Good external hard drive?

I will be picking up a LaCie before the end of the year. have a look at their product line....pretty slick.

I'm looking for a good external hard drive myself. Have been wondering if the ones with fans are better. My current one that died didn't. Left it on 24/7.

Yeh, Lacie make good, solid drives.

I brought the "Design by F A Porsche" model a few months back which was very inexpensive and offered the solution that I want. It's left on 24/7 and it does the job for music editing and composing.

I like the older LaCie d2 designs (160GB and lower). They were excellent drives. However, I read a lot of complaints about the heat/loudness of the fans in the larger drives, 200GB and up.

My friend who is a new Mac user thanks to me bought a LaCie 160GB drive and sent it back (bad power conector). He then bought the Porsche 250 model and couldn't be happier and it's very quiet. My worry is getting one without the fan but it's only for backup so it just may not matter that much

I have a Lacie and it is a very nice bit of kit.

powpow said:

• Quiet!

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I would go with a Seagate Barracuda. Very high quality, long warranty and, most important, has been the most quiet HDs for a long time, now, you can barely hear them "whisper".

Seagate has some very nice Firewire/USB2 combo drives in sizes from 80-500 GB, like the affordable 200 GB or the much larger 400 GB.

Seagate barracuda's are nice and quiet although they do make a seeking noise every few minutes, i thought this was a fault but called up seagate and they told me that it is normal and is the sound it makes when checking for errors and it will do this throughout the day when the HD is inactive...

Anyway i have a 200gb barracuda in my eMac and its been great so far i have had it running long hours everyday for about 4-5 months...Reccomended,

ShadOW

Mitthrawnuruodo said:

I would go with a Seagate Barracuda. Very high quality, long warranty and, most important, has been the most quiet HDs for a long time, now, you can barely hear them "whisper".

Seagate has some very nice Firewire/USB2 combo drives in sizes from 80-500 GB, like the affordable 200 GB or the much larger 400 GB.

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Looks very nice, have some questions. At least I wasn't able to find the answers. What is the case constructed of and is it durable? Does if have a fan? How long is the warranty?

I like my lacie triple interface

puckhead193 said:

I like my lacie triple interface

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same here!

Check out the western digital dual option backup, has firewire and USB 2.0 as well as one touch and scheduled backups

Euan said:

same here!

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Same here on the tri-int. Lacie - quiet as well.

I've had my Maxtor OneTouch II for about three months now and am very happy with it. This is my first external HD, so I don't have any basis for comparison, but it seems fairly quiet. It's definitely not SILENT though so maybe I'm less sound-sensitive than others.

wdlove said:

Looks very nice, have some questions. At least I wasn't able to find the answers. What is the case constructed of and is it durable? Does if have a fan? How long is the warranty?

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It looked like the case on the 400 GB I had at loan a couple of weeks ago had a fan, but we actually never heard it, even when backing up a nearly full 40 GB HD off a laptop.

I have no idea if the case was made from some composite material or a light alloy, but it felt quite durable and "heavy" (i.e. not "plastic light", but don't get me wrong: it didn't weigh that much).

The warranty is a question, though, because when I browsed a bit around it looks like Seagate have a 5 year warranty on all internal disks, but not the externals (which seems to be normal in the industry). You better ask this question to whatever retailer you buy the disk from. (Or you could get an "internal" disk and put it into a 3rd party Firewire/USB2 case, yourself, that way you should get 5 years.)

LaCie d2 and Porsche Drive

I have a LaCie d2 drive (250GB) since 6 month to back-up my digital pictures, it is not running 24/7 but I have it always switched on with the G5 so it is running fairly a lot.

It runs really quitely, the G5 (latest build, D2.0 GHz) is what I hear not the d2 drive. The speed is phenomenal - connected by the FW800 and my picture transfer so quick. I use a D100 and save uncompressed RAW files, so each is 10MB in size and when working the typical amount of pictures I move around are a couple of GBs. For this it is perfect and I am sure MP3s will work as good.

I have as well a small LaCie Porsche Drive (USB and FW) with 40 GB to carry with me. It is convenient, small, looks good and for the purpose fast enough but not as sturdy as the d2 (was a bit disappointed by the plastic housing). Something more solid and offering more HD space is definitely the d2 drive (I think not all d2s have the FW800 bus, for me this would be a must).

