What is the best external hard-drive compatible with ubuntu? [closed]

I am planning to buy an external hard-drive to backup my critical data. I was wondering if I could get it from Ubuntu shop :-

Any ideas which external hard-drives are compatible with ubuntu.


Solution 1:

All external disk drives should work but there are a few factors to consider:

  • Bus type. If it's USB2 I'd bet years of my life on it working. USB3 drives are a bit more hit and miss but only because some chipsets have dodgy drivers (something time tends to fix). USB3 also requires you to have a USB3 port. Firewire should work.

  • Filesystem. Most big drives will come preformatted to ntfs (for use in Windows). That's fine and you can carry on using it like that if you wish but it'll probably perform better if you format it to something native to Linux, like ext4. This can be done with Disk Utility.

  • Fancy features might not work. Things like one-touch-backup require software installed to work and undoubtedly this software isn't written for Ubuntu. Don't buy things based on their fancy features: buy dumb external disks and you'll be happy with your purchase.

Solution 2:

All hard disks are compatible with... In other words what i mean there is no relation between the physical content of the hard disk with the OS. What really affects is the File system that you use and as you know Ubuntu uses ext FS which is really great in dealing with hard drives so as a conclusion buy whatever you want.
For me i advice yo to but a Western Digital Hard disk