Picking a Good External Drive
Dear [Lynn],
Maxtor and Western Digital (WD) drives are great. Seagates are good also but tend to be expensive, and I’m not convinced that they’re any better overall than WD or Maxtor. http://www.pricewatch.com/ Â lists both Maxtor and WD 200 GB USB drives for $94. By the time you finish paying shipping and tax, you’d probably be looking at $115 at most, quite a bit less than the $193 you’re considering spending.
On the drive size: Well, you want drives that can hold at least several complete backups. And with the price per gigabyte being so low these days, why not go large? Don’t get too big though because once you get up to 300 GB, the price per GB rises sharply. But 200 GB is a pretty main-stream size these days, and drives around this size are generally the cheapest per GB. I think 200 GB would be what you need and you’ll get it cheap as well.
Tom