Does a decent external harddrive even exist?

[seriousart]

Hey guys, been trying to shop around for a reliable external harddrive for my Powerbook. I've got 60 GB of memory on it which is filling up fast and need some help.

Was originally going to get a Maxtor One Touch, but then I read a bunch of reviews for it which claimed it was horribly unreliable.

Fine, I'll look elsewhere.

LaCie? Hmmm... Also unreliable. Everyone hates them.

Western Digital? Horribly slow. Breaks almost immediately.

Seagate? An abomination to all that is holy. Makes baby Jesus cry.

I'm going on anecdotal evidence, of course. Reading reviews from places like shopping.com, epinons, amazon, etc. Unlike most electronic goods, there doesn't seem to be one brand or model which is stands out form the rest as being reliable. Is the current generation of these devices inherently flawed? Seems every time I think I've got THE one, I look a little further, only to find a dozen reports detailing how this particular model actually bursts into flames if you look at it too hard.

Having had my Canon Powershot and my iPod crap-out within a week of one another, I'm getting a little touchy about electronics not working as promised.

So, any recommendations? Is there some external hardrive that is known to be significantly more reliable than others?

BTW, I'm looking at ones 250GB and higher that are Mac compatable. A million thanks if you can help.

[Dewey Finn]

I wouldn't base my decision on the user reviews at those websites, since the ones who are posting are often only the ones who had a bad experience. I've used several external hard drives without any problem but never posted a comment to any of those sites. What I would recommend you look at is the MTBF for the drive, if that's given. Also what's the length of the warranty? I think manufacturers offer longer warranties on more reliable equipment.

[picker]

Personally, my LaCie 250 GB has never given me a lick of trouble. I am aware of the complaints about them, though I have never experienced any problems.

I still back everything to DVD on a regular basis, but I'd do that no matter who made it.

[nitroglycerine]

I've had a Maxtor One Touch for over a year and I use it HARD. It works great. It even survived getting dropped on the floor. No complaints here.

[Revtim]

I came within a hair of buying a 150g external drive last weekend, so I will be watching this thread with interest.

I have seen USB drive enclosures for like 30 bucks or so, which if I understand properly is a device to allow you to use an internal-type drive as a external drive via USB. This sounds like a pretty good idea, anybody have any info or experience with this type of deal?

[badmana]

I came within a hair of buying a 150g external drive last weekend, so I will be watching this thread with interest.

I have seen USB drive enclosures for like 30 bucks or so, which if I understand properly is a device to allow you to use an internal-type drive as a external drive via USB. This sounds like a pretty good idea, anybody have any info or experience with this type of deal?
I don't know if Macs can use natively USB2 (at least the older macs).

Just get any HD and stuff it into a Firewire enclosure. Keep in mind though that normal hard drives are not designed to take any serious abuse. If you want more reliability (and if your Mac supports USB2) get an USB2 2.5" HD enclosure and pick up a 2.5" notebook drive. I have one and it's pretty reliable (I also have a 3.5" USB2 and Firewire external and haven't had any issues).

BTW, HD speeds are not all that different so I don't know where you heard WD was "horribly slow". Most drives only work at 100 Mbits / sec AT BEST.

[bouv]

BTW, HD speeds are not all that different so I don't know where you heard WD was "horribly slow". Most drives only work at 100 Mbits / sec AT BEST.

Well, that's transfer time, but there is also seek time, how long it takes the HD to find the file it's looking for.

I second (third?) the recomendation to get not an extranl hard drive, but an external hard drive enclosure that turns an internal hard drive into an extrernal one. For the internal hard drive, get a Hitachi. Best drvies on the market.

[Homebrew]

I've had a Fantom Drive with firewire connection for nearly two years that hasn't given me any problems on my old G4.

I don't know if Macs can use natively USB2 (at least the older macs).Mac introduced USB 2 drivers with OS X a few years ago. The Rev. B Blue G3 and later machines support USB 2 when operating in an OS X environment. I don't think the earlier processors can run OS X. If you have an earlier OS, then they only work at USB 1.1 speeds.

