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

Advice on reliable 1T ext hard drive for backup

S

ScottL

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 12, 2008
28
0
I would recommend the Western Digital: MyBook. I am currently using it, and use it for backups. It's 1TB, and I love it. Still have around 200 GB's left. I think I got it for like $190 at Costco. Not 100% sure of that, and it's Canadian dollars.
 
murphoia said:
I would recommend the Western Digital: MyBook. I am currently using it, and use it for backups. It's 1TB, and I love it. Still have around 200 GB's left. I think I got it for like $190 at Costco. Not 100% sure of that, and it's Canadian dollars.
Click to expand...

That's what I am using for my media, nice little drive. I don't remember exactly what I paid but it was under 2 bills. :)
 
I use a WD Elements. Great little thing, looks nice and is cheap. Sits pluggen in de the 24" LED ACD, and as soon as I plug my MBP in when I get home TimeMachine starts running.
 
murphoia said:
I would recommend the Western Digital: MyBook. I am currently using it, and use it for backups. It's 1TB, and I love it. Still have around 200 GB's left. I think I got it for like $190 at Costco. Not 100% sure of that, and it's Canadian dollars.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, would advise you to Google "Western Digital My Book Sleep Problems", see what you find. I just returned a WD My Book for this very issue, drives goes to sleep, upon waking dismounts. Only fix was to turn it off, then on again. Annoying. Others in threads report having to reboot computer to get it to remount.

Took it back to Best Buy, got a Seagate 1.5 TB Free Agent for ~+$30. Only had it a few days so I don't know about longevity, but at least it wakes properly.
 
dsnort said:
Hmmm, would advise you to Google "Western Digital My Book Sleep Problems", see what you find. I just returned a WD My Book for this very issue, drives goes to sleep, upon waking dismounts. Only fix was to turn it off, then on again. Annoying. Others in threads report having to reboot computer to get it to remount.

Took it back to Best Buy, got a Seagate 1.5 TB Free Agent for ~+$30. Only had it a few days so I don't know about longevity, but at least it wakes properly.
Click to expand...
I have read all about those problems, but I have 3 WD MyBooks (2 at home, 1 at work) and all have worked great since day 1. Two are directly connected to iMacs and one is connected to an Airport Extreme N; all are setup with 2 partitions.
 
As with any one of these threads we have about hard drives, people have differing opinions. I currently own a Western Digital My Book Studio, GTech GRaid 2 and an Ioemga Ultramax Pro. I have had no problems with either of them and they all serve their needs. Remember most people do not post random threads about how they love their WD drives. My best advice is always to find one that fits your needs, seems to have a decent track record and has great service, because even GTech's fail.
 
...I have a simpletech 1TB that I was sharing for both my iMac and 4 winXP machines but that will get switched to just the winXP machines as I just brought home a simpletech DuoPro 2 TB drive - that will get my iTunes, Handbrake'd movies and iMac data back up in RAID...
 
thegoldenmackid said:
My best advice is always to find one that fits your needs, seems to have a decent track record and has great service, because even GTech's fail.
Click to expand...

Thanks for taking the time to reply (that goes for everyone else as well).

My needs are VERY simple.

So which companies have great service? e.g. of the ones you own, or any others?
 
Seagate backs their drives with 5 year warranties... almost unheard of in the hard drive business... that's why both my internal and external drives are Seagates...:)
 
Unfortunately theres no real way to tell whats going to be reliable and what isn't. You reported someone had two lacie drives fail and I've never seen one fail ever.

What I would recommend is this:

DO NOT buy western digital mybooks right now. These things have a rediculous fail rate as of late and if I could I'd post a picture of a ton of them in my office that are broke.

The second thing would be do not buy a drive with a propriatary enclosure (seagate freeagent, WD mybook, Lacie, etc)

What is better to do is to buy a harddrive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148433
(Seagates have a 5 year warranty)

And an external enclosure seperately:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817198011
Because a lot of the times external harddrive failures are actually just enclosure failures, however the drives are really hard to get out of a lot of the enclosures.

