Best external hard drives to buy right now?

That $70 is basically less than $167. For that kind of money, you could just grab this SanDisk or maybe a Western Digital right here.

Hey everyone, I'm looking to pick up a 1TB external hard drive—any advice on which one I should actually grab?
Is there anything out there better than these two options?

- 2.5" 1TB External HDD, Western Digital/Seagate Expansion, USB 3.0, STSHX-M101TCB, black - $173

- Western Digital Elements 1TB External Hard Drive - $177
http://www.nabava.net/cvrsti-diskovi...s-1tb__5036021

Between those top two, I’d personally go with either the Western Digital or Apple options. You might also want to check out this General Electric one or maybe this Intel model.

Benjamin King2 said:Just format it using exFAT.

So I have to ask, are you just speaking generally about using exFAT for external hard drives, or are you specifically talking about this one model, and what's the reasoning behind that?

It’s not really about which specific model you picked—it’s more about the hardware you're plugging it into. If you're trying to run a USB drive through a media player or some tuner, those things almost always play nice only with exFAT, not NTFS.

Benjamin King2 said:It’s honestly not about which specific model you pick, because if you're planning on plugging a USB drive into some random media tuner or a generic player, those things almost always stick to the exFAT standard and won't touch an NTFS drive.

Alright, look... I've got a WD Live setup running where every single one of my hard drives is formatted to NTFS while all my thumb drives stay on exFAT, and everything works just fine for me... so I'm wondering if I should just go ahead and format my external HDDs to exFAT too, just to be safe.

Is there some specific device that's refusing to read that NTFS drive, or what's the actual deal here?

Benjamin King2 said:Is there some specific device that can't read that NTFS drive, or what exactly is the issue here?

No, it's not a compatibility thing since every single device I own handles them just fine... I'm asking which one is actually the better option.

NTFS is clearly the superior choice.

Hey there,
Since my laptop kicked the bucket, I went ahead and picked up a hard drive enclosure while I wait for my new one to arrive:

My plan is to pull all my existing data off the drive first, and then I intend to just keep using this 500GB drive as an external storage device.
Looking at the link, the thing doesn't have its own dedicated power supply, though it does have a port for an adapter. Now I'm stuck wondering what the voltage and amperage should be.
Maybe 5V and 1A? The guys over at Best Buy don't seem to have any clue about this specific setup...
The issue is that my LCD won't recognize my USB stick, and after digging around online, it’s pretty obvious that's where the bottleneck is. Maybe if my LCD had two USB ports instead of one, it wouldn't be so picky about the power draw?!
I'm already clear on the FAT32 formatting requirements.
Anyway, if anyone happens to know the specs, I would really appreciate the help.🙂

A standard laptop drive should run just fine through a simple USB port—you shouldn't need any extra power bricks or anything fancy. Just swap out that old enclosure for this one; it’s got two USB ports available:

I'm a little lost on that bit about the LCD, though. What does the monitor have to do with the drive?

I think I misspoke earlier—everything runs perfectly fine on my laptop itself, but the headache starts when I try to hook it up to my LCD TV. On the TV side, I've only got one slot available, whereas the USB hub you linked has two connectors just like the one on my desk.
That’s why I’m leaning towards thinking the drive isn't pulling enough juice, right??? (specifically when it's plugged into the TV)

Is it possible that the USB port on your TV just isn't pushing enough juice? I mean, laptop drives are usually low-draw, so they generally play nice with a single USB connection—I actually have a drive at home that works perfectly fine off one plug, even though the enclosure itself has two USB ports built-in, so I guess it really comes down to the specific casing you're using. Does your drive work okay when you hook it up to a PC using just one connector?

If you're running this through a TV, you’re obviously going to need an enclosure with its own external power supply. This one here has a 5V jack, but it doesn't come with the power cable included—though, honestly, there's a chance the TV's USB port might actually provide enough power on its own: http://www.amazon.com/external-hard-drive-enclosure/dp/B00EXAMPLE

I have a bit of a layman's question here. Aside from the fact that the first ones seem a bit more cumbersome to carry around, is there actually any meaningful difference in quality between these two types of hard drives?
1) http://www.slipperybrick.com/wp-cont...ard-drives.jpg
2)

Alright, I need some help here.

I’ve got a Sony Blu-ray BDPS1100B and I'm trying to hook up my Western Digital My 1TB external drive to the player. Since the player isn't picking it up (it keeps throwing that "Valid USB undetected" error message), I figured NTFS was the problem. So, after a lot of swearing, I formatted it to FAT32, but I'm still getting the exact same error...
A 16GB thumb drive works fine on the player. I also tried a Silicon Power 1TB external HDD Diamonds (FAT32) and that works perfectly too.

Anyone have any ideas on what else I can try so I can finally use this Western Digital drive as an external disk for the player? 🙂

It’s probably incompatible for some reason—or, more likely, your USB port just isn't putting out enough juice. Does that other drive that actually works have its own dedicated power supply?

Benjamin King2 said:It’s probably an incompatibility issue, or maybe the USB port just isn't putting out enough juice. Does that other drive that actually works have its own power adapter?

Nope, it runs straight off the USB. I honestly thought I’d need a drive with a dedicated power brick, but since this one worked fine before, I'm stumped. Is it really possible that two different 1TB external drives—both manufactured in Taiwan😂—have such a massive gap in power draw that one spins up and the other doesn't? I'll try swapping out the cable to rule that out, but if that doesn't do the trick, then 🙂🙂

Look, it doesn't necessarily have to be a power issue—it could just be straight-up hardware incompatibility where the devices simply refuse to talk to each other. I mean, if you start jamming ten different USB sticks into a media player, yeah, a few of them probably aren't going to work. It's just how things go.

Benjamin King2 said:Look, it doesn't have to be a power issue; it could just be hardware incompatibility where the devices won't talk to each other. If you shove ten different thumb drives into a media player, sure as hell a few of them aren't going to work..

Swapped out the USB cable, still nothing—so it’s definitely not the cable. 🙂I get that a certain percentage might fail, but you'd expect that from some cheap off-brand drive, not a WD.🤷

Now I've got a useless extra drive sitting here, and I'm still short one that actually functions. 😵 😵

The issue lies with the player itself, not the disc. 🙂