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