External Hard Drives

Government Computer News tests 11 desktop external hard drives from 11 major companies. Each gets an individual write-up that's easy to understand and covers all of the major buying considerations, plus… letter grades for performance, ease of use, features and value. One current drive -- the SimpleTech ProDrive -- gets straight As and the Reviewers Choice award. A later review of the LaCie d2 Quadra says it's as good as the top performers here.

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In many categories, Digital Trends' reviews are cursory, and they focus on sounding hip. However, hard drive reviews are much more substantive. Testing is still shallower than some other sources -- speed is… not formally measured or really addressed -- but DigitalTrends.com does report heat and noise observations, which makes it a fine source in conjunction with the majority of reviews that take an opposite approach. Screenshots of bundled software are very helpful. Reviews are objectively balanced.

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PCMag.com regularly tests individual hard drives, rates all of them and awards the best ones an Editor's Choice badge. Testing and evaluation are competent but far less comprehensive than some other… reviewers. Reviews address some key buying considerations (such as cost and speed) but not others (such as noise and heat/projected reliability). Tests aren't head-to-head, but reviews often mention how a unit stacks up against other models. Reviews are easy for the nontech savvy to understand.

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CNET regularly tests external hard drives, giving each a star rating, a short written review and often a short video review. CNET tests the drives' performance, tries to scratch the cases and compares each… drive to a few major competitors in terms of cost, features and speed -- but test results are summarized in only a general way. This roundup singles out six portable drives as favorites, but some higher-rated drives get left out. The Seagate FreeAgent Go is the Editors' Choice listed here, but a later review of the Iomega eGo Portable Mac Edition awards it an Editors' Choice rating as well.

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PC World ranks 10 network-attached drives. The reviews are limited to a one-sentence summary and one or two pros and cons, though the results of speed testing are also reported. Documentation is minimal.… Scores, which aren't easy to decipher, provide the only basis for comparison. Once you've determined which product meets your needs, PC World's opinions and test results are worth checking, but the article is too uninformative to be a primary review source.

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Walter Mossberg reviews a variety of tech devices for The Wall Street Journal -- usually the big-news products or unusually good things he has tried. In the latter category, Mossberg finds two external hard… drives: the Clickfree portable backup drive and the network-attached Western Digital My Book World Edition. Mossberg also reviews the Apple Time Capsule, which he says is primarily useful for Mac laptop users running the included Time Machine backup software.

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BenchmarkReviews.com both evaluates products and links to other reviews. Site navigation is very awkward, but when you can find the in-house reviews, they are worth reading. Reviews incorporate solid… testing, a balanced approach and good context. They conclude with pro/con lists and overall ratings, as well as subcategory ratings for presentation, appearance, construction, functionality and value. We'd like to see more reviews and an easier way to find them, however.

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In this older roundup review, TomsHardware.com compares four 500 GB external hard drives: two from Western Digital, and one each from LaCie and WiebeTech. Testing and evaluation are superb; the four drives… are benchmarked against 20 competitors. The conclusion decisively asserts that you should only consider drives with eSATA interfaces. However, the reviewer is wishy-washy about which drive to choose. The report weighs the pros and cons of each, and expresses a slight preference for the LaCie d2 Quadra.

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Bit-tech.net's reviews are superb. They are balanced and comparative, and they fully document and illustrate detailed testing. Some reviews conclude with overall ratings and subcategory ratings for… features, performance, build quality, software and value, but other reviews do not. Reviewers carefully weigh considerations to give readers an excellent idea of whether each product fits their needs. Bit-tech.net has reviewed several solid-state drives recently but only two external hard drives since 2007 -- the QNAP TS-209 II Turbo NAS and QNAP TS-409 Pro Turbo NAS -- and they are not highly recommended.

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SmallBusinessComputing.com reviews external storage solutions regularly. Review quality is hit-or-miss -- most do a good job judging the hard drives, but some are little more than a list of features. The… latest review, for the Clickfree Traveler, includes numeric ratings for performance, features, value and overall, but earlier reviews don't. For that reason - and because reviewers seem to like most of the external hard drives equally -- it's hard to tell which models are the best. A 2009 readers' choice awards feature names winners and runners-up in the external hard drive and NAS drive categories, but there is very little explanation.

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