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makintosh

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 13, 2007
13
0
Hi everyone,

I plan to buy an external hard drive, (I'll be using it with an iMac, will store all kinds of documents such as video, photo...)

Which brand would you suggest, Lacie or Western Digital? (Western Digital is much cheaper, but I don't know if it is reliable or not)

Thank you,,
 

garethlewis2

macrumors 6502
Dec 6, 2006
277
1
Lacie don't make hard-drives. They buy hard-drives from companies such as Western Digital and then put them in an external enclosure.

Western Digital is a spin off from IBM.

Western Digital, Seagate, IBM, Hitachi, etc 1,000,000,000,000,000 better than Lacie.
 

maestrokev

macrumors 6502a
Apr 23, 2007
875
8
Canada
I don't find my WD 1TB MyBook Pro very reliable and would not buy again. Just read their forums and see the type of complaints they're getting.
 

crazycat

macrumors 65816
Dec 5, 2005
1,319
0
I have used over 25 LaCie hard drives over the last 3-4 years and not one has failed on me. I Also use Western digital ones and they seem to be as good as-well, altho i had 1 fail a few months back.

I would go with any of the two, they both will do here job but you have to remember that there is always a small percentage of hard drives that fail.
 

GenericNick

macrumors newbie
Jul 3, 2007
2
0
3rd vote against Western Digital

In 15 years, all of my hard drive advice has been distilled down to:
"As a rule of thumb, choose something other than Western Digital"

Personally, of the 10 drive's I've had fail at home and work while using mostly other brands, 9 of the failures were Western Digital. I end up giving this advice a lot, and I'd put your odds at 25% of being dissapointed if you don't take it.
 

bleuhhhh

macrumors newbie
Sep 1, 2007
17
0
Could someone explain me waht is a failure when we talk about external hard drive?? I'm not sure i understand it all... And i'm planning to buy a My Book Premium Edition, i'm quite nervous about it... :S
 

~Shard~

macrumors P6
Jun 4, 2003
18,377
48
1123.6536.5321
A failure can be any number of events, however the ultimate result is the same - your hard drive ceases to operate properly usually resulting in your data being permanently lost. Corruption, drive head malfunction/component wear, impact, there are many causes...

In general, I have heard less than stellar reviews regarding the WD MyBook product line as well.

Also, Lacie does not make hard drives, so you're not comparing apples to apples. Lacie purchases hard drives from hard drive manufacturers (such as WD) and incorporates them into their drives.

Personally I have always been impressed with Seagate drives, have never had any issues with them and quite like their 5-year warranty. :cool:
 

sunfast

macrumors 68020
Oct 14, 2005
2,135
53
I haven't had loads of externals but I'll share my experience.

About 5 years ago I bought a Freecom drive (I know, I know) and the enclosure died. I couldnt remove the drive so I smashed up the enclosure and the drive is now running happily in my flatmates desktop (where it has been for a while). Don't know who made that disk.

These days I have an older WD 250GB (~3y.o.) and a 250GB WD MyBook (~18months). Haven't had any problems with them but I'm not a power user by any means. I just got them because they weren't too expensive and I store all my music, videos & pictures on them.

We had a Lacie network drive in the house which was plugged into a router so we could all use the stuff on it. The power supply failed on that and we haven't got a new one yet. Otherwise it seemed a pretty decent disk (nice metal enclosure too).
 

Oryan

macrumors 6502a
Apr 1, 2005
595
0
Lincoln, NE
I always go with Seagate, Western Digital, or Lacie. Lacie seems more hit-and-miss than the others, but I bought one (500GB Porsche model) a month ago and haven't had any problems. And it is really quiet too.
 

~Shard~

macrumors P6
Jun 4, 2003
18,377
48
1123.6536.5321
I always go with Seagate, Western Digital, or Lacie. Lacie seems more hit-and-miss than the others, but I bought one (500GB Porsche model) a month ago and haven't had any problems. And it is really quiet too.

Once again, for clarification, Lacie does not make their own hard drives. They could be using WD or Seagate or any oher drive in their product.

Regardless, Lacie does make a quality product IMO. However they are not a hard drive manufacturer themselves.
 

Naimfan

Suspended
Jan 15, 2003
4,669
2,017
Buy a Seagate external instead. They come with a 5 year warranty.

Seconded. I've got a 160 Gb Seagate from about 3 years ago that has worked perfectly. The five year warranty is, I must confess, reassuring. While not a guarantee the drive won't fail, for me it speaks to the confidence Seagate has in their products.
 
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