As of now I'm still using my 10yr old IMB desktop with Windows XP
It has a 2.2Ghz Intel Celeron and 1.5GB of RAM
The thing is getting old though and the original hard drive is only 72GB and pretty much full making everything run a bit slow.
My hard drive is filled with music mostly and I've been trying to find the right external hard drive to store all my files on.
I plan on getting a new laptop in the near future, most likely a macbook, and I want to have everything off this computer and safe for now.
Previously I had a Seagate drive and it died within a year, right after the warranty ran out. Luckily I salvaged most of my files stored on my mp3 player.
I'm looking for something that will work with both Windows and Mac.
Something that will last more then a year and with a longer warranty.
Friends have suggested Lacie or Mybook, but I can't decide.
Anyone have any good suggestions?
Whilst not solving your problem I have used for quite a long time a USB external hard drive carrier box. It is a unit that you can put any IDE type drive into it and it then works just like a USB hard drive. In this way you can put a new HD into the box and copy the files and then use on any usb machine but you also have the facility when you ditch the old machine to keep the old hard drive and ,use it if necessary in the HD usb carrier box. these boxes are not expensive!
While Mjdodd's advice is very good, if you still wish to buy an external harddrive. You need to understand a few things.
The Small 2.5 Profile drives are compact and easy to plug and play. but they are very fragile. If you want to get one get a Rugged rated one I am using an Hitachi I treat it like hell and it works flawlessly.
If you want to get a 3.5 Profile Drive. These drives are much cheaper compared to the 2.5 Profile drives and inherently rugged. The problem with these drives is that you need to supply them with DC power (very much what mjdodd is talking about). So mobility goes out the window unless you don't mind the extra cables to plug in.
If you want to go the route mjdodd suggests get a good quality USB HDD enclosure that supports IDE, as most new enclosures don't support IDE any more. The problem here will be as the drive is old your read write will suffer when you will transfer data from and to it.
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