They have a 500GB Fantom external HD at Newegg for $129.99. I've never heard of a comapnt called Fantom are these external drives any good??

Never heard of them but I love NewEgg.  They back their products up with great support.

I bought a Fantom external a couple of years ago (maybe even from newegg), and I have no complaints.

Quote - Never heard of them but I love NewEgg.  They back their products up with great support.

Hehehe Newegg and I are old friends. Just about everything inside my new PC came from there.

Thanks for the info folks!

I have a 250 Meg Fantom Drive. The first one died in less than 5 month's but they replaced it with a newer model for free and even recovered all my Poser data from the old drive and put it on the new one.  To say the least, I learned not to leave an external drive turned on 24 hours a day 7 days a week! Now I just use it to back up my internal runtimes.

Quote - I have a 250 Meg Fantom Drive. The first one died in less than 5 month's but they replaced it with a newer model for free and even recovered all my Poser data from the old drive and put it on the new one.  To say the least, I learned not to leave an external drive turned on 24 hours a day 7 days a week! Now I just use it to back up my internal runtimes.

 

And I have 2 Iomega external hard drives that are on 24/7 and have been for nearly 2 years now with no problems.  Go figure ... :biggrin:

Quote - I have a 250 Meg Fantom Drive. The first one died in less than 5 month's but they replaced it with a newer model for free and even recovered all my Poser data from the old drive and put it on the new one.  To say the least, I learned not to leave an external drive turned on 24 hours a day 7 days a week! Now I just use it to back up my internal runtimes.

To quote a famous doctor, "You bubble headed booby" LOL! I would have never thought that myself I would have left the darn thing on too. I have a little 40 gig xtrnldrive but I'd like to get a bigger one.
This just sounded like a good deal a 500gig external drive for less than a $150 clams.

Well the external HD's from Fantom don't have any sort of internal cooling so constant running just burns them up. I hear there are some external's that have cooling systems, but honestly? I really only bought them for backups anyway so there was no point in me running them 24/7 to begin with. I just have a habit of leaving all my computer's turned on all year round. Less wear and tear on the off switch. LOL!

Attached Link: http://www.salescircular.com

Keep an eye on salescircular.com's hard drive listings for sales at stores in your area. If you're worried about nonbrand names, you can get a 500 Gb Maxtor for $170 or a Western Digital for $180 at Staples and Office Depot respectively.  That's a little more money, but it gives you a name brand and in-store service if there's a problem.

With a laptop, consider a smaller portable drive that works off USB power instead of requiring separate power. Staples has the 120 Gb WD Passport drive for just under $100.  For somebody that's mobile, it provides more flexibility. One annoying feature is that the cable connector is ridiculously short at 6 inches.

Thanks gagnonrich unfortunately were I live the nearest office depot or staples is about 4 hour drive there and back so I am pretty much at the mercy of mail order or Newegg. I guess WD figures that if you're laptop is sitting on a table or something you'll be putting the external drive right next to it so all you need is a 6in cable. Six inches what bone brain thought that up?

The problem with a six inch cable is that the drive can't even be moved to the side of the laptop and, for a desktop, may not be long enough to put it on the same surface as the computer.

It sounds like you're really in the boonies.