[Xema]

I bought a cheap ($17) USB 2.5" HDD enclosure on eBay. I inserted an old IBM 30G HDD from a friend's dead laptop. So far, this seems to work great - fast backups with no hassles.

I admit I haven't dropped, kicked or otherwise abused the thing - and I have no plans to try. So YMMV.

[unclviny]

I use 2 different "external hard drives" (internal 3.5" drives in boxes I got off ebay) and I have had wonderful luck, 1 is my "MP3 player" (80g, that travels with me in my laptop bag) and the other is my "master backup" (160g, which stays home). Stay away from 2.5" drives as they are expensive!. I am a hardcore WD guy, having bad luck with other brands in the past.

unclviny

[AHunter3]

PET PEEVE DEPARTMENT, GEEKY NITPICK DEPARTMENT —

SeriousArt: Hey guys, been trying to shop around for a reliable external harddrive for my Powerbook. I've got 60 GB of memory on it which is filling up fast and need some help.

You don't have 60 GB of memory. Even folks with G5 Desktops who max out their RAM don't have anywhere close to 60 GB of memory. What you've got is 60 GB of storage space.

[/Geeky Nitpick]

Hitachi makes very nice laptop-height drives. You won't get oceans of storage space, although you can double your 60 with a nice external FireWire enclosure that you can swap with your current internal because they will be physically interchangeable, and the 7200 RPM drive is fast enough to give you a solid performance boost if you're currently running a 5200 or slower HD.

I always liked Quantum for full-sized (3.5") drives: they tend to be durable and quiet. I admit I haven't had any reason to snag one lately though.

[Cynical Optimist]

On my PC I use a hard drive chassis that fits in a 5.25in bay & allows me to use standard 3.5in hard drives in trays as removable storage.

I'm not sure if the Mac can go this route, I suspect it can if it uses serial or parallel ATA drives. Otherwise, the same hard drives can be used in a firewire external enclosure, I find USB2 much slower & CPU intensive that firewire for large transfers.

As for drive brands the Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 & 7200.8 can be had reasonably cheap after rebate from Outpost. 5 year warranties out of the box & I've never had a bad one.

[Padeye]

I've been using a Maxtor one touch 250GB since last summer and it has been reliable even after being bounced around in checked airline luggage several times.

[Revtim]

What kind of prices have you guys seen? For external drives, I was seeing something like a little more than a buck per gig at my local Best Buy. I haven't checked online yet.

[badmana]

Well, that's transfer time, but there is also seek time, how long it takes the HD to find the file it's looking for.

I second (third?) the recomendation to get not an extranl hard drive, but an external hard drive enclosure that turns an internal hard drive into an extrernal one. For the internal hard drive, get a Hitachi. Best drvies on the market.
http://www20.tomshardware.com/storage/20040209/seagate-04.html

Toms hardware reviewed several large HDs. Sure, if you're thrashing your HD heads all over the place a 14 ms random access time might be almost noticeably slower than a 9 ms deskstar but it's not going to matter that much. In fact, I doubt the overall real performance wouldn't be affected by more than 1 second.

All HDs are slow compared to every other part of a computer so I don't put much stock in access speeds. In fact, my 9 ms IBM deskstar (74 gigs top of the line HD back in it's day) failed on me and it was $150 more than the next brand. Go by price and make backups.

[badmana]

What kind of prices have you guys seen? For external drives, I was seeing something like a little more than a buck per gig at my local Best Buy. I haven't checked online yet.
A buck a gig is way over priced (DON'T GO TO BEST BUY). Go to any small computer store and pick up whatever they have or order via New Egg. I know in Toronto Canada Computers sells HDs at about $0.75/gig CAN.

