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feedback needed on external hard drive

16 years ago

All ~

I'm looking at purchasing an external hard drive for under $200. Which is the better brand, Maxtor or Seagate? and which model?

Needs ~ USB, minimum of 500GB storage, reliability, ease of use, security

Background ~ I've recently started my own accounting business and want an external drive to where I can load all my tax and accounting programs to make it portable and enable me the freedom to either work from my office computer or my home computer. My OS is WinXP.

Appreciate feedback.

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Comments (7)

owbist
16 years ago
As Seagate now owns Maxtor it doe not really matter. A nice point of interest is the fact that Seagate has extended their warranties up to 5 years now, how sweet it is.

Ask questions to be sure you get a newer model covered for the 5 year term when purchasing

Here is a link that might be useful: Warranty period for Seagate or Maxtor
msm84
16 years ago
owbist, that article was from 2004 and it does say "excludes external hard drives". Do you have a newer update where the warranty has changed? I couldn't find anything.
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owbist
16 years ago
Ooops, sorry about that. I had read elsewhere about the 5 years so when I found that article I thought that was it.

However the warranty is five years based on the link below. Check the Top sellers list for items 1 - 4 - 5 and each has the 5 years of coverage. Then if you click the 'Portability' link above the top sellers you will see those drives are also 5 years.

Hope that helps

Here is a link that might be useful: Maxtor site
msm84
16 years ago
Thanks owbist for clearing that up :o)
arleneb
16 years ago
I just bought a
MaxtorÂ® OneTouchÂ 4 Plus 500GB external hard drive for $139 at Staples and it has a 5 yr. warranty on it from the manufacturer.

A couple years ago I had bought a 2GB Flash from them and when I had a problem with it, they replaced it with no problem at all.
owbist
16 years ago
I have replaced 2 Maxtor hard drives under warranty with no problems at all. In fact one was a 30 gig and as they no longer made those I was sent an 80 gig drive. I did not complain :-)
jemdandy
16 years ago
I have an external Western Digital 80 GB drive and have had no problems for 3 years (after I did a surface scan on it). I recommend a surface scan before using the drive. My drive had a few bad sectors that had not been marked off and these casued some pecular problems until this was discovered. It took 30 min to 1 hr to do a thorough surface scan but was well worth it.

I noted in your post that you intend to have 'programs' as well as data on this external drive and may use this drive on another computer. Beware that if the programs are "installed" Windows programs, this may not work. It may work if the programs are of the stand alone variety such as code for BASIC, complied FORTRAN, or Visual Basic embedded in an EXCEL work sheet.

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