Choosing the correct type HD for a nexto

I'm planning on purchasing a Nexto to back up my images on a long vacation. There are some great posts on this forum that discuss the benefits of various PSDs and I've found them extremely helpful. But, I'm not very computer hardware savvy and I have a question regarding how to purchase the "correct" HDD for a Nexto.

Should I be looking for a 2.5" laptop hard drive or are there other types of 2.5" hard drives that would work?

Is there a significant difference between the performance of SATA1.5 Gb/sec and SATA 3 Gb/sec in the Nexto? Will they both work? Does it matter?

Last question (and I anticipate that since it's subjective it could raise a spirited debate Is there one model or two or three brands that seem to consistently perform better than others for this particular purpose? Perhaps more importantly is there any model that people would almost universally avoid?

Thanks in advance. I'm just afraid of thinking I know what I'm doing and then ordering the wrong product.

You really need to go to the Nexto website: http://www.nextodi.com/en/

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Lost in the Colorado Mountains!!!

21st Hermit said:

You really need to go to the Nexto website: http://www.nextodi.com/en/

--
Lost in the Colorado Mountains!!!

Click to expand...

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Thanks 21st Hermit. I tried that before posting. Unfortunately, the website specifically doesn't answer any of my posed questions.

Noledevil said:

I'm planning on purchasing a Nexto to back up my images on a long
vacation. There are some great posts on this forum that discuss the
benefits of various PSDs and I've found them extremely helpful. But,
I'm not very computer hardware savvy and I have a question regarding
how to purchase the "correct" HDD for a Nexto.

Should I be looking for a 2.5" laptop hard drive or are there other
types of 2.5" hard drives that would work?

Click to expand...

All 2.5" drives are considered laptop drives. The older drives are IDE (or PATA) and 250GB is the max size that was made. The current generation of drives are SATA, and so far I think 500GB is the largest size available ($100 - $140 at newegg.com). You can also get solid state drives (SSD) that use flash memory like your camera's memory card that fit in a 2.5" SATA form factor. However, to get a lot of space, it becomes pricy ($750 for 250GB).

In terms of Nexto, I believe the older Nexto's used IDE, but the current 2700 uses Sata.

noledevil said:

Is there a significant difference between the performance of SATA1.5
Gb/sec and SATA 3 Gb/sec in the Nexto? Will they both work? Does it
matter?

Click to expand...

In general it shouldn't matter, but I have heard of incompatibilities occasionally, but you may be able to jumper the drive to work.

noledevil said:

Last question (and I anticipate that since it's subjective it could
raise a spirited debate Is there one model or two or three brands
that seem to consistently perform better than others for this
particular purpose? Perhaps more importantly is there any model that
people would almost universally avoid?

Click to expand...

I tend to think things come in waves, and each of the major manufacturers has spells where their disks fail after a few months. I don't know which one is the best right now.

Noledevil said:

Last question (and I anticipate that since it's subjective it could
raise a spirited debate Is there one model or two or three brands
that seem to consistently perform better than others for this
particular purpose? Perhaps more importantly is there any model that
people would almost universally avoid?

Click to expand...

From their web site:

Nexto-eXtreme is compatible with all the 2.5 inch SATA hard drive with 9.5mm height.

But hard drive from following company is not robust for the continuous shock(such as backup during walking or running).

If you walk or run during backup with following hard drive installed in Nexto-eXtreme, then you\\\'ll see error message and beep sound which indicate backup failed.

Hard drive which makes error when continuous shock applied during backup.

• Every 2.5 inch hard drive from WesternDigital.

Westerndigital hard drive is not robust for shock, so we
don't recommend it for ND2700.

Following is the list of prefered hard drive in order.
1. Any Hitachi or Toshiba 2.5' hard drive
2. Any Fujitsu 2.5' hard drive

3. Any SAMSUNG 2.5' hard drive.(SAMSUNG hard drive should not be used with Nexto Video Storage)
4. Any Seagate 2.5' hard drive.
5. WesternDIgital hard drive is not recommended.
--
http://www.TheDirtyLens.com

Thanks everyone. Very helpful.

Michael Meissner said:

In terms of Nexto, I believe the older Nexto's used IDE, but the
current 2700 uses Sata.

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yes, all earlier models used PATA (parallel-ATA) and only the ND2700 uses SATA.

Choice of new PATA drives is limited nowadays, most of what is offered are probably used ones. As long as you don't need the highest capacities you can probably find used PATA drives (e.g. from older notebooks) for a very low price. Despite the difference in drive technology, the transfer speed for e.g. ND-2325 and ND-2700 is quite small in actual use - you will only notice with the fastest flashcards like Sandisk Extreme IV.

Michael Meissner said:

Michael Meissner said:

Is there a significant difference between the performance of SATA1.5
Gb/sec and SATA 3 Gb/sec in the Nexto? Will they both work? Does it
matter?

Click to expand...

In general it shouldn't matter, but I have heard of incompatibilities
occasionally, but you may be able to jumper the drive to work.

Click to expand...

the SATA type doesn't say anything about actual performance with Nexto.

Michael Meissner said:

Michael Meissner said:

Last question (and I anticipate that since it's subjective it could
raise a spirited debate Is there one model or two or three brands
that seem to consistently perform better than others for this
particular purpose? Perhaps more importantly is there any model that
people would almost universally avoid?

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I recommend keeping the drive list from the Nextodi website in mind when shopping for a drive. It matches my experience with Nexto's: although you can use almost anything, the Hitachi and Toshiba drives are fast and reliable and I would avoid WD drives.

Speed is not the only thing to look for, there are also differences in power usage (important if you use the device a lot in the field) and be sure to check drive height (a few big SATA drives are more than 9.5 mm so they won't fit inside Nexto).