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

Best External Hard Drive

primusrocks

primusrocks

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 23, 2007
28
0
East Lansing
I just got my new MBP 2.2 just not to long ago and now im looking to get an external hard drive in addition. I was looking at the MyBook 320 gig. But i was also wondering what everyone else thought was the best out there. Please gimme your opinions and if i should change or get what i was thinking about. Thanks a bunch. :)
 
I have had quite a few, and most of the name brands are ok, WD included. I tend to like the ones that have firewire and easily replaceable drives myself though.
 
Another brand bites the dust

I shop for external drives now and then. LaCie used to be the brand I'd favor, but I was shocked to find many bad comments from users, and bad ratings at review sites, for recent models. I bought a Western Digital drive that gave me trouble earlier this year, and it also had backup software with terrible documentation. I have a Maxtor drive on order at the moment. If I have trouble, I'll post about it.

I don't understand why drives don't have better average quality, given how long these manufacturers have been in the business.
 
From personal experience I've used Western Digital, Hitachi, Seagate, and Maxtor. I've had three bad hard drives with Western Digital so I would stear clear of that brand.

I would say either get a Seagate or a Maxtor external hard drive from good personal experience. I'm planning on buying a LaCie drive soon due to good things I've heard about it but I haven't used one myself...yet.
 
I have been using a Maxtor 250GB for last 1 1/2 years...it worked fine for the first one year. But now I am getting troubles. Its not even detecting in my friend's MBP (my MBP is still in transit :mad:) ..and crashes sometimes in windows vista. Thinking of buying a seagate next time.
 
I get the feeling that a nontrivial percentage of external drives don't last as they should, so we hear anecdotes about problems with every brand. It's hard to judge overall reliability of a brand from this small sample of comments.
 
Doctor Q said:
I shop for external drives now and then. LaCie used to be the brand I'd favor, but I was shocked to find many bad comments from users, and bad ratings at review sites, for recent models. I bought a Western Digital drive that gave me trouble earlier this year, and it also had backup software with terrible documentation. I have a Maxtor drive on order at the moment. If I have trouble, I'll post about it.

I don't understand why drives don't have better average quality, given how long these manufacturers have been in the business.
Click to expand...

I have had a LaCie for 3 years(?), I bought it the same time as i got my PB g4.
The reason i did get it was because of the superior interface with fw/fw800/usb etc. It's a maxtor 250 gb drive inside and it have never got me any headace at all.
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
crazycat said:
You should build your own hard drive, i myself have a 500 GB hard drive with an enclosure i got from amazon. Its working great, the hard drive has a warranty on it so if it fails i can replace it.

http://www.amazon.com/CoolMax-HD-36...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1185531667&sr=8-1
Click to expand...

I couldn't agree more! I really think this is the way to go, for several reasons:

1) building one is dead simple--a 10-yr old could do it. :p
2) available enclosures are quite nice, and often much "cooler" looking than the pre-packaged offerings from LaCie, Maxtor, etc. For those here in Europe, Raidsonic in Germany makes some boss-looking cases.
3) most importantly, this approach lets you select the exact drive you want. Resources such as Storage Review offer great performance and reliability data on the latest drives. At the end of the day, its going to be the quality of the HD itself that determines the reliability of your external drive.
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
yep i have the exact same opinions!!!
building your own harddrive allows for a lot more flexability
it also is a hell of a lot cheaper!
i know some computer companies that are only making $10 on their harddrives from the manufactorers compared to the $40-$50 that lacie and maxtor miht be making... so its a lot cheaper
 
crazycat said:
I have been using LaCie for the last 4 years, i have over 20 hard drives and not a single one failed on me.

You should build your own hard drive, i myself have a 500 GB hard drive with an enclosure i got from amazon. Its working great, the hard drive has a warranty on it so if it fails i can replace it.

http://www.amazon.com/CoolMax-HD-36...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1185531667&sr=8-1
Click to expand...

That case seems to be only 2.0. I perfer my hard drives to have usb AND firewire. I think it makes much more sense. Plus I love plugging in my video camera directly to the harddrive, its much easier then finding the port on the back of the Imac.
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Hey, I just bought a WD MyBook Pro from BH photo video for just over a 140 dollars.

This thing has 250 gigabytes, usb 2.0 (440 mb/s), firewire 400 (400 mb/s), and firewire 800 (800 mb/s).

I reformatted it with Disk Utility to Mac os x extended (journaled), and installed a piece of software from it so that the ring measures space and activation.

Only had it for a few days, (and currently only using the firewire 400), but this thing is very fast, *very* quiet, and a synch to use. It also stays quite cool.

I recommend it. (I got the Pro version because when I get a new computer I'll already have firewire 800 capability with the hardrive for only a couple bucks more.)
 
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