Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello,

My housemate would like to purchase an external HDD for her laptop, but is put off doing so because on Amazon pretty much every drive has a bunch of "OMG DO NOT BUY THIS IT BRAKES AFTER 3 MONTHS!!!!" type reviews. Most of you lot know far, far more about This Sort of Thing than I ever will, so could you recommend which one she should get?

I done a quick search and saw Dudley uses a Western Digital Elements 500GB drive, but the average 3.5 star rating on Amazon might put her off... any advice?

Tell her to get over it.

I have had an iomega 500GB external HDD for about a year with no problems as of yet (touch wood).

Maxim: Everyone in the comments section is an idiot.

Ditto. Two of them, in fact.

I have loads of external drives. 7 self built and 3 "off the shelf" units.

The problem with external drives is that they are easy to break. I had a excellent Seagate that was really well built but I pulled the power from it by accident and it died.

I now have one of the high end Maxtor drives and it's also good. But the problem is that no matter how well built they are, external factors can screw you over.

I purchased a cheapie Tosh unit the other week but knocked it off the top of the Jesuscomputer (the HD had a stupid vertical stand). Although the drive was off at the time, it still died. Luckily I managed to get a replacement.

Self built drives are even more fragile and I only use them for secondary backups. There's virtually no protection at all should you drop one or even knock it.

When looking at external drives, if you do need intensive access do consider firewire. I know the specs on paper say it's slower (400mps as opposed to 480mps for USB) but the reality is it's faster.

Also consider ESATA if you can get hold of a drive that supports it and have a suitable controller card.

But they are all much of a muchness. Don't rely on them by any means as there are so many external factors from power supplies to knocks that no matter what option you go for there will be some risk. However, that said, the more expensive units such as my Maxtor are at least better protected than the cheapie Tosh I recently purchased. The Maxtor has a larger case with rubber edges and the Tosh is just a slim metal case.

I can vouch for Western Digital external 500GB drives.

I've got 2 "Mybook" drives and 1 "Elements" drive.

Had these drives for over a year and they've been flawless.
They're fairly cheap too (£60 or less delivered, depending on where you buy).

Should point out that my "Mybook" drives are version 1's. There is a version 2 available now that seems to have had some bad reviews (on Amazon etc.)

I bought a G-Tech G-Drive Q, thanks to a mixture of Craig's recommendation and the fact that Googling revealed almost zero complaints about them ever breaking, and even when they did the customer service was great.

They cost a lot for 500Gb (I got mine from Jigsaw24, where they're £131ish at the mo), but all I can really say about mine is that it looks nice, it's fast (FW800) and hasn't broken yet. Three for three. I've partitioned it to allow SuperDuper! backups of two Macs and a little bit extra for storing random non-critical crap. As I'm not a Time Machine man, I use it about once a week, and it's off the rest of the time.

I also encountered the review problem - the Apple Store reviews for the 2 most well known FW800 drives (one by WD, the other by Lacie) are almost all 5/5 stars but both are peppered with 0 star reviews saying "CRAP BREAKS LOSE ALL YOUR DATA DON'T GET THIS GET THE LACIE/WD (delete as applicable) INSTEAD".

And this is why I recommend the elements drive. It's as cheap as they come but it's a decent solid case with protective rubber edges.

I still have the Seagate drive that broke. It has company data on it so when it broke I wanted to put a nail through it.

It was a right bugger to get the external plastic casing off, but can I get to the drive? Can I fuck! Underneath the plastic was a kind of suspension system and a further metal casing.

I got a huge nail and the biggest hammer you'd ever seen and tried to slam it through the casing. Totally failed. I then got angry and started shouting "HAMMER TIME" while smashing the case with a hammer.

I then started singing "What's new pussy cat" while continuing to hit the thing for about a minute*.

A year on and the casing is still sitting outside my office because I still can't destroy the fucker. It has company data on it and the drive inside is still intact.

So some drives are built better than others!


* Bonus points if you get the reference.

I have a 400(ish)GB version of this maxtor 'personal storage 3200'



It's very good. Quiet, fast, never let me down. It's ugly as hell and pretty heavy though so it's not ideal if you want portability (I don't. It sits on the desk for back-ups).

The biggest gripe I have is that it doesn't have an on off/switch - so I have to unplug it from the computer and wait for it to spin down, then take the power cable out. It's far from a big problem but it may be something to consider.

Thanks all, I've forwarded her the link to this thread. I think I'll get a Western Digital Elements or am Iomega drive in a few months, not sure what she's decided.

Or for just under 100 notes, a 1tb version

http://uk.insight.com/apps/productprese ... =WDGA05URP

One... trillion.. bytes!?

this one apparently sucks

I was just browsing for another external HDD myself and this one looks highly amusing, but I bet it's LOUD

Upgrading from my trusty WD MyBook Pro (triple interface 250GB) I bought a LaCie d2 Quadra (quad interface 500GB), should arrive today.

The WD works well, especially over Firewire 800, but is a little awkward in terms of Mac drivers for the front button and power down. Using it with Super Duper! on my Mac. It's been solid for over a year, though. I also have a few other WD stuff for long term archiving.

I now need more space, so chose to upgrade to something a little more Mac friendly and feature rich.

Old:


New:

http://www.lacie.com/uk/products/product.htm?pid=11023

Gahh. They've changed the image on the page now to the actual drive. When I spotted this this morning it was of a vacuum cleaner!

I'm backing up onto the new LaCie right now, it's noisier than the WD but also faster (and slightly smaller, if that matters).

Supplied button software is definitely better than WD. I use my own choice of backup software.