Thinking about buying a portable desktop hard drive and was wondering if people had any recommendations? Not sure if they're all more or less on a par? I'm currently in a position where I need to back up the entire contents of my computer so the drive needs to be 300Gb minimum. A good friend of mine could do this for me but I've recently thought that I could use the flexibility of being able to transport very large Cubase compositions backwards and forwards between my humble home studio set-up and the proper recording studio. So, what would people recommend and where would be best to go looking for them? Looking to buy as soon as possible...er...if possible! :)

I've gt a 80GB Lacie HDD and a 500GB Western Digital 'Book' HDD. The 80GB is much smaller and very portable. The WD HDD is about the size of a hardbock story book (smaller than A4, larger than A5??) but does need an external power source to operate so might not be useful if you intend to use it on the move. Have a look on the WD website:

 

http://www.westerndigital.com/en/

 

The if you find one you like..pop onto either Dabs (http://www.dabs.com) or Ebuyer (http://www.ebuyer.com) as they are usually slightly cheaper than the big retailers and much better service!

 

HTH

I use the 200gb version of this... and it's been absolutely fine - good transfer rates with firewire.

 

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/pushbutton_backup/

i have the My Book 320gb, not bad take a few seconds to kick in if you open a file from it, and does make a little humming sound sometimes on a hard surface

Has anyone had any problems with their "Books"? The only reason I ask is I've read a lot of reviews that said the unit experienced some fairly major problems after a few months of use. :(

Not yet I havent. And as for the humming noise mentioned above, just keep one side of the plastic packaging it comes in and use it as a 'holder'...works a treat!