Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

advice for external hard disk

X

xcalibur

macrumors member
Original poster
I'm interested in getting an external hard disk and the most common name associated with that is obviously Lacie. However i've heard some bad feedback about them lately. Does anyone know what hard disk brand is in Lacies? As in is it a Maxtor, Western Digital, etc? What other models are recommended?

Another thing is that i plan to format it using FAT32, this is possible right and wouldn't cause any problems will it? Other than the maximum file size issue? Will FAT32 perform slower than Mac OS Extended? Won't be running the OS off the external disk, just to keep data.
 
You might consider just buying an external drive enclosure (they have them with both USB2.0 and FireWire - usually about $35) and then adding your own drive (around 50 cents/GB or less if you shop around/find a deal). That will result in about half the cost for your external storage compared to buying a pre-built unit plus you can choose what type of drive you want to trust you data to (I'd personally choose Seagate).

Mike
 
yeah, but i had a bad experience with external hard disks, my previous one was a 2.5" in an enclosure and had problems on both the controller and the hard disk itself. I think its because of voltage regulation (it was hub powered an didn't require external power), so i guess i'm looking for something that's more reliable. I guess my assumption is that the design of the controller of self built external enclosures aren't as efficient and reliable as the ones in branded ones like lacie and maxtor.
 
xcalibur said:
yeah, but i had a bad experience with external hard disks, my previous one was a 2.5" in an enclosure and had problems on both the controller and the hard disk itself. I think its because of voltage regulation (it was hub powered an didn't require external power), so i guess i'm looking for something that's more reliable. I guess my assumption is that the design of the controller of self built external enclosures aren't as efficient and reliable as the ones in branded ones like lacie and maxtor.
Click to expand...

i bought a western digital 120GB 7200 RPM external drive a few months ago for 129 after rebates... i really like the drive.. it has held up well... and is currently giogn on its 7th straight day of bieng on.... no problems yet.... i'd recommend it...
 
micsaund said:
You might consider just buying an external drive enclosure (they have them with both USB2.0 and FireWire - usually about $35)
Click to expand...

I have heard this price quoted before but never actually found one anywhere near that price. Can you tell me where I can find one?

So far the best deal I found on a name brand unit was $65 from buy.com for a FW/USB2 model.
 
I say build it yourself.. i have an 40 (24/7 for ~2 years), 120 (24/7 for about a year) and a 80 in firewire external enclosures, all run great. I put them together from drives i got rather cheaply with rebates (2 WD and a Seagate), and the enclosures were ~$50 each.

edit: same one i have, but rebranded $39.99 @ Newegg.com
 
krimson said:
I say build it yourself.. i have an 40 (24/7 for ~2 years), 120 (24/7 for about a year) and a 80 in firewire external enclosures, all run great. I put them together from drives i got rather cheaply with rebates (2 WD and a Seagate), and the enclosures were ~$50 each.

edit: same one i have, but rebranded $39.99 @ Newegg.com
Click to expand...

Hmm, maybe i should give it another go. This time i'll be using 3.5" disk so i guess it won't have the same problems as last time.
 
I highly recommend the LaCie. I've used my 250gig triple interface w/iBook to tide me over till the G5's come out, for the past couple months.

I had a similar predicament where I formatted 30 gigs of it to FAT 32 so I could leech stuff off of windows friends, and left the other 200 or so in OS Extended, or whatever apple friendly format it is.

I have moved the thing around quite a bit and its gotten banged around as well, but so far so good. Plus, LaCie has a good support staff and a good warranty. In other words, there's good reason for why they have a good reputation.

Incidently, I researched the drives and barefeats or somebody else said that the lacie was actually slower that the WD drives, but it's not like you're gonna notice a few microseconds, right?

Go with LaCie, they're the Apple or LL Bean of hard drives. 🙂
 
krimson said:
So you're saying that they charge end cuonsumers 7x of what it actually costs to make? 😉
Click to expand...


No, I'm saying that they have a level of quality.

And as for chraging more than what it costs to make... well I believe they call that business. There's no way LL Bean has more of a markup than say Nike. Plus, they manufacture most of their stuff in America, much like LaCie which is based out of Washington or Oregon. Ok, enough talk of non-apple related stuff. 😛
 
DGFan said:
I have heard this price quoted before but never actually found one anywhere near that price. Can you tell me where I can find one?

So far the best deal I found on a name brand unit was $65 from buy.com for a FW/USB2 model.
Click to expand...

Well, this is a bit higher than my original mention of $35, but for $42 shipped (this was around 5/21/04, so I don't know if the $5 coupon code still works - "me-350u2f5off"), but here's one for a Bytecc aluminum enclosure:
http://store.yahoo.com/cooler-express/byal3hadrexe.html
$42 (if the code still works) should fit your "anywhere near" price range hopefully. 🙂

As for the power issues someone had: all 3.5" enclosures that I've seen are powered by an AC adapter, whereas the 2.5" tend to use the USB solely (due to using more power efficient laptop drives). Thus, building a 3.5" external drive, you should avoid the power issues you had previously.

I have a motto: "You can pay with your time or your money." You can pay around $1/GB for a pre-made external drive or you can pay around $0.50/GB for a "do it yourself" (if putting a HD inside a case can be called DIY 😉 ). Personally, I'd expect the external drives to begin dropping in price since I think that the general public realizes that it's not that hard to build yourself for half the cost and the external manufacturers like LaCie will have to drop prices to remain competitive.

Mike
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back