[gotpasswords]

What kind of prices have you guys seen? For external drives, I was seeing something like a little more than a buck per gig at my local Best Buy. I haven't checked online yet.
Yowch! I recently built an external with a dual-interface enclosure ($45 at the local white box store) and a 200 GB drive (Western Digital JB series - 7200 RPM, 8 MB cache) that was $60 after a rebate. Net price per GB is fifty cents or so.

[Finagle]

A buck a gig is way over priced (DON'T GO TO BEST BUY). Go to any small computer store and pick up whatever they have or order via New Egg. I know in Toronto Canada Computers sells HDs at about $0.75/gig CAN.

Sigh. I once paid $800.00 for a 20 MB Dataframe hard drive (in 1987). And was happy to get it. Yep, that was $40K/Gig.

[Dewey Finn]

I don't know why you think Best Buy is much more expensive than "any small computer store" or New Egg. The prices seem roughly the same at Best Buy or New Egg; approximately one dollar (American) per gigabyte.

I bought a 300GB Maxtor external drive last month for $300 plus sale tax, but there was a $70 rebate from Best Buy, so the net cost was about $0.85 per gigabyte.

[seriousart]

Update: First of all, much thanks to all those who chimed in with their big brains on all things computer. After much debate and frustration I decided to go with the 300GB Maxtor One Touch.
To hedge my bets, however, I ordered through NewEgg, who weren't the cheapest, but who have a glowing reputation for customer service.

Seems like any HD is a bit of a crap shoot, so I'll try this one, cross my fingers, and hope NewEgg will live up to their reputation if something goes horribly wrong with it.

Incidentally, out of sheer newbishness, I shyed away from the internal HD used externally. I need this drive ASAP and don't really have time to worry about set up and such. The Maxtor is supposed to be very user friendly/ plug and play for Macs.

Again, a million thanks to all who contributed and please continue. Seems I'm not the only one that is interested in this.

Heck, there might even be time to cancel my order if someone has a really hot lead on a great hard drive...

[Revtim]

Yowch! I recently built an external with a dual-interface enclosure ($45 at the local white box store) and a 200 GB drive (Western Digital JB series - 7200 RPM, 8 MB cache) that was $60 after a rebate. Net price per GB is fifty cents or so.Well, I was talking about the purely external type drive, not the enclosure type solution which I assume would be cheaper even at Best Buy.

I really the enclosure idea, since it sounds easy to swap multiple drives with it. Some questions:

1) Does it get all its power from the USB, or does it need an additional wall plug?

2) How "hot" pluggable is the drive inside the enclosure? Do you need to unplug the USB before swapping drives, if you have multiple drives for use with the enclosure?

Thanks!

[gotpasswords]

Mine's entirely powered by a wall-wart as not all USB ports and not all Firewire ports can source enough juice to run a full-size drive.

It is not an easy way of swapping drives - most enclosures are meant to be semi-permanent as you'd have to unscrew the enclosure, pull out the drive (mine cradles the drive in rubber blocks, rather than screwing the drive to the enclosure) and unplugging the data and power lines. The drive itself is definitely not hot-swappable, nor easily swapped.

Actually, an external drive isn't truly hot-swappable. At best, it would be a warm-swap as you must, must, MUST stop the drive first. In Windows, it's done with the Unplug or Eject Hardware icon in the system tray, and on a Mac, you dismount it by dragging it to the trash. Failure to do this is a sure-fire way to corrupt data.

"I really the enclosure idea, since it sounds easy to swap multiple drives with it." Were you thinking of the scheme where you mount a drive into a carrier and plug that into a special drive bay in the PC itself? These have pretty much died away as they cost a good bit more than an external. One big advantage, however, is they're moving data on the internal IDE or SATA bus, rather than USB/Firewire. Still needs to be stopped/dismounted before removal, though.

[Revtim]

No, I actually meant using the enclosure, I was hoping it was easier to swap the disks out of it that it appears to be. Thanks for the info!

