Are Seagate Hard Drives any good?

[jayeskreezy]

I'm thinking about buying a seagate hard drive for an external drive to accompany my mini, but I wanted to know if they are any good?

Also, what is the best brand? Currently I have an 80gb external WD drive.

[Flowbee]

Seagate Barracuda is an excellent drive. Very fast and nearly dead silent.

[bousozoku]

My first hard drive was Seagate (my latest too) and I find it difficult to trust anything else.

[Heb1228]

Seagate drives should serve you well. Many Mac users will also recommend LaCie drives.

[Duff-Man]

Seagate drives should serve you well. Many Mac users will also recommend LaCie drives.
Duff-Man says..LaCie does not actually make the drives - they only make the enclosures they ship them in. Seagate are very reputable, as are WD and Maxtor and Hitachi. At one time or another *every* drive manufacturer has had a bad batch of drives go out and we see posts aboiut how to avoid them cause they are crap etc etc. Maxtor seems to be the latest whipping boy but I have Maxtor drives (1 internal and 1 external) and they are fine, quiet and have not had any trouble. If you see a good deal on a Seagate drive then by all means go for it....oh yeah!

[Heb1228]

Duff-Man says..LaCie does not actually make the drives - they only make the enclosures they ship them in.
Who makes the drives for LaCie, out of curiosity?

[Xeem]

I have no experience with Seagate externals, but I never had problems with their internal drives, so I'd recommend them. My dad has like a dozen Lacie externals (mostly 80GBs) in his office, and he has experienced no problems with any of them other than one that a friend unknowingly formatted FAT32 on his PC (and the only problem there was slow writing until it was reformatted). The only problem I've ever had with an external drive was with a Maxtor drive. It died under warranty, got replaced, and the replacement died under warranty.

[Duff-Man]

Who makes the drives for LaCie, out of curiosity?
Duff-Man says...LaCie, like just about everyone else - including Apple, buys hard drives in batch lots from drive manufacturers...I would assume they in some way put out a "tender" for supply of drives and the various suppliers then bid on some kind of supply contract - pretty standard stuff I would presume...oh yeah!

[bousozoku]

LaCie was once a subsidiary of Quantum, I believe, prior to Maxtor buying Quantum.

[Demon Hunter]

I had a Maxtor or two fail on me... but that was 3-4 years into owning the computer, so, take it for what you will. I think Seagate is great. :) Their HQ is in my area.

[ajampam]

FYI: Lacie has a cool 160gig external HD for the minis...I just bought that last week though I do not have a mini as it was smaller and portable....for you it will stack down right under the mini....it could look really cool....BTW, it costed me 149 bucks or so........

[macEfan]

Dont get a Fujitsu! I had a 30gb drive that suddenly stopped powering on. Lost all my data('cept for a little that i backed up)

[admiraldennis]

An older LaCie Firewire drive I had contained a Seagate Barracuda, don't know if that's always the case though.

[IJ Reilly]

Another Seagate fan here. I've got two 80 Gb Barracuda drives, and as a previous poster said, they are wonderfully quiet. Unfortunately one of them is in the PC I built last year, and it's got such noisy fans a quiet drive is besides the point. But the one in my Cube.... ummm, nice!

But most of them are good. The only manufacturer I personally avoid is Western Digital.

[Lacero]

Seagate and Hitachi make good drives. I prefer Seagate simply because they are quiet.

[yippy]

I just got a Seagate and it came with a 5 year manufacturer warrantee, can't argue with that.

[dubbz]

I've had Western Digital, Hitachi and two Seagate drives.

Only one I had problems with was the first of the Seagates, though my current one is working fine. The Seagate drive is dead silent when idling, but make some noise when active. My graphics card fan make sure that I don't hear any of it :p

That's internal ones though. No idea about external drives.

[iGary]

Seagates rule.

Dead silent, I've never had one fail, and they come with a 5-year warranty.

[Jigglelicious]

Seagate makes some decent drives. However in the past year or so, all their new drives make very annoying "diagnostic" read noises every couple of seconds. When I wanted a silent drive for my fanless iMac, everyone recommended a Seagate, so thats what I got. But I quickly noticed that every couple of seconds when the drive is idle, it makes this very annoying "chattering" sound. I thought it was a defective drive, but when I checked online forums, I wasn't the only one! I called Seagate and they explained this is a self test that the drive does, and is normal operation.

Not satisfied with that, I quickly sent the drive back and got a Samsung instead. The Samsung was even more quiet, and had no annoying sounds.

[JW8725]

Many Mac users will also recommend LaCie drives.

I dont! d2 Etreme? Dont go there pal!