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imac abuser

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 1, 2004
631
1
Hello,
I have bought two different Western Digital external hard drives now, and have had terrible luck with both. The first was a Western Digital Passport I put files onto it, unmounted it replugged it in and they where gone! :mad: Then the second was thier brand new MY BOOK 500GB model I set it up, and was trying to put in folders how I wanted and then when I would click on another folder it would rename itself to the last folder I created.

I have found these Western Digital products as much as I want to like them suck for mac. I reformated the drive per the instructions, and it was fine. Until I started adding the folders and stuff.. Unreliable. I have a Maxtor II One Touch 300GB that works great, and other ones people know work well for mac?
 

freelancing

macrumors regular
Sep 30, 2007
113
33
I've heard they are problems

I have 2 of the 250GB MYBOOK drives by WD. I had heard that WD were unreliable, but I simply bought them because I needed backup drives and they were on killer sale at BestBuy. That being said, I have had no problems with either of them. I've been using them for about 6 months with no issues. I have my entire iPhoto library and iTunes library on one - every works ok, and since it's hooked up w/ my MacBook, I disconnect and reconnect frequently without issue. I'm going to eventually get a new Airport Extreme base station so I can mount the drives on my network.. but for now, all is well. They do make lots of drives - you might have just gotten a dud.

When buying drives, you must know, no matter who makes them, ALL drives have an appointment with death - so don't put all your eggs in one basket. My next investment after the new Airport Extreme will be the Drobo (http://www.drobo.com) - which seems like the most reliable way to do backup I can think of.

As drive prices tend to be plummetting, I'm seeing newer brands I've never seen before. I think it's wise to stick with known brands until others prove themselves. Maxtor and Seagate have good reputations from what I understand. Samsung seems to be getting into everything now - laser printers, HDTVs, next there will probably be a Samsung SUV - but I have seen a Samsung HD - not ready to trust my data to a company that isn't into doing hard drives as their mainstay - not until they are proven contenders. I've also heard bad things about DeskStar drives - drives Apple used to use for years.

Either way, no matter how reliable the drive, ALL drives fail and like an alternator, you won't know until it just stops working... which means lots of redundant backup. I also have Maxtors and Lacies at home - as I don't want my redundant back-ups from the same manufacturer and lot number in case I draw a short straw and end up w/ two duds that die at the same time.
 

Aceon6

macrumors newbie
Apr 23, 2004
14
0
I've had good luck with them, but I leave them as FAT32 drives and don't reformat for Mac. Since Mac supports it, why not leave the externals as universal drives?
 

imac abuser

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 1, 2004
631
1
I really want to get a Lacie 2big Network (2-disk RAID) when they come out :)
 

obibobi

macrumors member
Aug 13, 2007
45
0
Sweden
imac abuser: I have a MyBook 500 GB too, andit works OK when formatted for a mac.
But when I formatted it to NTFS to use it with my PC (Vista 64-bit) it didn't work.
Western Digitals support told me they don't (and probably never will) provide drivers for 64-bit OS's for this drive.
Contact Microsoft was their answer.


freelancing: Samsung has made harddrives for a long time, and I never had 1 that crashed. (the oldest one is 10 years)
Have had IBM's infamous GXP75's (or whatever the model was) , crashed bad.
Maxtors: the 3 oldest are good, but the last 2 fried.
Seagate: all still works
Lacie 250 GB: seagate or samsung inside, still working

thank for the drobo info, interesting cause I'm just about to build my own RAID-storage server.
 

Mr. B

macrumors regular
Dec 25, 2005
114
0
I use a mybook pro 250 gig and it works fantastically and has done so for a few months now.

that being said, I hope to god it doesn't fail because I have *alot* of important work inside of it...
 
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