[badmana]

I don't know why you think Best Buy is much more expensive than "any small computer store" or New Egg. The prices seem roughly the same at Best Buy or New Egg; approximately one dollar (American) per gigabyte.

I bought a 300GB Maxtor external drive last month for $300 plus sale tax, but there was a $70 rebate from Best Buy, so the net cost was about $0.85 per gigabyte.


Well, I don't really need to think. Bestbuy.ca sells a 200 gig Maxtor HD for $229.99. Canada computers sell the same drive for $148.

In the US, Bestbuy sells the same drive for $149.99. Newegg = $105.

You HD for instance at Newegg is $258.50. Bestbuy: $349.99. You might have gotten a mis-priced HD or it's not the same external drive (I just did a quick search).

[Dewey Finn]

Best Buy often offers products on sale or with rebates, which can give very good prices. That's how I buy most of the stuff I buy there.

[danceswithcats]

I came within a hair of buying a 150g external drive last weekend, so I will be watching this thread with interest.

I have seen USB drive enclosures for like 30 bucks or so, which if I understand properly is a device to allow you to use an internal-type drive as a external drive via USB. This sounds like a pretty good idea, anybody have any info or experience with this type of deal?

My old backup drive that used to live in a 5.25" removable tray now lives in a USB box with external power supply. To make a copy of the HDD, I connect the USB box, the machine recognizes F:\ as a mass storage device, and I open Acronis True Image to make my archival backup. You could use it for anything else, but that's my application.

[butter pie]

I came within a hair of buying a 150g external drive last weekend, so I will be watching this thread with interest.

I have seen USB drive enclosures for like 30 bucks or so, which if I understand properly is a device to allow you to use an internal-type drive as a external drive via USB. This sounds like a pretty good idea, anybody have any info or experience with this type of deal?

My boyfriend uses one of those external USB enclosures for an extra hard drive, and he loves it. If your computer is compatible with them (I don't know why it wouldn't be), you have the added advantage of being able to take the hard drive out and put it in a desktop at a later date, or replace it but reuse the enclosure if it craps out. His enclosure can also be used with an optical drive instead. The particular style he ordered came in two sizes. Interchangable and reusable parts are good.

My computer has four hard drives in it, an Hitachi, a Western Digital, a Maxtor and a Seagate. I've had hardware issues with a previous Maxtor, but it seems like once they make it past a year or two old they are much less likely to crap out on you. I have a little 15GB Maxtor drive that's the only remaining part from an oldass HP Pavillion. It's not in a computer at the moment, but it's still alive and kicking. The Hitachi has been going on strong for quite some time now, and I've heard nothing but good stuff about Seagate, and most Seagate drives come with a 5 year warranty. You just mail them the dead drive and they'll send a new one.

Newegg is good... they are the only place I get computer parts from anymore. Really good prices and the shipping is super-fast.

[rjung]

Happy LaCie owner here. I use one of these (http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10025) without any problems. I'm rather picky about external drives, since I've gotten too used to quiet computing to put up with a noisy fan; the LaCie is fanless, which suits me fine.

[JThunder]

We use LaCies at work. They work like a charm.

[Seven]

I have seen USB drive enclosures for like 30 bucks or so, which if I understand properly is a device to allow you to use an internal-type drive as a external drive via USB. This sounds like a pretty good idea, anybody have any info or experience with this type of deal?

I've got one but it is firewire. Works like a charm.

I have two computers and 8 drives. 4 hard drives are configured for different uses; music, video, gaming and a general workstation (what I'm using now). They all have different operating systems and different configuations.

I've combined the external box (http://www.pcclub.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A3326323) with removable hard drive bays (http://www.pcclub.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A3386808) so I can easily exchange different drives into the removable box.

I have 4 back up drives (formatted but no OS) full of different stuff. When I need to access something I pop it in the external box, power it up, access data. when I'm done I power off the box and put the drive away.

My main computer hard drives are mounted in the same drive bays. If I need to access files on the music drive but I'm currently booted into the video drive I can pop the music drive into the external bay and fire it up.