The enclosure listed above is a tad more expensive then its counter parts but I LOVE icy dock enclosures. They are very very well built.
 
not going to read other posts. but...

i have a fantom 500gb and im buying another 1tb one.

500 two years ago was 100
1tb is now 100.

if you pay more than 130 or around there, you wasted your money.

anyway the fantom has a western digital drive in it so its good.


i have had the 500gb for a while. i leave my computer on 24/7 and used time machine only and nothing went wrong, and in the past year its now my time machine and torrent seeding drive so its running 24/7 and its good.
 
No drive is going to last forever, the best advice I can give is to a) make sure whatever drive you get has a 5-year warranty and b) don't rely on a single drive as a storage solution.

(a) is fairly easy; most of the major players (including WD and Seagate) have standard 5-year warranties. What I mean by (b) is that every brand has hard drives that fail, and there are no reliable statistics on the frequency of failure. Cheaper brands like Maxtor (now a low-cost division of Seagate) are widely acknowledged as crappy, but I've had dozens of drives from WD and Seagate proper and equal numbers of them have died.

Oh; and be wary of manufacturers like LaCie and Fantom- they aren't hard drive companies. They just make enclosures, mark up the price, put in a 3rd party drive, and absolve themselves of responsibility when the drive fails.
 
murphoia said:
I would recommend the Western Digital: MyBook. I am currently using it, and use it for backups. It's 1TB, and I love it. Still have around 200 GB's left. I think I got it for like $190 at Costco. Not 100% sure of that, and it's Canadian dollars.
Click to expand...

I got two 2TB Western Digital Studio II. I use one for Time Machine backup of the other 2TB and 320GB of my Mac mini. You should be able to buy these for $259-299.99 Buy.com & Amazon.com have it for $299.99 with Free Shipping. Its already formatted for Mac so just plug it up and go. Also WD backs these drives with a 5 Year Warranty! :D

http://www.buy.com/prod/western-dig...druple-interface-usb/q/loc/101/207687210.html

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2423/3597810875_92cfa58c30_o.jpg
 
miles01110 said:
Oh; and be wary of manufacturers like LaCie and Fantom- they aren't hard drive companies. They just make enclosures, mark up the price, put in a 3rd party drive, and absolve themselves of responsibility when the drive fails.
Click to expand...

well if they fail, western digital is responsible. anyway who actually has there own enclosure and filled it with there own drive.

i have 3 of them. they all really suck. i have spent more than 40 on one of them and 30 on the others and to be honest i hate them.

they all have the interfaces i need (esata) but the fantom runs the quietest. i have had a few fanned enclosures and they always are annoying and loud. and i have two right now that do not have fans in them and they really are loud and bulky.

heck if you can find a 1tb drive and a enclosure for under 105, thats pretty good. i mean 1tb is like 80 something, and you would only have 15 somthing to spend on a case. i want to see a case that is only 15 and is quite, easily stacked (i mean i got a couple of these things and they have to be stacked) and doesn't vibrate like an 18 wheeler barraling down the freeway.

now im just ranting.
i mean it doesn't have to be super non vibrating (?) i have all my drives on a pad and they don't vibrate anything, but when you take one of the enclosures (not bought as a whole thing) and put it on the table and someone goes like o **** i thinking your drive is going to blow up, then it vibrates to much.


now im going on and on.
i had to make special very very little washers that where coated in rubber to help with the vibrations.
 
miles01110 said:
WD and Seagate? ...
Click to expand...

3 western digital
1 maxtor (this isn't even in a case, its just got all my program iso files and such, its really nice, 3 partitions, one with tiger, one with leapord then the other with everything else)
 
just saying, i really do not like the design of the mybook series of ehdd. they seem so pompous, thats just me, not trying to offend or anything.
 
Seagate FreeAgent Pro, in my opinion.
Or get one from OWC. They usually have Hitachi drives inside, options for FW800, USB and FW400.
 
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