Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

pyune

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 18, 2006
19
0
My friends have been telling me that I shouldnt have invested 200(including tax) on a Seagate Portable External Harddrive 100gig. Its very small sturdy and portable but pretty expensive as you see for only 100gigs. I thought since everyone said Seagates were very reliable the money was worth it... could I have gone with a different product and gotten a more bang for my buck?
 
Why do you need a portable hard drisk? do you own a laptop? If you do and you dont travel much you can buy a hard drive and an enclosure for much cheaper.
 
yes... i own a macbook pro . and I needed an external harddrive to store all my multimedia files.. nearly 40 gigs of avi movies and music. so to free up space on my laptop i purchased the SeaGate.. my question was was there a better purchase with same quality/reliablilty for 200 dollars.
 
Well, you paid $2 per gigabyte. Part of that is because it is a small, portable drive. If you don't need the small size, many external drives are $.50 or less per gigabyte.

Are you really going to be bringing the drive around with you, or will it mostly be at the desk?


EDIT: Example
 
crazycat said:
Why do you need a portable hard drisk? do you own a laptop? If you do and you dont travel much you can buy a hard drive and an enclosure for much cheaper.

I just did a quick froogle, but the $200 seems slightly high for that product... I found it pretty quickly in the $165 range. But what's the difference between a "portable hard disk" and an "enclosure?" Just the fact that it can run bus powered? (EDIT: oh, never mind, 2.5")
 
mkrishnan said:
I just did a quick froogle, but the $200 seems slightly high for that product... I found it pretty quickly in the $165 range. But what's the difference between a "portable hard disk" and an "enclosure?" Just the fact that it can run bus powered? (EDIT: oh, never mind, 2.5")

The "enclosure" doesn't include a hard drive.

Seagates are good drives with solid warranties. What kind of connectivity does it have? If it's just USB 2.0, you may have overpaid a little bit, but if it includes FireWire (especially FW800), it's too bad a price.

You don't say whether you really need the portability of a bus-powered 2.5" drive. A desktop drive/enclosure would have been cheaper, but if you need to take your external with you, what you have is obviously a better option.
 
pyune said:
My friends have been telling me that I shouldnt have invested 200(including tax) on a Seagate Portable External Harddrive 100gig. Its very small sturdy and portable but pretty expensive as you see for only 100gigs. I thought since everyone said Seagates were very reliable the money was worth it... could I have gone with a different product and gotten a more bang for my buck?

It's more expensive because it's portable. If you didn't need a portable one, then you could've gotten like a 300-500GB external HDD.
 
well... i have this problem of rushing my purchases. *i always do this!!*
Yeh well.. Best buy didnt have fire wire so i thought ill just be content with USB 2.0 .. yeh well I believe the portability of this harddrive was the main reason for the high price.. but the question of whether I really need it or not is very subjective... could i have lived without it? yes. but I am using this to take to my dorm in college and probably will be storing more important files for future purposes and it is a nice convenient size to just throw into my bookbag.
 
I think this thread needs clarity, just for sanity sake. :p


There are 3 types of external harddisks:

#1: The first type is usually sold by companies like Maxtor or LaCie. It's a single prepackaged harddisk that comes with nice, fancy enclosure (aka: outer metallic case) and a normal 3.5" harddisk installed inside. There's no installation or work necessary on your part. All you need to do is plug the unit into your computer. Since they use normal desktop HDs inside, they're usually at least 150 GB capacity now, probably larger.

The 2nd type is one you essentially assemble yourself. You need to buy a regular harddisk, buy an enclosure/casing of your choice, and put the HD into the enclosure yourself. It takes 1-2 minutes, and the only difference between #1 and #2 is that this method will save you money and likely give you a better quality HD for the same price. The capacity depends on the type of HD you buy, but since desktop HDs tend to start at around 150 GB to 200 GB, that's the smallest you're likely to get.

The 3rd type uses the type of HDs normally found in laptops and stuff. They're around 2.5" rather than 3.5", so they're smaller, and use very small enclosures. In many cases, they can be powered by plugging it into a powered USB port. Since they're small and don't necessarily need to be plugged in, they're more portable. You likely have one of these.

Do you, pyune, plan on taking this HD all over the place with you? I mean, will this external HD ever leave your desk? I have an external HD that I use to back up my photos and stuff, and it sits on my desk, and never moves.
 
thinking about it.. it will move around once in a while to share or upload a file somewhere else.. it will often just stay on my desk as storage. .
 
so is it difficult making the harddrive?.. like where do you purchase enclosers and how do you essemble it etc..
 
pyune said:
so is it difficult making the harddrive?.. like where do you purchase enclosers and how do you essemble it etc..

It's pretty easy. You just buy a regular desktop (3.5") or laptop (2.5") hard drive and then buy the appropriate sized enclosure from somewhere like New Egg. After you get the parts, you basically open the enclosure and plug in the hard drive. Simple as that!
 
I almost bought a hard drive and enclosure and from what I read it isn't hard at all to assemble. You just stick the drive in the enclosure and thats about it.

Here is an option to consider: (if you can take back current hard drive)

1. Buy a hard drive (3.5"; not a portable one) and enclosure as others have described above.
2. Clean up MBP hard drive so it holds only essentials and all the avi files you need. You should have the space since it is at least 80GB.
3. Use the external hard drive you bought in step "1" as storage for everything that doesn't need to be portable all the time.

This could save a lot of money and give you more disk space.

If apple puts Seagate's upcoming 60 & 120GB drives in the iPods you could buy one as an excuse to store files.:D Even buying the current 60GB one is a good option.
 
Yes you overpaid. Since the files you're storing there are really things you wont (and shouldnt) be carrying around alot then theres no purpose on spending the premium to be portable. So for $200 you couldve got 3x more storage on a standard sized external. Or you couldve just invested that $200 towards a larger internal HDD upgrade for your macbook pro since that would be more useful, then buy a nice little $20 enclosure for your old drive.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.