Obnerite-technofiles I need your expert help!!

I'm going to buy an external hard drive for our home computer.

3 deals are advertised in our local big box stores:

Maxtor 200GB OneTouchIII Usb 2.0 $160 Canadian dollars

Comstar 120GB 2.5" Usb 2.0 $150 Canadian dollars

Kaser 250GB StorageVault $120 Canadian dollars (backup software
in advertisement -
not sure about others


What would you suggest I buy?? I value your opinions more that others.


Cheers,

audiobill

Never heard of Comstar or Kaser, so unless you can find good reviews, I'd go for the Maxtor.

Maxtor 200GB OneTouchIII
Vs
Kaser 250GB StorageVault


In this digital age 120GB gets eaten up soon enough so I would hold off on Comstar for practical reasons.

On the Maxtor, that one-touch button feature makes backing up and copying your files a breeze. I own one.

There is also a DriveLock system for securing your External HD with your own password and a user-interface to help you manage your Drive and schedule backups.

Something else I really like about Maxtor is the Power on/off button. When I was shopping for External hard drives I noticed most of them did not have this feature. Comes in handy for those numerous short periods your Drive is on idle. Eliminates repeated plugging in and unplugging.

Maxtor is also Hot swapable which allows you to add or remove peripheral components without having to reboot you computer over and over.

250 GB is massive, but unless that Kaser has these same features I say stick with Maxtor.

I have a 500gb MyBook from WD that I got for like $199. There are pretty good deals out there if you search for them.

Thanks for your advice folks.

Looks like the Maxtor will be the one I get.


Ran across 2 more options:

Seagate 300GB USB 2.0 -External Hard Drive for $165 Canadian
and
Western Digital 250GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive for $130 Canadian


Any ideas about the Seagate and/or the Western Digital??


Appreciation, in advance,

Bill

and
Buslink are all reputable, but still better to check for those useful features.

I know the Maxtor OneTouch III has gotten general good reviews, but I had an earlier version (I? II? Ida Know) that just shit the bed on me a few months ago. It won't show up in explorer, no matter how I try to tackle it. It did this to me periodically before, but it would come back after a day or two. This time, I gave up after a couple weeks of no music. I won't keep important files on the external.

I replaced it with a WD MyBook that seems to be doing just fine so far.

Could it have been a configuration issue then? 'cus when Explorer doesn't display expected instillation I start looking for something in configuration not in Explorer but in the operating system in this case Windows XP.

Also when you switched to the other new hard drive did you make any changes in your computer set up? I know that no hardware lasts forever, but my Maxtor has been working fine for about two years now.

Nah. It would sometimes stop working between songs.

i have this one and it works great. . .

http://www.acomdata.com/hdp/fs.html -- the "E5 USB" one

Thanks for all of your feedback obnertechs.

I'm going to do some more research on this one before I take the plunge into external harddrive bliss.

Any one else have anything to say on this topic? Further suggestions?

Thanks-a-ton,

Bill