Portable harddisk and laptops ....

[skate.101]

I was thinking of buying a portable harddisk and a laptop so I wanted to know of your personal experiences with different companies so that I can evaluate which is the best .... and plz do answer keeping a good budget ...

[Koby]

From my experience Western Digital is one of the best brands for portable hard drives and they are also usually one of the cheapest. I bought a 1 TB WD back in 2008, and then I bought a 2 TB WD last November and both are still doing great.

[† TheChaosLegion]

I also suggest using Western Digital for hard drives. Both my current hard drives (160gb & 500gb) have been running strong for almost 2 years and I just ordered myself a new 2.5tb HD to go along with them.

Can't say about laptops though since I don't own any mobile devices.

[DuLake]

I also suggest WD for hard drives. I have a 640 GB external that's ran well as well as a few internals in a few machines in my house (including dual 2 TB's in my networked storage, be jealous). You might be able to save a few bucks (and only a few) with another brand, but I personally don't like to gamble with data, so I really do recommend you go with a WD HDD.

As for laptops, I happily use a Sony Vaio. It's not perfect, but it's been running strong for me for over a year and was competitively priced. My sister uses a Toshiba and it also seems to run well, so I wouldn't mind recommending that company either. It really depends on what you want to use it for and how much you're willing to spend though.

[biggman15]

Normally I would recommend WD as well. My first external was a 250 GB WD MyBook, I had it for close to 6 years before replacing it and giving it to a friend. He still uses it. I replaced it with a 2TB WD which lasted for maybe 4 months before the USB controller Fried. At least I think it was the USB controller. Anyway, that has also been replaced. I'm using a Seagate(I've never been a fan of Seagate) Freeagent Goflex Desk 2TB. This one is a bit different. The reason I purchased it is because the Hard Drive and the Controllers are separate. The Hard Drive sits in a little Dock that for example if I had bought a USB 2 drive. I can order a new base that simply upgrade the drive to USB 3. So while I may be delusional in thinking this way. I'm assuming that if the USB controller burns I can simply order a new one. Now that I've said that. It's going to happen and I'm going to be disappointed when it doesn't work...

[† L4ugh]

I would also recommend Western Digital for the HDD. I have a few that are almost 10yrs old now and they're still running fine.

It would cost a lot more but a NAS (Network Attached Storage) is another option you could consider. Some can hold multiple HDDs and you could share it with all the computers on your network.

If you want a cheap laptop I would recommend getting a netbook like the eeepc. They don't have a lot of power, so if you need power stick with a full sized laptop. Nvidia is lanching a new quadcore processor later this year so around christmas time netbooks could offer a lot better performance.

[† ballard]

Like everyone else said Western Digital is a great brand to go with. I have always used WD hard drives external and internal. You could also look at Seagate hard drives. I was personally iffy about them at first, but after buying an external hard drive from them it has ran flawless for me which is good considering how much I use it.

As far as laptops go I have always liked ASUS, Samsung, and Lenovo brands. I'm currently using an HP laptop that has been running amazing since the day I got it.