Looking for an external hard drive

I am looking to buy an external hard drive to store various files from laptops.

One laptop is on Windows XP and the other on Windows 7.

Thinking of going for the 2 or 3tb hard drive as I am not too concerned about carrying it about.

Looked at Toshiba or Samsung but also want plug and play as I am not very techie.

Any advice would be welcomed.  PC World do not have a branch local to us so went into Currys who were as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

Needless to say being female, the staff appear to ignore me when I look at computer stuff. But Colin, who doesn't know how to turn a computer on, they rush up to and ask if they can help him. 

I usually go for Western Digital (WD) when buying hard drives, have you got a Maplin store near you? Argos do hard drives as well I think, and don't forget there's always our Amazon associates store  
Other things to think about
Have you got a smart tv or thinking of getting one?
Do you want to access the drive while away from home?
Look for NAS drives if so, these are networkable, but hardly plug and play, ordinary hard drives will just be a case of plugging it in, then you will be able to drag and drop files into it

Need to just drag and drop files Ken.

Will look through the Amazon store.  Just can't decide which drive   Was only going into PC World to pick their brains  

One thing I do recommend is that you get one with its own power supply, not one that is powered by the usb port

Are you going to be using it solely for viewing with the laptop Joice?

Mainly to store files but to access them when necessary from either laptop , Mark.

Have found the following three and I am trying to sort out which one to buy.
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All from the Homers store  

They will all do what you want and are all fast enough, personally I'd leave the Toshiba alone, not too keen on the 2.5 inch drives and that will more than likely be powered by the usb port

So Ken I am now down to a choice of two.

I am also having to make sure the drive is compatible with the 2.0 usb.

One is usb 2.0 and the other is 3.0, the 3.0 is backward compatible and will be ok with usb 2.0

Just had another read through the details and customer reviews of the two drives Ken.

The book one appears to be up to 4tb and as you say backward compatible with the 2.0usb

The other drive appears simpler to use but is 3tb.

So Ken which one do you think I should buy    

Just had another look the 4tb is another drive quite a bit dearer so back to 3tb.

Me, I'd probably go for the faster transfers with usb 3 because I have other usb 3 products, will you be changing your laptop in the near future? wouldn't worry about the extra tb, 3 will hold one hell of a lot of data

Must admit I am leaning to the book drive also.  I note that WD drives are supplied with two pin plugs   although its not a problem as I have an adaptor or two.

Have a look at the big supermarkets (tesco sometimes have offers on) You must have a lot of files if you need to go that big ,I've had a seagate 500gig drive for a few years and haven't filled it.And it has all my pics and music on it.
I use these but mainly because they are local
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rebbyvid wrote:

Have a look at the big supermarkets (tesco sometimes have offers on) You must have a lot of files if you need to go that big ,I've had a seagate 500gig drive for a few years and haven't filled it.And it has all my pics and music on it.
I use these but mainly because they are local
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Supermarkets in rural North Yorkshire are not as large as in other parts of the country and locally we struggle to buy many products.  A price we pay for living in 'Herriot' country.

The reason I am looking for a large drive is because I have nearly filled the laptop 500gb drive - the reason being we all have drivers cameras and I have to store the resultant videos from the cards.  Soon mounts up. 

But I am still considering my options.

I have recently purchased office 365 which gives you all the latest Office suite and a terabyte of space on One Drive. My package is home and personal which allows up to 5 pc's in the home to share it. It is advertised at about £80 per year but I got mine off Amazon for £54 the advantages are you get the latest versions of Office all the time you never need to back up and providing you have wifi, access your files anywhere on any device. I just thinks its great.