External Hardrives?

Stu

I'm planning to get an external hard drive.......to save me from the inevitable blue screen of death but am also running out of room.
I'm thinking of getting a 320 Gig. Lacie 300968A.
Does anybody have an opinion on this brand or on external HDs generally?
Thanks,
Stu

otb designworks

I have used Maxtor OneTouch, Seagate, and Western Digital My Book premium.

Overall, I like the My Book and the Seagate the best.

Seagate uses a program called Bounceback for updates and it is really fast; much much better that the retrospect Express that comes with the Maxtor.

Reliability has been excellent with all of them.

I think that Seagate is phasing out firewire connections (they are starting to use esata, which my Mac doesn't have).

not registered yet

I'm using a LaCie 100GB Porsche Design Mobile Hard Drive (5"x7"x.5"). I bought it primarily for the portability of getting files to and from work/home with speed and having a reasonably sized backup. I've been a fan of this particular drive because it came with lots of connection options (USB 2.0 or Firewire) I've been very satisfied with the product and would recommend both the drive and the brand (I've also purchased burners from LaCie)

poster-Karl

Shaun Tennant

not much to add to this, but a friend just bought a seagate and found that the free software that they provide was the only thing that would allow him to copy exactly everything from his drive, and swap it out so that he could just boot straight from the new drive - that's not what you are trying to do, but might help the search.

poster-Shaun Tennant

Stu

Guys,
Thanks for the responses.
Carl I'm tending towards the LaCie and its good to hear you have had not trouble.
320Gb. sounds ridiculous, but then you can never have too much storage.....as the man who sold me my first computer,[512Mb hard drive] said.
Stu

RonS

Hi Stu,
I use a Maxtor One Touch 250GB and it works very well and hard everyday. I'm happy with it.

lewiswadsworth

I have had a reliable LaCIE 200GB for a couple of years; it even survived a digital video course.

However, on the strength of its performance I bought a larger LaCie, 400 GB dual USB/Firewire. It has proved completely unreliable, if used with Firewire...which is of course how I want to use it for video. Three times the whole disk, both partitions, has become spontaneously corrupted during file transfers. I no longer depend on it at all; it's an expensive paperweight now, because I don't dare use it for anything (even restricting myself to USB).

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

Krisidious

I boycott Maxtor... their customer service reeeeeeeks.... and they either bought Siemens or vs versa...

on another note... why are you buying the "External" if just a bunch of money for some plastic on the outside and a pretty cord...

why not buy a cheaper internal and carry it around hooking it up via HD IDE or CD IDE...

sorry I'm a cheap bastage

lewiswadsworth

Good point. For the cost of that titanium shell on the LaCie alone, you could buy a terabyte of high-speed Hitachi internal drives, pop them into one of those inexpensive external cases they cell at NewEgg.Com

http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/SubCategory.asp?SubCategory=92

and still come out ahead. I've done this ever since my 400 GB LaCie debacle.

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

tomsdesk

Just yesterday installed a WD 320gig MyBook...works great so far with nary-a-hitch (of course I didn't install the "free" google controlware

Maggy

I love speed. My previous boot HD was a 32 GB 15000 RPM UltraSCSI.
The one I installed a few weeks ago is the fastest Seagate Sata I could find.
I was actually trying to find it in ESata but couldn't find it. Firewire and USB2 can do a lot, but I find them too slow as harddisk interface, maybe for backup.

I do have an USB2 2.5" harddisk with CF card interface to store my pictures on. When downloading some GB of pictures I always fall asleep before my computer does.

poster-Maggy

marne

Having my 4th external drive know, i noticed two things to be important for me:

the drive should have an on/off switch
for a long lasting lifetime an integrated fan does a well job

my vented hd only reaches 38°C max., while the others reach 53°C and above when doin hard work...

if the chipset of your external case provides it, you may read out the smart info with this (free) tool and compare yourself:

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2006.01.22-HDDScan/

greetings marne