Desktop Drive Best Buy Recommendations

For a non-portable, desktop external drive I recommend the the LaCie D2 Quadra series. Why? Capacity – desktop drives are available from 500GB up to 2 TB, great reliability and connectivity – aside from the ever-present USB 2.0, the drives have Firewire 400 & 800 plus eSata.

Reliability is a big factor: There’s no point in buying a drive if it fails on you. Often, drives that do great in professional laboratory tests fail to live up to their reputation in the real world. The customer reviews on sites like Amazon.com demonstrate that. The reliability of the D2 Quadra drives has satisfied both the professional testers and end users and that counts heavily in the D2’s favor.

Transfer speed quickly becomes an issue if you’re transferring large files — videos, music or images to store on your external drive which is why a fast connection like eSata quickly becomes a necessary rather than luxury. Some USB 3.0 products are beginning to appear, but Crunchgear says “But if you’re looking for a reliable and fast external hard drive right now, forget USB 3.0 and instead look at eSATA drives.” It’ll be a couple of years until before USB 3.0 drives will come into their own.

You can check out the prices for the 500GB, 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB LaCie drives below. Be sure to factor in sales tax and shipping depending on the merchant. And don’t forget to review the return policy as well.

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