questions → which external hard drives? please help....less…

vote-for4vote-against

Which external Hard Drives? Please help....less than 24 hours to decide

Jul 26, 2012 5:26 AM

The Flash Sale at 1saleaday right now is Western Digital hard drives and I cannot for the life of me figure out which ones are best...
I need one to back up my computer. One to connect to my Dish Network DVR (VIP722K) and one that might work with an Asus Tablet (not likely?).

Any ideas?

morriea morriea

7 Answers answer

Sort By:

vote-for2vote-against

Good news and bad news. Good first. You should be able to use any of those drives (I like the Passport series) with your Asus. It will be drawing power from the USB port, so your battery life will go down while the HD is plugged in. And now the bad news...you can't use a USB powered hard drive with Dish receivers, and all the ones on 1saleaday are usb powered. I have a Dish receiver and use a WD external drive, a My Book 500GB. Even a 500GB drive will hold hundreds of hours of HD video, so there's no need to get a terabyte. Oh, and they make a model that's specifically for DVRs. It costs more (I believe) and is completely unnecessary. Any usb2 hard drive with its own power supply will be fine.

edit: That's what Dish technical support told me, at least. I never tried any other drives, so I could be mistaken.

rprebel rprebel
vote-for2vote-against

I've been looking at backup drives for my computer also. Best Buy has the Western Digital My Passport Essential 500GB on sale for $59.99. They may only have it in blue, but who cares. The reviews I've seen have been very good. It is USB 3.0/2.0 and is powered by the USB connection. Here's the link:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Western+Digital+-+My+Passport+Essential+500GB+External+USB+3.0/2.0+Portable+Hard+Drive+-+Pacific+Blue/1251548.p?id=1218242901808&skuId=1251548&st=1251548&cp=1&lp=1
I don't know about a drive for a tablet or a DVR. Don't most DVR's have a list of the drives that are compatible? You'll probablt have to pick one of those. Good luck.

tbgolladay tbgolladay
vote-for2vote-against

@tbgolladay: I am so glad you mentioned the tablet. I missed that the first time I read the question.

@morriea: Never mind about the tablet. I don't know if you can use an external with that or not.

rprebel rprebel
vote-for2vote-against

There are external hard drives that are externally powered.
These are the ones with both the usb and the 120v power cords. ;+}
There are a lot of devices (tablets, etc) that don't like powering up other devices off their ports.

gidgaf gidgaf
vote-for2vote-against

So far then...just pick one of these as a backup, ignore them for the tablet or DVR.

morriea morriea
vote-for2vote-against

Just a note of caution, It appears that all of these drives are refurbs with only a 90 day warranty. Personally I would never trust my data (especially backups) to a refurb hdd. If it has failed once before you can guarantee it will again.

cobracat03 cobracat03
vote-for2vote-against

A refurb with a 90 day warranty? I'd pass as well.

jsimsace jsimsace

Stats

Asked
Jul 26, 2012 5:26 AM
Asked By
morriea
Answered
7 times
Viewed
783 times
Voted Against
0 times
Voted For
4 times

Similar Questions

Related Deals

Not a farewell, just a forced redirect.

It's true, Local.Woot is no longer, but please don't despair.

Never-ending savings are still to be found on Deals.Woot each and every day, so come on in. Don't think of it as a time for tears. Think of it as a way to bring us all closer together under one roof.

Sorry

This is only for people who have bought woots

We restrict voting to users who have purchased something from one of the other Woot stores. It's not just because we want your money (which we do) - it's the best way to be sure all the votes are coming from real people and not spam-bots or phony accounts. The best way we can think of, anyway. For now.

You can always get voting rights by buying something from one of Woot's other sites:

Purchases through Deals.Woot don't count, because in that case you're not buying anything from us. And we don't have your account information for those purchases.

If you think you've bought something from Woot before and still can't vote, make sure you're logged in with the same account you used to buy from us.

Geez, why so negative?

You have to vote up more before you can vote down.

Don't get us wrong. Negativity has its place. And downvotes are just as essential as upvotes when it comes to making Deals.Woot a useful place to find deals.

But when your votes lean so heavily toward the dark side, we have to wonder. Go vote up a few things. Accentuate the positive for a little while. It'll do you some good, and it'll do the site some good, too. Then you can get back to dealing out the smackdowns, OK?

Too late, we all heard you!

Hmm... you're wanting to take your vote back?

Well, that's a bit tricky. See, we do a lot of stuff with your vote, using it to work out the popularity of what you voted for, compare that to all the other things voted on, tally up our leaderboard, work out your reputation. Someday we'll do a little cartoon showing just how hard your vote is working.

Anyway, taking votes back messes all that up, so we give you five minutes, in case you just mis-clicked. After that we've got to say no take-backs. Luckily, votes are free, so feel free to throw them around left and right wherever you see fit.