one more thing, I got a Dell 710m

what do they got?

look for

7500 rpm
16mb buffer
usb2 & firewire
large cooling fan in enclosure

yea what mike said.

they had a lot of Maxtor, but i was readin the external hard drive post and everyone who had a Maxtor hated it. I didnt really see anything good, the selection was pretty poor

Just picked up a Seagate 300 Gig HD at Fry's for $189.

Not bad 16mb cache, and 7200 rpm, so it's quick! :)

what brands should i be lookin into. i have read that a lot of djs on here use Seagate,,, what else?

I have been rocking a maxtor for a minute and it works great. Never had any problems, I have even dropped it from a desk 4 foot drop and its still holding strong.

Western Digital is a good brand. Although I bought a 300 gig one and i cannot get it to work with serato for some reason.

I have 2 Maxtors and I haven't had any issues yet. I don't consistently use them for gigs though. I'd buy another Maxtor if I had the chance.

i'm all about Hitachi (formerly IBM)... if i can find em on sale

I have a maxtor also. No problems.

for those who say maxtors suck, can u please give a reason for such?

Push... damn near 4 years of road gigin with it. Gets hot as hell but fires up everytime AND has the ability to change the power save mode so it don't go sleepy after 5-10 minutes.

Seagate likes to fuck you on rebates. I buy a lot of hard drives for my Karaoke business, and I've had seagate tell me I sent in an invalid product code 3 different times. There's no way it was invalid, because I cut it off the side of the box.

They do have a good warranty though, 5 years. Pretty much any of these hard drives, if they fail they will either fail very quickly if there's a defect, or they'll fail when you drop them, but they all have pretty easy warranty policy. You can usually go onto their website, punch in the serial number, mail it out to them, and have a new one in a week or two for the cost of shipping. If you just keep a backup with you, you'll never have an issue. If one fails, use the backup while the failed drive is in transit.

That's good to know because Western Digital's customer service is NO BUENO! I will never buy another WD just because they are like that.

just got a lacie 500 today

Yeah, that mofo does get hot as hell! I wanted to get a western digital but couldn't find the model I wanted. So I ended up getting the 200gb maxtor. And needless to say, I'm happy with it. It even fell out of a chair once. And yes I was worried. lol. But that mofo fired right up.

I have vowed to stay away from maxtors.

The new one that replaced this one www.scratchlive.net , crapped out on me too.

Yeah, I guess it's hit and miss with Maxtor. What are you using now?

Lacie ..

lub my lacie

lacie triple threat (firewire 400-800,usb 2.0)
go to pc nation for best price on a lacie!
I BOUGHT A 300 gig for like $179.00 6 month's ago!
i have 2 of them and they have been flawless!

^^^ yup same here.. except 500gig size here!!!

With some of the Christmas money I received I plan on buyin my Internal HD tomorrow. Ive been lookin at the Seagates on New Egg. Most of them are "OEM" what does this mean?

I bought a lacie 500 gb for $174.99!!!!!!!

where?

newegg.com

Anyone know what "OEM" stands for on the New egg site?

OEM = Original Equipment Manufacturer;

Basically you get the HD without cables, bulky retail box, mounting screws etc. Just a stripped down less bulky version. Just as good as retail.

should note the HD is exactly the same its just a less bulky packaging.

I plan on building my own external hard drive, so I would need those cables and screws. Im takin a trip over to Frys right now, hopefully I walk out with something

CQuence, actually you don't need those screws and cords. The ones you need come with the hard drive case.

Thanks for pointing that out, Anyone know is Frys is havin Day after Crhristmas sales?

Maxtor OneTouch user here too... not a problem yet for two years running strong.

This is what I use also (200gb). I've had it for a year with no problems.

Nice... mine's the 250gb version, and again, no problems.

I accidently dropped my maxtor external, from about 1 foot high. The hard drive hasn't worked since. I would never buy maxtor again :(

I dropped mine once from a few feet. Still works.

Well Frys had no deals at all, looks like I will be purchasing online. I am very interested in this AMS Venus enclosure..
www.newegg.com.
Its got USB 2 + SATA. Would this be a good option? I know that SATA is the new technology or should I stick with the AMS Venus that is USB2.0 + Firewire? Im trying to find a good deal on a Seagate HD. Frys online is offering this...300GB, 7200RPM, 16MB Parallel ATA for 79 bucks, one day offer only

I use the Glyph GT050Q 250 GB external. It houses a seagate hard drive inside of it, but it's made of metal, has a fan on it, is rackmountable, and SATA, USB 2.0, FireWire 400, and Firewire 800 connections on it.

It's built like a tank.

www.djsupply.com

I like glyph drives...

www.glyphtech.com

awesome and asorb shock really well...designed for music