External Hard Drive - Recommendations?

[Drew Phillips]

It's time for a new external hard drive, but it seems like even the highest-ranked drives have quite a few bad reviews. Any recommendations of a brand to go with (or stay away from)?

[Steve Stein]

Drew,

Here's what I did with my Mac recently. I bought two 1TB Seagate SATA Barracuda 7200 RPM drives from Microcenter for $99 each. I put them in an Other World Computer Mercury Elite AL Pro housing (you can find a complete package here (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/MirrorRAID/))

You can either set the drives up to mirror or stripe. I have mine as RAID 0 since I have other backup set up. It's pretty quiet on my desktop and with Firewire 800, it's fairly fast. The other benefit is that the case is acting like a heatsink so to the touch, it's completely cool.

I have a preference for Seagate drives since I've had two Western Digital drives fail in less than 18 months of operation.

[Daniel Buck]

harddrive brands seem to be like like ford/chevy, people always have preferences. For me, I've had very good experiences with Western Digital drives over the past 8 years or so. I've never actually had one fail on me. When they get to small after a few years, I just transfer the data to a new larger (and cheaper!) drive. Getting into that habbit will keep the drive failure hopfully to a minimum! I've had a few Maxtor drives fail (which for a while, people really like that brand, not sure if that's true anymore), and know people who have had fairly new Seagate drives fail, and just about every other brand. I don't think any harddrive brand has a perfect record :-D

What are you looking for in the external drive? Something to store as a backup? Something for transferring files?

For transfering files, I like using the little Western Digital "passport" USB drives, they are powered by the USB cable (no extra power), and seem to be pretty good for transferring files to and from people. I've only had them for less than 2 years now, so i don't know how their longevity is, but if I can get 2-3 years out of a drive, that's enough for me, I'm not willing to let anything important sit longer than that on a drive without making a duplicate later on.

For storing as a backup, I would agree with Steve, do some sort of raid so that you aren't dependent upon just one drive. And important stuff, backup more than once :-) Right now, I'm using a Drobo with a mix of drives for my immediate backup (quick and easy!), then important stuff get backed up elsewhere too.

[Steve Stein]

Heat is a drive's worst enemy. That may be why my WD drives failed. Probably too many drives in the PC case although the Seagate I put in it is still working strong (when I use the PC for anything now days.)

I do have a small WD Passport with FIrewire for my Mac's time machine backup. Works great and it's small.

[John Thawley]

Don't they all have Sony guts? ;)

It's hard to follow online reviews/comments of hard drives. After all, while millions upon millions of people enjoy trouble free experiences with one brand or another, let one guy have a drive go bad and he's going to be on every forum, filling out every user review and screaming from the rooftops and at anyone who'll listen.

I shouldn't even write about my positive experiences, because I'll be sure to jinx the situation. :)

I had WD's go bad on me and I had a Seagate go bad on me. Currently I have 7 LaCei Firewire 800 externals. 2 500mb, 3 1tb, a 2tb and a 1tb portable. The only issue I have with LaCie is their power supplies are crap. I've had a couple of scares where it appeared the drive wouldn't mount. Some online research revealed that the problem was the power supply. Sure enough, I swapped out the supply and life was good.

They seem to be as good as the next guy... most important to me is they all match. It's important to look good. Plus I'm quite sure they're all Sony guts!

JT

[Daniel Buck]

It's hard to follow online reviews/comments of hard drives. After all, while millions upon millions of people enjoy trouble free experiences with one brand or another, let one guy have a drive go bad and he's going to be on every forum, filling out every user review and screaming from the rooftops and at anyone who'll listen.

Yup, no kidding! Same with just about every other product :D

[Justin Cannon]

i have all western digital externals 2x500 gig and a new 1 tb which are great

[STEPHEN HALL]

I worked in IT for 10years before making the break into photography, and in my experience there is only one 'MUST AVOID' and its already been mentioned here: MAXTOR

[David Adolphus]

I have 500GB each LaCie and Seagate Freeagent here at work, and three identical 320GB Seagates at home. Seagate sells VERY cheap remaindered HDs direct; I got the three for $29 each, delivered. http://shop.seagate.com/store/sgateus/Content/pbPage.OnSalePage

Those I use for regular backups. The LaCie has been on all day, every day, without a hiccup, for..a couple of years? The Freeagents are essentially silent, which is good, but I only really use it for a weekly backup, so I can't vouch for reliability.

[John Waugh]

Control cards in the drive case are sometimes problematic.
Several WD failures were remedied by tearing the drive out of the thermal welded cases and installing them as internal drives or putting them in after market cases. Don't just assume the drive is a lost cause. Check it in an alternative mounting before binning it.
John