Martin

gMac said:

I've had my Maxtor OneTouch II for about three months now and am very happy with it. This is my first external HD, so I don't have any basis for comparison, but it seems fairly quiet. It's definitely not SILENT though so maybe I'm less sound-sensitive than others.

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The noise doesn't bother me, I'm used to the constant hum of my Power Mac G4. Just something that I one learns to ignore.

I also have a Maxtor OneTouch II. I just bought it Sunday, it was on special at Frys for only $270 (its a 300GB 16MB Cache drive with Firewire and USB 2.0). Only complaint I have is that when I have both my LaCie DVD-Recorder and the disk plugged in at the same time, its alot slower than if I just had one of them plugged in. But I can live with that!

Mitthrawnuruodo
Quote:
Originally Posted by powpow
• Quiet!
I would go with a Seagate Barracuda. Very high quality, long warranty and, most important, has been the most quiet HDs for a long time, now, you can barely hear them "whisper".

Seagate has some very nice Firewire/USB2 combo drives in sizes from 80-500 GB, like the affordable 200 GB or the much larger 400 GB.

Click to expand...

Mitthrawnuruodo, that's an awesome price for that drive 200 GB as it's $210 US but I'm sure just a bit cheaper if I did a search but not much.
The only thing that has made me wait on getting a drive is the software (for backup purpose), as well as in putting one together (internal drive/external case) but if it doesn't really matter then I've seen some great deals around

mpsullmann said:

I have a LaCie d2 drive (250GB) since 6 month to back-up my digital pictures, it is not running 24/7 but I have it always switched on with the G5 so it is running fairly a lot.

It runs really quitely, the G5 (latest build, D2.0 GHz) is what I hear not the d2 drive. The speed is phenomenal - connected by the FW800 and my picture transfer so quick. I use a D100 and save uncompressed RAW files, so each is 10MB in size and when working the typical amount of pictures I move around are a couple of GBs. For this it is perfect and I am sure MP3s will work as good.

I have as well a small LaCie Porsche Drive (USB and FW) with 40 GB to carry with me. It is convenient, small, looks good and for the purpose fast enough but not as sturdy as the d2 (was a bit disappointed by the plastic housing). Something more solid and offering more HD space is definitely the d2 drive (I think not all d2s have the FW800 bus, for me this would be a must).

Martin

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I too have the LaCie D2 500gb drive and it rocks. I move ~1000 digital photo files from my D2h/D100 around per week, and it's quiet, realible, and fast. I sometimes forget that it's an external.

I do connect it with FW800, FWIW

Maxtor One Touch II Triple interface

Hi

Just got the Maxtor OneTouch II 300GB drive (16mb cache version), it has Firewire 400/800 USB 2.0 & I am using it for exactly the same function as you want!

It has a single button backup system which I have configured to backup the itunes library, it is sooo quiet its not true - I think it is much quieter than the LaCie that friend has. Additionally I have used it all day & it it is cool to the touch.

Oh and you get Retrospect Express bundled in (as well as all the Firewire400/800/USB 2.0 cables, International power adaptor with 2 pin & UK 3 pin cables & 2 year warranty)

There is nothing bad to say about this drive

alexeismertin said:

Hi

Just got the Maxtor OneTouch II 300GB drive (16mb cache version), it has Firewire 400/800 USB 2.0 & I am using it for exactly the same function as you want!

It has a single button backup system which I have configured to backup the itunes library, it is sooo quiet its not true - I think it is much quieter than the LaCie that friend has. Additionally I have used it all day & it it is cool to the touch.

Oh and you get Retrospect Express bundled in (as well as all the Firewire400/800/USB 2.0 cables, International power adaptor with 2 pin & UK 3 pin cables & 2 year warranty)

There is nothing bad to say about this drive

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My only concern re: maxtor is that I've had an 80gb Maxtor SATA in my G5 fail, and i've had 2 120 gb Maxtor drives in external cases fail. Dead.

My experience has been that WD drives are a bit more reliable. That said, I don't know what brand drive is used inside of my LaCie...

I've got three LaCie d2 drives and a LaCie burner in a rack at home, on 24/7. The drives range in age from ~3 years to ~6 months. Never had a problem with any of them (sized 120GB to 250GB). They seem very quiet to me, and I like the design.

Yep, my lacie drive is very quiet.