What to Buy on Amazon : External Disk Drives

Buying cheap external HDDs is always an evergreen topic on the local forums. Now that Amazon offer free shipping to Singapore, I think it'll be difficult for the local retailers to match the price you're going to see on Amazon.

As with the case of SSD, there are many vendors who sells external disk drives. There are basically 2 types, 'Desktop' or 'Portable'. What is the difference between them? 'Desktop' means it requires an external power source, will be more bulky and as a result, not exactly portable. The upside is, it's cheaper in terms of $/GB of storage since it uses 3.5" drives. 'Portable' means it'll be powered by your USB ports, is small and as a result, extremely portable. The downside is, it's more expensive.

I'll talked about 3 vendors, Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba. Why these 3? Briefly

• Seagate's Backup Plus series offers a unique proposition and is a name-brand you can identify with.
• Western Digital is a name-brand you can identify with.
• Toshiba is cheaper. At least at time of writing.

I'll start with Toshiba as there's really nothing much to say about their Canvio Basics series. It currently offers the best bang for the bucks among the 3 vendors. Toshiba 2TB Canvio Basics USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive (HDTB220XK3CA) is currently priced at $99. You really can't fault the price point. This also means you need to pad your cart to $125, another $26 at least, in order to qualify for free shipping back to Singapore (or India). One thing to note, Toshiba offers only 1 year warranty for this item and whether or not it's valid in Singapore is also another question.

Next, Western Digital Passport Ultra offers a very sleek looking package in multiple vibrant colours to boot. They don't cost that much more over the Toshiba offers. At the moment, WD My Passport Ultra 2TB Portable External Hard Drive USB 3.0 with Auto and Cloud Backup - Black (WDBMWV0020BBK-NESN) is going for $114.75. For that $16 premium, you get a nicer looking package, multiple colours options and a standard 3-year warranty. I've read that the warranty checks out locally in Singapore too. Personally, I'll go with this.

Lastly, Seagate. If you are looking at making full use of your Thunderbolt port on your Mac to connect external drives, then Seagate has a much better value proposition. The Seagate Backup Plus Series has a unique feature in that it can be 'upgraded' to fit into your Thunderbolt port or the Firewire 800 port.

How does it work? Basically, all the drives in this series (sans  the Seagate Backup Plus 2 TB USB 3.0 Portable External Hard Drive - Black (STDR2000100)) has a detachable part that contains the USB3 connector. If you remove this, it will expose the native SATA connector of the drive itself. You can then plug this drive into the Seagate Backup Plus Portable Thunderbolt Adapter (STAE128) (for 'Portable' drives) or the Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Thunderbolt Adapter (STAE129) (for 'Desktop drives). These adaptors then connects to the Thunderbolt port of your Mac, turning it into a Thunderbolt external disk! The Desktop Adapter comes with 2 Thunderbolt port for daisy-chaining another Thunderbolt device.

Another advantage of these adaptors is that they sport a standard SATA connector. As a result, you can stick just about any SATA drives to it. I plug the Intel 530 Series 240GB 2.5-Inch Internal Solid State Drive (Reseller Kit) SSDSC2BW240A4K5 into the STAE128 and run Windows off it. Read about my experience here.

These drives come with a standard 2-year warranty and they are valid locally in Singapore. Prices at Amazon is always better then local. The only thing is you have to wait. And some drives are so cheap, you need a cart filler. Do check back this blog for ideas on what to fill the cart with to hit $125!

Be sure to read the tutorials on this site to get started!