WD External HD

[eqmassa]

For my friend?s birthday, I would like to give her a copy of my large music collection in the form of an external, USB 2.0 Hard Drive. I?ll probably purchase a factory-built one.

She will not be using this drive for anything but music so I want it to be very simply interfaced, preferably just a plug-and-play type of thing that causes it to essentially function as a large folder; don?t need a new OS or anything like that. As for technical specifications, a 120 GB, 7200 RPM / 8 MB cache is fine, and a good warranty would be nice.

The decision between a pre-built one and building one myself was largely a concern of cost/benefits, as you?d expect. The only benefit to building it myself would be saving the money, which after rebates on the WD I?m considering would be about $15.

Here is the one I?m looking at, priced at $143:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-144-213&depa=1

Her computer only supports USB2.0/1.1, but I?m sure she?ll upgrade/use it on other computers in the future. I do wish it came with a longer warranty than 1 year, but other than that it seems like a good purchase. The $30 rebate expires soon, so I need to decide by tomorrow at the latest. Any comments/suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[MrBond]

That drive looks awesome, I'd definatly go with the prebuilt one.

Most HDD's only come with a 1yr warranty now . Some (Maxtor?) let you upgrade to a 3yr warranty for a pretty decent price, you might look into that option for the WD.

USB 2.0 should be great for that drive, even USB 1.1 would be OK if she just streamed the music off of the drive. I take my CF card reader with a memory card loaded with music into work and plug it into the front USB port on my workstation so I can listen to music. USB 1.1 HDD's take forever to format though, but if you have USB 2.0 on your PC you should be fine.

Any WinXP system should recognize it right away with no drivers needed.