Best external hard drives to buy right now?

The price seems fine, but what’s the deal with Seagate's reputation lately? They’re offering a 2-year warranty, but then I look at the manufacturer's site and it says only one year. That’s pretty confusing.

First off, does your computer actually have a USB3 port available?
If it doesn't, you might need to pick up a dedicated expansion card to plug into your motherboard—though, as those with a bit more technical experience know, you have to make sure your motherboard is actually compatible with that kind of upgrade. It’s pretty easy to figure out, though; just check which motherboard you're running and ask at a place like Best Buy (or just post the model here).

If your motherboard already supports USB3, then all you need to do is buy an external enclosure for your new 3.5" HDD that features a USB3 interface. Just keep in mind that most of these external enclosures come with their own dedicated power supply and wall adapter to plug into a standard outlet.
As for actually installing the HDD into the enclosure, it’s really not a headache. The kit usually includes all the necessary screws for assembly, along with the internal connector that plugs directly into the drive. You won't be able to get it wrong as long as you ensure the enclosure is specifically designed for the exact HDD you purchased... so just double-check the specs before buying.

Everything I've mentioned applies to getting a new external HDD enclosure... for example, something like this > http://www.futura-it.com/product.asp...ID = US-GD-25633 which houses the HDD

P.S.—I was checking the warranty details for Seagate through a local distributor, and while their main site mentions a 12-month term as of early 2012, this specific link suggests a 2-year coverage. My advice? Always aim for the HDD with the longest possible warranty period...

Thanks for clearing that up. It makes things a bit more obvious now. I guess it’s time to actually sit down and think this through before I go making any big moves or opening my wallet.

What do you guys think about this setup?
The case.
HDD
Don't forget to check the warranty—it's a solid 60 months.
Would the transfer speeds be compatible between an HDD and this enclosure?
It looks like you might have cut off your message there. What were you trying to say? If you've got a question or a rant ready to go, lay it on me. I'm listening. USB3 controller. That's all I want to talk about.
Can I actually mount this on my current motherboard? And more importantly, am I going to need some specific cable to hook the damn thing up? The motherboard is...
The ASROCK H55M-LE. Honestly, what even is this thing? It’s like looking at a relic from a different era. I don't know why people are still digging through junk drawers for these old boards, but here we are. It's basic, it's dated, and quite frankly, it’s barely holding on by a thread. If you're thinking about trying to build something decent with this, just stop. Save your money. You're better off buying something that wasn't obsolete before the last decade ended.
Those two white ports on the far left—which end up at the very bottom of my PC case—are wide open. Same goes for those two red SATA II connections down on the left side of the photo, just like the ones on the right.

You could probably grab this controller, unless you’re absolutely dying for four ports:

Just plug the controller into that tiny x1 PCIe slot—though, honestly, you should double-check that your graphics card isn't hogging the space. If it is, you might be in for a bit of a headache since that's the only slot of its kind on your board.

Personally, I’d go with the Chieftec case—the cooling setup is way better, regardless of the fact that the warranty is a little shorter.

Yeah, that GPU cooler is definitely in the way. Is there some kind of adapter or cable I could use to fix this? I’d rather just mount it up front; that actually works better for my setup. And honestly, I'm leaning toward the one with four ports. It’s the smart move—everything is moving toward USB 3.0 anyway.
Are you talking about this specific case?
Worst case scenario, I can just ditch the GPU cooler since the motherboard already comes with its own...

Look, there's no cable or adapter in existence that’s going to fix this—mostly because you don't have anywhere to actually plug it in. If your motherboard doesn't have a native USB 3.0 port, your only real move is to grab a PCIe card and add one that way.

Yeah, that's the Chieftec I was talking about.

Alright, everything’s been bought. I grabbed a Chieftec case, and regarding the HDD, they told me they haven't even had one come back for a warranty claim in three years—considering how many of those things they move. As for the graphics card, I'm pulling it out first, and honestly, looking at it, I might actually be able to save it. It looks like maybe two or three fins on the heatsink are just getting in the way, and not even all of them. I’m going to take a closer look and try to "surgically" remove them if I think it won't mess with the GPU temps too much. I'll let you know how it goes once I finish cleaning up this mess and test everything out. 👍

Alright, regarding the first phase of the job—installing the USB 3.0 controller—it’s a success. I don't want to clutter this thread with a massive wall of text, so here's the gist: I had to trim a little bit off the GPU heatsink to make everything fit, but once that was done, I got it all seated, installed the driver, and tested it out with a USB 3.0 card reader. It works perfectly. I've got a few photos of the setup if anyone actually cares to see it. Once I get back home, I'll get the HDD sorted and run my first backup, then I'll let you know how it holds up.

