I need a fast external hard drive preferably 1 terabyte or higher for temporary storage for my laptop until I have enough fund to build my own PC. Recommendations? My laptop does have usb 3.0.

You can buy a USB3.0 hard drive enclosure and buy a fast SATA drive of your choice to put in it.

Once you have your larger computer in place you can move the drive into it. Minimal waste.

interesting, can you give me some example or links, that sounds like a good way to do it.

If you want an enclosure that can hold multiple drives you can check out something like this:

Newegg.com - Mediasonic HF2-SU3S2 3.5" Black USB3.0 & eSATA 4 Bay External Enclosure (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817576009)

One for a single drive would look like this:

Newegg.com - Rosewill RX-358 U3C BLK Aluminum / Plastic 3.5" Black USB3.0 & eSATA External Enclosure (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182247)

From there buy the SATA drive(s) of your choice.

I recently bought one of these for about $28AUD.

Welland Industrial Co., Ltd. - External HDD Enclosure (http://www.welland.com.tw/html/USB3.0/601S.htm)

I've tested it with a "Western Digital Scorpio Black 750G 7200RPM 16MB SATA II" HDD which was purchased for use in an Atmos Ninja. Had as high as 140MB/sec transfer rate to it. Takes 3.5 inch and 2.5 inch form factor drives.

Best thing is that you can save money not purchasing caddies for each additional external storage drive you buy.

Andrew

PS. It connects via USB3.

I recently bought one of these for about $28AUD.

Welland Industrial Co., Ltd. - External HDD Enclosure (http://www.welland.com.tw/html/USB3.0/601S.htm)

Best thing is that you can save money not purchasing caddies for each additional external storage drive you buy.


What do you mean by this?

Enclosures got too expensive so I went with a hard disk drive dock...

NewerTech U3S3HD Voyager S3 'SuperSpeed' USB 3.0... in stock at OWC (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/U3S3HD/)

don't enclosure cost around the same?

Hi, Victor.........

The enclosures have the disadvantage (from what I know) of usually only accepting one size drive, and changing the drive is a bit of a pain.

The Welland and NewerTech units mentioned above are almost identical to my Welland EZSTOR unit, which accepts ESata, USB and Firewire interfaces and both 2.5" and 3.5" drives.

Bit like a floppy drive, only using hard drives instead, plug in, turn on, go. Finish, disconnect the drive via the OS and pull the drive out for safe keeping elsewhere.

Replace with another drive if required.

Means you can have 50 different hard drives ready to plug in (if you keep track of what's on what).

I use two 1GB drives used to back up my entire system whenever I think of it, keep alternating them and always have a rolling full system backup.

Be wary of the "one button back up" though, on mine it doesn't work on E Sata, and on many drives sold with the feature it isn't a straight system copy but a compressed version, which means having the appropriate software on a new system to get the files off again.

I always use the Windows XP "copy to", which means they can be copied back to any Windows NTFS machine anywhere, any time.

They're refered to as "Toasters" BTW, 'cos it's just like putting a slice of bread in same. Very apt description.

One note:

My E Sata/ OS link actually sets the drive up as 4 individual USB drives. Make sure you make a note of what drives your system has active BEFORE you get the Toaster active, as the only way to disconnect the toaster drive without creating chaos is to use the "safe disconnect" utility to disconnect the first of the 4 drives it shows in the drive list.

The other three go with it, and it's safe to remove the hard drive from the toaster.

Brilliant idea and much better than a "one drive in the box, end of story" system.


CS

Hi, Chris. So you're saying that external enclosure is a pain to put in new harddrive, but with toasters, you can switch one out much faster? Isn't Toasters more like a docking station?

i like this drive for external backup & portability

Newegg.ca - Vantec NexStar MX Dual Bay 3.5" SATA to USB 3.0 / eSATA RAID Enclosure (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392054)

i like this drive for external backup & portability

Newegg.ca - Vantec NexStar MX Dual Bay 3.5" SATA to USB 3.0 / eSATA RAID Enclosure (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392054)

it said raid. I heard of raid before, but how does raid work?

I'm not even going to attempt to describe Raid, Wikipedia can do it so much better, Google it.

As for your original question "I need a fast external hard drive", why?

What for? Connected to what, how?

There's external hard drives and then external hard drives, simple and cheap, not so simple and real expensive, which one do you want, and how much are you prepared to pay?


CS

I'm not even going to attempt to describe Raid, Wikipedia can do it so much better, Google it.

As for your original question "I need a fast external hard drive", why?

What for? Connected to what, how?

There's external hard drives and then external hard drives, simple and cheap, not so simple and real expensive, which one do you want, and how much are you prepared to pay?


CS
My laptop is running out of space right now so I need a quick fix before I start building my pc. I'm willing to pay up to $400. My laptop is a Dell XPS 15z and it has usb 3.0

Victor, Go buy a simple and inexpensive USB3.0 drive enclosure and a good SATA drive as I suggested above and you will satisfy your current need and be able to reuse the drive when you build your desktop computer.

Victor, Go buy a simple and inexpensive USB3.0 drive enclosure and a good SATA drive as I suggested above and you will satisfy your current need and be able to reuse the drive when you build your desktop computer.
yeah that's what I'm gonna do. Thank you everyone for your suggestion.