Works great.

I've been thinking of getting a switch box for the firewire box so I don't have to swap cables between the computers, but the price of firewire boxes have come down a lot (the one I linked to above is only 40 bucks - I paid $100 for mine 2 years ago) so I think I'll just get another firewire box.

I like the idea of not running my back up drives all the time. One drive is 3 years old but I happen to guess it has only had power on it for 24-48 hours max. In theory, that drive should be usable for years and years to come.

[clayton_e]

<b>Xema</b> covered this slightly.. is it worth it to buy a HD offline and put it in an external case?

I plan on doing it that way because I want to wirelessly stream video and music from it. Is there a reliable and effective USB wireless plugin that would work well with this?

[butter pie]

I like the idea of not running my back up drives all the time. One drive is 3 years old but I happen to guess it has only had power on it for 24-48 hours max. In theory, that drive should be usable for years and years to come.

In theory, AFAIK, this would also be true of any purely back-up drives inside a system. The hard disk is only spinning when you're actually accessing the data, so the only disk in constant use is whichever ones are running the OS. Even though it's plugged in to the power supply it's not necessarily pulling power, otherwise I don't think my system would boot up at all (I only have a 350w PS).

At least, that's what I was told when I asked. I know when I access my back-up drives, I can hear them start spinning (one is considerably louder than the others.)

[Revtim]

When buying an enclosure and a hd, what factors does one need to be careful about to make sure they work together? I see "IDE" and "ATA" used in the descriptions, does one need to be careful about what supports what?

I'm more a software guy than a hardware guy, so this stuff is pretty new to me.

[Cynical Optimist]

When buying an enclosure and a hd, what factors does one need to be careful about to make sure they work together? I see "IDE" and "ATA" used in the descriptions, does one need to be careful about what supports what?

I'm more a software guy than a hardware guy, so this stuff is pretty new to me.

The older connection (wide ribbon cable) internal drives can be referred to as IDE, EIDE, or more recently PATA (parallel ATA). They're not techincally identical (EIDE is a superset of IDE) but in practice they're used interchangably by hardware vendors.

SATA is serial ATA, which uses a much narrower cable & is not forward or backward compatible with PATA. Adapters to attach mismatched drives/controllers exist but it's cheaper to just buy a PCI card with the appopriate connector if (for example) you want a SATA drive but only have PATA on your motherboard.

Generally the enclosure will be for either IDE/PATA or SATA drives, and connect to the computer with USB and/or Firewire (other interfaces exist, but if you're not a hardware person you'll rarely come across them).

The important thing is to match the drive type and the connection between the enclosure and the computer. IDE/PATA drives and Firewire connections seem to have the best price/performance ratio.

[JThunder]

In theory, AFAIK, this would also be true of any purely back-up drives inside a system. The hard disk is only spinning when you're actually accessing the data, so the only disk in constant use is whichever ones are running the OS. Even though it's plugged in to the power supply it's not necessarily pulling power, otherwise I don't think my system would boot up at all (I only have a 350w PS).
That's not strictly true. Even when the disk isn't spinning, the electronics within the drive still draw power.

[Revtim]

Thanks Cynical Optimist!

[pestie]

FWIW, I've been using several large (250G) external USB drives as backup devices at home and at work now for a few months and have yet to run into any problems. All of these are just ordinary "internal" 3.5" drives in external USB2/FireWire enclosures. I use them in USB2 mode and they're not any slower than a drive connected directly to the IDE bus inside the PC. The drives I've used have been Maxtor or Western Digital.

I will say this, though - heat is the #1 factor in the death of electronics, and these drives run hot inside those enclosures. I've swapped drives out of the enclosures immediately after powering them down and often they're too hot to handle comfortably. So if anything, I think that might be a potential source of trouble. Some enclosures might be better at dissipating heat than others, but I have yet to find one that doesn't run obscenely hot. But I haven't really looked for such a thing, either.