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external hard drive, which one should I buy?
- Thread starter mhuff
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There's no way we can tell you how big a hard drive you need without you telling us how much space you actually use (and will use in the future if you extrapolate your space usage figures). That said, I've had no problem with my FreeAgent Go that I've had for a while.
G-Drive
Well...first of all what size are you looking for and what is your price range? I have had both WD and G-Drives. Both are excellent. My WD has lasted me for 4 years so far and is going strong. I just picked up a 500 GB G-Drive Q for $160 off Amazon. I highly recommend it.
Cheers,
-ReborN
Well...first of all what size are you looking for and what is your price range? I have had both WD and G-Drives. Both are excellent. My WD has lasted me for 4 years so far and is going strong. I just picked up a 500 GB G-Drive Q for $160 off Amazon. I highly recommend it.
Cheers,
-ReborN
Buy an enclosure and buy a hard drive separately, it will cost you less! take a firewire800 / USB2 / eSATA enclosure, it will be more future proof.
If you need the drive always up and running, take an enclosure with a fan.
If you need the drive always up and running, take an enclosure with a fan.
Search the forums.
My vote would go probably towards the Western Digital, although I have had no problems with my Iomega UltraMax Pro, my main concern with it though is the limited cache size, however I use it solely for back up. I also have a G-Tech, while I rarely (I actually don't think ever) hear bad things about them and have never had a problem, you are paying premium.
And like always:
Everyone has their own experiences, but I imagine that most of them are positive. Sure, there are these threads about how person x's drive failed and person y wouldn't buy anything but them. I own three drives that there are plenty of horror stories about.
No one would ever post: "I love my Western Digital 1TB Drive", unless someone posts a horror story about one. Companies ship tons of drives daily, not everyone will be perfect.
The best advice is to find one that has a good warranty and excellent customer service. And then avoid reading these threads so you don't lose any sleep.
Or you could be OCD, anal and paranoid like me and have two back-up drives.
Next Thread...
My vote would go probably towards the Western Digital, although I have had no problems with my Iomega UltraMax Pro, my main concern with it though is the limited cache size, however I use it solely for back up. I also have a G-Tech, while I rarely (I actually don't think ever) hear bad things about them and have never had a problem, you are paying premium.
And like always:
Everyone has their own experiences, but I imagine that most of them are positive. Sure, there are these threads about how person x's drive failed and person y wouldn't buy anything but them. I own three drives that there are plenty of horror stories about.
No one would ever post: "I love my Western Digital 1TB Drive", unless someone posts a horror story about one. Companies ship tons of drives daily, not everyone will be perfect.
The best advice is to find one that has a good warranty and excellent customer service. And then avoid reading these threads so you don't lose any sleep.
Or you could be OCD, anal and paranoid like me and have two back-up drives.
Next Thread...
I recommend Hitachi's SimpleTech Signature Mini hard Drives. They're highly portable with 500 GB of space. I use it for Time Machine and VIDEO_TS files. I've never had any problems whatsoever.
Actually I've found that a full external hard drive is usually around the same price of a standalone harddrive... Unless you're looking for special features like the triple interface you listed, then it might make more sense.
The principal reason for assembling your own drive and enclosure is that you can take it apart if something goes wrong. Do that to a canned drive and you likely void the warranty. My experience is that controllers fail more often than the drives, thus you can still recover the info by disassembling the drive.
I went the cheap route my external HD is my old 40 gig internal one, I bought a usb adapter kit for 30 bucks on OWC and use it as my time machine back up along with the time machine editor so I only have to back up once a day that way I don't wind up filling the lil old thing up.
LaCie doesn't make hard drives. They make fancy looking enclosures and nothing more.