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Between Western Digital, SimpleTech, and LaCie

E

Eclipseon

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 24, 2008
25
0
Hi,

I'm a fairly new member here (joined a short while ago just never created a thread). Just last Saturday, I received, as a graduation gift, a Unibody Macbook Pro with a 2.66 Ghz processor, 4 GB worth of memory, and a 320 GB hard drive. Yes, I have been a very happy gal for the duration of this past week :p

Sadly, I would like to purchase an external hard drive with at least 1 TB of space and I can't seem to discern which brand is reliable and suitable fit for the Macbook Pro. As listed above, I am currently stuck in indecision between the Western Digital My Book Studio Edition, the SimpleTech Pro Drive, and the LaCie (w/ the black grand-piano finish).

I have read a jumbled mixture of opinions and reviews regarding the brands. My number one choice is the Western Digital external hard drive; however, most have said that they have had problems with the drive failing and losing important data as a result...which I MOST DEF DO NOT want to happen.

So, in conclusion, if anyone is able to help point me in the direction of a super reliable drive that supports Firewire 400 and/or 800...I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks,

'Rika
 
I used to be a big Western Digital fan until, in about a two month timespan, I lost two several year old MyBook's. I'm now waiting for my third to die as they were all bought in the same timframe (knock on wood!).

Have you thought about Seagate and their FreeAgents? With their 5 year warranty that's what I'm looking at these days.
 
LaCie: NO!

LaCie is awful. They use terribly flaky power supplies that fail and leave you unable to access your data. Sometimes they die and take the drive with them. Their customer support was awful when I dealt with them. I got burned a couple times by recommending them to clients. Now I advise everyone who asks, clients and friends alike, to steer clear of them. I don't care if they've gotten better since then, my experiences made me never want to give them another dollar.

Your best bet IMHO would be to buy an empty enclosure from Other World Computing, and pick up a nice OEM drive from NewEgg to put in it. I have never had trouble with OWC products, and since I pick the drive that goes inside it I know it's not some cheap POS.

~Philly
 
I would go with the LaCie. I purchased two refurbished d2's in I think 360GB option almost 4 years ago now and they have worked flawlessy and I am always writing/reading data to/from them. I recently pruchsed a 2Big 1Tb drive to ruin in Raid 1(Time Machine). I find them to be reputable and reliable, although I have never had to deal with their customer service.
 
I have 3 lacie drives. 2 of them are 5 years old with no problems. I just bought one of the new 1TB d2s.

They definitely look the coolest/have the best enclosures imo.
 
My personal favorite is this hard drive, which I have owned for a few years now. It has been a champion, moved with me back and forth from Indiana to Connecticut a few times now, filled it up to single digit free gb space, left on basically for weeks straight and it is still going strong. It seems as though they may have stopped making (or at least selling this exact model from the official store) though this looks like a basically identical follow-up. One feature I really love about the drive is its usb, firewire 400 and firewire 800 ports. It is sad to say but I have found if you want to use those firewire ports on your computer you will end up paying a bit more for an external than a simple usb.

That said I did recently buy two other hard drives from newegg, this which seems fine, it was very cheap and seems to be working just fine as a back-up. My main gripe is honestly that is consumes a usb port, along with another hard drive and another device I feel as though I am running low on them with my remaining firewire 800's hanging around uselessly.

If you are willing to pay a bit extra and really want that firewire capability, I'm all in favor for the lacie. I will say though no matter how much you like any hard drive, don't keep data on just one! Maybe get both and use the usb once a week to back-up the other terabyte while you sleep. :p If you want your information safe assume all your technology is going to fail!
 
I have SimpleTech Pro 1TB 7200 RPM Drive and i have been using it for a month now. I have no problem expcept for the drive noise while spinning :mad:. when compared to my other WD 250 & 350 GB 2.5" drives .. not sure if this someting normal with 3.5'' drives.

Ben
 
All the hard drives fail eventually, it's just a matter of when. Just buy one of the major manufacturers, like the ones you listed, and then plan on replacing them every 2-3 years. If they last longer than that, then great. If one external is going to be the only copy of that file, then I suggest getting a 2nd external to keep the same data on as a backup.
 
I would get a WD MyBook Studio. They come with 5 year warranty and they also have FW800 and eSATA both of which offer blazing fast transfer speeds compared to USB. The 750GB version of this drive is on sale at NewEgg this week for about 110 bucks. It was certainly the best deal I've seen around for these drives, and they rarely, if ever, go on sale.
 
Simple Tech All the Way

I've been using this black one for about a year. It is so quiet I forget that it's writing and reading constantly. I have all of my DVD rips on it. You may not want this, but my point is that I trust Simple Tech with my media. Go for it.
 
imthekuni said:
I would go with the LaCie. I purchased two refurbished d2's in I think 360GB option almost 4 years ago now and they have worked flawlessy and I am always writing/reading data to/from them. I recently pruchsed a 2Big 1Tb drive to ruin in Raid 1(Time Machine). I find them to be reputable and reliable, although I have never had to deal with their customer service.
Click to expand...

LaCie doesn't make hard drives, they only make enclosures and stick 3rd-party drives in them.
 
Go with a WD, not a LaCie

I'd recommend a WD. I've had six MyBooks, and they've all outlived the Mac they were backing up (and in the case of two, the Mac after that, as well). If you treat them with care, they have a remarkable longevity.

On the other hand, I would strongly recommend not to get a LaCie. I was recently given one for some video work, and about three weeks in, it began to smoke and the FireWire port on it broke afterwards. I also have several friends who swear by LaCie's (mostly for video work) and they seem to be buying new ones every other week.

So, I'd advise you go with your first choice.
 
WDs for me, both 3.5 & 2.5 (I stick them in my MacBooks :p)
Only one out of five drives failed, but it was swell capacitor on USB/FW board, so I was able to back it up with SATA enclosure.
 
Be wary of LaCie

Over a 2 year period I have bought 7 LaCie drives varying from 250GB to 2TB, d2s to big disk extremes. Currently only 2 are still running. Faults have been either a HDD inside the enclusure (Hitachi is the only brand I can remember, but there were others) or the controller circuit dying. Allways just after the warranty expires. So my vote would be to be cautious with LaCie drives.

And for those who ask why I kept buying them, it was because I had to buy what was available in the shops!
 
Eclipseon said:
I would like to purchase an external hard drive with at least 1 TB of space and I can't seem to discern which brand is reliable and suitable fit for the Macbook Pro. As listed above, I am currently stuck in indecision between the Western Digital My Book Studio Edition, the SimpleTech Pro Drive, and the LaCie (w/ the black grand-piano finish).
Click to expand...

I never buy canned drives anymore. If they fail, you cannot take them apart without voiding the warranty. Thus, you can't determine if the drive has failed, or if the enclosure's controller has failed and you have to send the entire drive in, risking data loss. Thus, I buy enclosures and drives separately. In fact, I'm using this setup that might be what you'd need:

Samsung 1 TB drive ($90) (This is a low heat drive)
Macally FW400/USB2 enclosure ($40)
 
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