HD Internal, External, Net! Too many choices!

Life Technology
1

I was running out of space due to my appreciation for old movies and Bit-Torrent. I went to Costco to Pick up a drive… I got hit with a ton of stuff I never heard before and I was afraid to buy… Also a great price difference between two companies threw me for a loop…

First is something I never saw before. It’s what I think is a Net/Internet Hard Drive that is compatible to with BIT TORRENT. I think it’s called Link Station by Buffalo.
Storage Space 1TB Price almost 6KNT

Is it any good. I would like it to appear on my home network as a regular HD that I could drag and drop from. I’m not particular how it appears outside my home, as long as it is easy to use.

Second is a regular USB External Hard Drive by Buffalo. 2TB for around 3.5K
The third option was an External 1TB HD by Transend. That was almost the same price as the Buffalo.

I trust Transend. I had a Buffalo Wireless Router that worked well for almost three years… but now it’s starting to fail. Is Transend worth the cost, or is Buffalo created an el-cheapo product. .
I was thinking for just getting an internal hard drive but my wife and I use our laptops a lot and share data. In this case, I guess the external drive or net drive would be the most practical.

Which option would you choose. Can you give me the pros and cons. I’m leaning to the Buffalo External 2TB drive if it is of decent quality If not… I’m leaning toward the transend. If you can sell me on the net drive, I’d go with that… I trust you guys… Please help.
(MY MOST FAMOUS STUPID QUOTE IN COLLEGE) Who needs all this Hard Drive Stuff, 714K and two floppy drives are enough for me. said about my Tandy 1400LT laptop…

2

Hello

Indeed there are different Hard Drive company.

In fact Buffalo doesn’t manufacture hard drive. They provide the case only or the integrated solution for Online sharing, etc…(By the way, be sure if includes a hard drive inside and it is not just the case)

In fact there are few manufacturer of Hard Drive, but several resellers.

That would be very difficult to compare those, but basically:

Standalone hard drive:
Usually 2 types

  1. 3.5 format. Bigger in size, bigger possible capacity, usually faster, cheaper but need power supply
  2. 2.5 format. Very good for external hard drive for laptop, no need for a power supply (USB enough), but a bit more expensive and could be slower

You could have in USB3 or USB2. USB3 is the new standard and is faster if you have a USB3 port on your computer (But not so common except on new computers) and if the hard drive is fast enough
With USB2 the maximum transfert rate will be around 30Mb/s. A 700Mo movie transfert in less than 4 minutes.
With USB3, could vary a lot, but you could have 45Mb/s on 2.5 format, and may be 60-80Mb/s in 3.5 (Difficult to say, it depends on the hard drive inside the case)

For LAN hard drive, it is in fact usually called “NAS” for Network Attached Storage. It is like a tiny server with 1 or several hard drive(s). You can access it online, or at home on your local network.
They usually come up with some online/network adminstration tools (To easily configure it) and in some of them, they can even run some bitorrent clients, FTP, Mail server, etc…

A NAS is much more High tech than a simple hard drive and allow several computers to connect together and run some services, but is more expensive.
Speed are usually better than USB2 if you are connected on your 100MB network.
The most popular one are QNAP and Synology.
For example: shopping.pchome.com.tw/DRAF2U-162667681 (But is without hard drive)

In term of quality…well, the main point is what is inside the NAS or a Hard drive case. You could be a sony case with a crappy Western Digital hard drive inside… It is almost impossible to know…

So I suggest you to rely more on the warranty.

Why not buying in a computer shop instead ? More choice and better price may be?

3

[quote=“Taiwan_Student”]

I trust Transend. [/quote]

Be aware that Transend doesn’t actually make hard drives, just the cases. The actual drive inside could be from any of the manufacturers.