I’ve definitely got a problem here. Here’s the deal: the HDD is mounted properly in the enclosure, power is connected, and I've got the USB 3.0 cable plugged in. When I hit the switch on the case, the blue power light comes on and the red data light kicks in too. A notification pops up saying new hardware was detected, it spins for a few seconds, and then says it's ready to go. But here's the kicker—when I open My Computer, the new drive just isn't there. It should be showing up right there. Everything else works fine instantly; my other external drive (a 2.5'' 250 GB one), card readers, thumb drives, cameras, GPS units—they all show up immediately as extra drives. Even Device Manager recognizes this thing by its full name and claims it's working perfectly. So, how do I force it to actually show up as a drive in My Computer?? I've already tried restarting Windows a few times, toggling the HDD on and off, wiggling the USB cable, even clicking update driver... I haven't exactly started dancing for it yet, but I highly doubt that would help.
The OS is Windows XP, Service Pack 3, 32-bit.
Oh, one more thing. Along with the motherboard, there's this software, XFast USB, that reacts to basically anything you plug into a USB port and offers "normal" or "turbo" data transfer modes. It recognizes this drive too, and it hasn't given me any trouble until now.

Go ahead and right-click on My Computer, then select Manage > Disk Management to see if the drive shows up there. If it does, you can go ahead and format the disk using the NTFS file system. You could also create partitions, but since you mentioned this is just for backups, that probably isn't necessary...

Dennis Taylor82, thanks for the tip.
The issues aren't going away. When I fired it up again today, the drive would show up, stay for maybe ten seconds, and then just vanish. I keep getting that message saying new hardware was detected but it’s not working right. It's constant—it pops in and out every ten seconds like clockwork. Tried switching to a different USB port, same exact nonsense. Eventually, I plugged it into a USB 2.0 port and things finally stabilized. I went ahead and formatted it through Disk Management, which took a grueling 4 or 5 hours. Once that was done, I used Safely Remove Hardware, moved it over to a USB 3.0 port, and yep—back to square one. It's there, then it isn't. For a split second while it was actually visible, I managed to create a folder and start copying some files, but ten seconds later the drive "disappeared" and killed my data transfer mid-stream. Had to move it back to USB 2.0 just to get it to work. Now I'm running backups on it there. Interestingly, the card reader on the USB 3.0 port works perfectly fine and doesn't cut out. But when I plug an external 2.5'' HDD into that same USB 3.0 port, the system says new hardware is ready to use, yet the drive won't show up in the list of drives or even in Disk Management. I used to run backups to it on USB 2.0 without any drama. To make matters worse, it won't even recognize a standard USB flash drive now. Is it possible the USB 3.0 controller is just junk, or is there some weird incompatibility with the motherboard? Or am I looking at some messed up OS or BIOS settings?

Four or five hours just to format a single drive?!? Are you kidding me? You should be using the Quick format option—you only ever run a full format if you’re dealing with actual issues, like hitting some bad sectors or something.

It’s highly likely you’ve got a controller issue on your hands, especially if everything seems to be running fine on your USB 2.0 ports. Have you actually installed the drivers for the controller yet? Is the Device Manager looking clean?

Clearly, I forgot to check the Quick format box before I started formatting.
I installed the driver for the USB 3.0 controller using the CD that came with it. It’s possible I missed a step during the process because the CD doesn't have an auto-run feature. You had to manually trigger something—probably the driver installation—inside one of several folders. The instructions mentioned an "autorun," but there wasn't one, just an "install" file.
Should I try hunting down a fresh driver online and see if that works? And what do you mean when you say "Device Manager is clean"? If that's what you're getting at, the only thing on my list is the "VIA USB 3.0 Root Hub," and there isn't a single yellow exclamation mark. Double-clicking it shows the device is working perfectly, though the driver is from 2011.
Could the issue be that I'm running 32-bit Windows XP?

If you’ve got the right driver for Windows XP on that disc, you should be golden—no real issues there. What kind of controller are we talking about, though? Maybe try testing the controller out on a buddy's rig to see if it's just your setup?

This controller
I've got this older PC sitting around, but I’m worried the motherboard might be way too ancient to handle compatibility. It's been sitting there for... maybe 7 or 8 years

Did you actually plug the SATA power cable from the PSU into the controller?

Yeah, honestly, the GPU cooler was my biggest headache because it kept getting in the way of the power supply. But I finally sorted that out.

It actually says right here that you’re supposed to be running this on XP: http://www.delock.de/produkte/F_319_...setLanguage=en

Which is exactly why I told you to just plug that controller into a different PC and see if it behaves—it's the only way to know for sure.

Hi there.
After digging through a few sites, I’ve narrowed my search down to just two models based on price and storage capacity. I'm torn between them:

http://www.diskont24.com/product.php...cat=530&page=1

and

Does anyone have any advice?
I just need a drive to store photos and music; I don't plan on carrying it around much, so portability isn't really a priority.

I would lean toward the General Electric model, but Microsoft offers a three-year warranty. I know General Electric actually manufactures drives, whereas I'm not as familiar with the other brand...