. And some drives actually exceed this limit.

If you choose a 3½" unit, heat may become an issue, especially when there is a high-spin drive in it (often 7200/min). If you can get a grip on the specs, prefer one running at quiet 5400/min. Have a close look at the enclosure. If it is a plastic one, there should be generous venting holes; if it is a metal one (usually aluminum), it should have good thermal contact to the drive's chassis, so that the enclosure doubles as a heat sink.

The price may not be critical, but nobody wants to spend more money than necessary. But I can't help you on that one; prices vary a lot from country to country, currency exchange rates observed. And 500GB is probably about the smallest capacity you will find today; occasionally, there are some lonely 250 or 300GB drives left in stock, but they've become rare.

I hope I could help you more than I confused you. :-)

[X] Doc CPU

Any drive should work really.

I'm not much of a fan of western digital, but they do have performance. I've heard of some issues with the "green" edition drives firmware.

I usually buy seagate, but my confidence was shaken ever since that really bad firmware bug that slipped through. It only affected on series, but it bricked the drive.

I do have one Samsung drive, and it works well. I haven't tested it long, so I don't know about reliability.

Oh, and I did have a Hitachi drive on my laptop, it had a nasty firmware bug where it would constantly spin up and down wearing itself out.

As you can see, firmware is the biggest issue with HDDs. You can search the net and make sure the series of drives doesn't have major firmware issues.

I would personally buy a Samsung or Seagate.

Thank you both for the feedback.

H_TeXMeX_H, this point is very interesting. Can I ask you to review my thread here http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...39#post4544139 ? About a Hitachi drive on my desktop. Could be the drive is fine, but maybe not...

Seems the drive is an "ATA Hitachi HDS72101" according to an app I have called HardInfo.

Thanks.

Hi there,

I haven't used Seagate HDDs for a few years, so I probably skipped that news because it wasn't important for me. Do you have some more info on what happened?

I second that; IIRC I bought nothing else but Samsung since 2004. Well, except for the HDDs in preconfigured systems where the customer has no insight before buying. Especially the Samsung drives are known for their low noise operation, which was more than once the final criteria for my choosing a Samsung.

I also have a strong disklike towards Western Digital. In the late 90's, four WD drives died on me within three years just like that with no apparent reason; and all with very different symptoms. One had a serious head crash on power-up; one just failed to respond to the host controller some day; yet another had a sudden alarming increase of bad sectors; and the fourth just stopped spinning in mid-operation and wouldn't spin up again.

Alright, WD may have improved in reliability, and I agree that the performance of their contemporary drives is really good. I particularly like their concept of adjusting the revving speed dynamically depending on load, varying from about 4000/min up to 7200/min. Most of the time, that saves power and makes the drive comfortably quiet.
However, once bitten, twice shy - I still can't convince myself to buy a WD again.

And no, this post is not meant to be WD bashing - I know there are people who had similarly bad experience with Seagate, Fujitsu, Hitachi or IBM. This is just my own experience and my resulting attitude.

[X] Doc CPU

I got this Samsung http://www.samsung.com/sg/consumer/p...ype=prd_detail for 105 USD including shipping. I called the guy with the online store here in Israel, to give my CC number and he said he sells one of these every 5 minutes. He also said he never had one returned.

Thanks.