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External Firewire 800 HDD

R

RafMac

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 25, 2007
192
7
Ontario
I want to purchase external Firewire 800 HDD for my iMac. I am considering 2 models listed below and both have good and bad reviews, I guess all products have good and bad points so you can't please anyone.

I currently have 2 Lacie HDDs Porsche (firewire 400) and Neil Poulton (USB2) drives and are running like a charm, no problems. Also if I were to buy a case and HDD separate, it would cost the same since Firewire 800 cases are expensive compared to USB cases.

Any advice or other oprions in same price range? I am leaning more towards Lacie due to success of my existing ones.


LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Disk 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800/eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive 301442U (Aluminum)

http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-Quadra-...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1274970698&sr=8-1

OR

Western Digital My Book Studio 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800, Desktop External Hard Drive

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digit...8?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1274970787&sr=1-8
 
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I have Lacie and Seagate externals and have never had a problem with either.

I just recently picked up this 2TB Seagate drive for mac at a local shop for a little less than Amazon has it listed.

I've never had a Wesern Digital so I can't speak to them, but I think you are right that you'll find both positive and negative reviews on whatever you look at.
 
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I really don't think it matters much either way. WD do make their actual hard drives, and LaCie only makes the cabinet so you don't know what drive will be inside.
I've just used WD studios connected to a Lacie for extra backup on a documentary series I just shot. We ran the set up for 5 weeks straight, on a boat, so we had at least 3 powerfailures. 2 while backing up. But we never had a problem with any of the disks we went through. We filled up 6 Terrabytes
 
Avoid that model WD Studio drive (the older model with eSATA is much better). The new ones include have a virtual drive on a partition that auto-mounts every time you connect the drive - you can't erase it, and (prior to last Thursday), you can't disable it. For more info read here.

Notice that the WD support thread I've linked to was posted in December 2009, and Western Digital's prompt action produced a fix last week.
 
After doing extensive research and feedback, I went and bought the Lacie one for the same price as WD as it was on sale. I don't need to deal with the crap ware / firmware issues from WD, just too much hassle. I have had no problems with my existing lacie's so I keep the trend on as I was open to suggestions this time. Thanks for your responses.
 
telecomm said:
Avoid that model WD Studio drive (the older model with eSATA is much better). The new ones include have a virtual drive on a partition that auto-mounts every time you connect the drive - you can't erase it, and (prior to last Thursday), you can't disable it. For more info read here.

Notice that the WD support thread I've linked to was posted in December 2009, and Western Digital's prompt action produced a fix last week.
Click to expand...

I just don't see the problem with that. Agreed it shouldn't be there, but does it ever get in your way?
 
yoak said:
Agreed it shouldn't be there, but does it ever get in your way?
Click to expand...

Yes, it does.

My desktop contains important things, an icon that appears to prompt me to install software that's less than useless (like Time Machine? OK, how about installing WD's inferior version!?), that for months couldn't be disabled is a problem.

Oh, and all of that crap can't be deleted (just hidden by disabling it, and only after months of waiting).

To have the virtual drive hidden on connection, first you update your drive's firmware, then install the WD software you aren't interested in, then alter a drive setting using that software, then restart everything.

Great, now your drive connects without auto-mounting a virtual drive, so you've just got to delete the ironically titled "SmartWare" software on your computer. Where's the uninstaller? Located on the virtual drive you've just hidden. All of that and, since even wiping the drive won't delete the virtual drive, you're also out about 700 MB of disk space compared to the older drive. Is that a big deal? No I guess not, but after everything else they've put you through...

New 1 GB Studio drive on the left, old one on the right.
 

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6 hours to copy 650 GB of files from External USB HDD to the new Firewire lacie drive. Copying between lacie and iMac is super fast! But between the mentioned drives painfully slow as I guess it goes by USB speed. Hope it doesn't wear both drives out by running over 6 hours straight.
 
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