There are no real features except connection type and portability. The portable drives are powered via USB or Firewire as opposed to AC. However, they are generally more expensive for the storage space and much more limited in size and speed. There is no best, rather what fits ones needs. If you are doing back-ups only you don't really need to worry about speed, but it's nice to have it.
After Taking Part in Numerous Threads and Purchasing Numerous Drives after Research, I have come to a couple of suggestions and a massive "guide."
There are three (basic/main) parts to the speed of your external drive:
1. Connection Type – This is the one most people will know about, if they know one. Things like Firewire 800, Firewire 400, USB 2.0, eSata, etc. It comes to how your drive connects to the computer, in general (fastest to slowest) eSata, Firewire 800, Firewire 400, USB 2.0. Firewire is preferable because it is not only faster then USB, but it transfers at a constant speed, whereas USB is variable. eSata is the fastest but it requires a port that is not available without an adaptor, and those adaptors are hit and miss in terms of quality. Chances are most users will do fine with Firewire 800 and have no need for eSata.
2. Hard Drive Speed – For some reason people seem to forget that if you have 4200 RPM Drive inside your enclosure, it's going to be slow. This depends on the physical drives inside your enclosure. Speed from fastest to slowest: SSD, 7200 RPM, 5400 RPM, 4200 RPM. The higher the revolutions per minute, the faster, unless there are no revolutions at all
.
3. Cache – The one people forget. The cache is just like your computer stores the information temporarily. It is important that if you look at this, especially if you are going to try to play files from your drive. Even if you are using it is a back-up, you don't want a 4MB Cache. Higher the cache the better; 64MB is the general highest speed for most stock drives.
thegoldenmackid said:
As much as I was happy buying a G-Tech, I bought my G-Raid was the assumption that one of my other drives would fail like I read about online, every drive I have owned has worked flawlessly, so for me the G-Tech was not really completely worth it.
But 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.
For the most part no one is going to post "I Love My _____ Drive" unless two things occur. Either: A. They just purchased the drive – hard drives fail, if it worked out of the box, that's a good thing; but, to give a positive rating takes at a bare minimum six months, if not a year in my book. B. Someone said that _____ Drive is bad. Remember these companies ship millions of drives. Western Digital, Seagate and Hitatchi all make tons of drives internal and external; a couple of users are going to have some problems, but for the most part – most customers drives probably work.
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...
Other User's Recommendation's:
Build Your Own: uberamd,
kufford,
SaSaSushi,
nanofrog,
Ti_Poussin,
Caveman
Drobo: gatepc recommends it, further mixed discussion
here.
EZQuest: LizKat has owned a variety of
Monsoons
G-Tech: RebornKillah recommends the G-Drive Quad 500GB, but it's currently out of production;
Digital Skunk notes the great warranty;
jaysmith recommend G-Tech
Hitachi: Trag (
SimpleTech Signature Mini 500GB);
Thedesolateone also recommends Hitachi.
Iomega: mc3s (
Ultramax 34495 1.5 TB);
Justin Lee (
eGo 500GB Portable Mac).
ioSafe: Tterb recommends.
LaCie: Note: there is an entire thread dedicated to LaCie, I have summed up support from users below, but simply a tally
jrotunda85, (
d2 Quadra 1 TB);
RedTomato,
gatepc &
eVolcre, {although eVolcre owns the one with eSata and Firewire 400}(
Hard Disk, Design by Neil Poulton 1 TB);
iGary (
LaCie Rugged);
Gymnut (F.A. Porsche,
out of production);
VanMac (BigDiskExtreme,
out of production); Digital Skunk (2Big Triple,
out of production)
Users expressing general support:
cmcbridejr,
dpaanlka,
LethalWolfe,
mpsrig,
UltraNeo*,
iPhoneNYC,
chocolate632,
Hellhammer,
romanaz
Users not so happy with LaCie:
surfmadison (not a big fan),
accacc57,
dave12345 (Little Disk),
jaysmith,
Jerkfish,
auero,
mperkins37,
dfs &
jessica.
Maxtor: adamvk purchased a OneTouch 4 1TB (not sure what version)
Seagate: steeler (
FreeAgent Desk 1.5 TB);
MacMini2009,
rick3000 (
Seagate FreeAgent Desk 1 TB USB Mac);
Acid303 does not recommend the (new) Seagate FreeAgent Desk series
SimpleTech: J&JPolangin (
SimpleTech 2TB SimpleDrive Pro Duo);
BlizzardBomb recommends the Go;
suekitch recommends Seagate because of its warranty
Western Digital: MacMini2009,
xpress1 &
MacDawg (
MyBook Studio 1TB);
Thiol notes purchasing an incredible
seven Western Digital MyBook Studio drives all working flawlessly;
Acid303 also
notes a positive experience with a non-Studio Edition Western Digital drive;
terp2007 &
matthewscott661 recommend the Passport Series;
munkees notes a failure with one of the drives purchased,
but a positive experience overall;
rikdiddy,
RebornKillah &
Jerkfish also recommend Western Digital.
chrono1081 does not recommend Western Digital &
romanaz was also not happy.
Other Threads:
1TB is prbly a good size to start at it, I would say most people looking for non-mobile externals start at that size,
here is a (not-so) recent thread about that...
More literature found
here.
Here, is
another thread on 1TB Hard Drives
This one is about LaCie...
Here is another, there is some more discussion about LaCie in there...
Here is one on USB 1TB, I'd stick to Firewire...
And if all else fails, MRoogle
