What is the best External Hard Drive to buy. I was at Circuit City tonite, and found a Western Digital (I think that's what is was called) 120GB for $69 with a mail in rebate of course. I was thinking to go with a "Lacie" but aren't they expensive? Let me know..Thanks.
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External Hard Drive Question
- Thread starter PaRaGoNViCtiM
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I have a 5 year old LaCie external that is still holding strong. They are highly recommended in my book! Maybe they will cost you a bit more but I believe they are worth that extra cost.
i believe it's one of those items were you get what you pay for fits. i purchased a lacie triple interface 160gb several months ago and have not had any problems with it. but i believe the maxtor one touch backup 2 was rated pretty high in mac world for ease of use i don't know about reliability. another thing to look out for that it has firewire interface.
i got my eye on the lacie triple interface 250 gig one before school starts again at the end of auguest.
I bought a Mercury Elite enclosure from Other World Computing and it's a great enclosure. Very quiet. I just discovered that Fry's here in Dallas has 160 gig Hitachi hard drives (7200 rpm, 8 meg cache, 3 year warranty) on sale through Thursday for $39 after rebate.
I have 3 LaCie external hard drives, 1TB, 500GB and a 100GB portable one. I have had no problems with any of them. I back up lots of movies, i enjoy watching them on my Mac so sometimes i might have like 20-30 movies and 3-4 TV shows on the LaCie and have had no problems. I have not tryed anything else but LaCie so i would not know much but i can say that LaCie is a damn good brand.
Lacie is not a hard drive manufacturer, they are a company that takes external enclosures made by nameless Taiwanese companies, stamps "LaCie" on them, and then puts in an OEM version of a Maxtor, WD, Seagate, Hitachi - whatever drive is price-convenient. It's better to buy the enclosure and the drive separately because you'll pay less, you'll be able to pick out the appearance you want, and you'll know exactly what you're getting.
ChrisFromCanada said:
superbovine said:
As alex_ant pointed out, Lacie is not a brand of hard drive, they use HDs from other manufacturers such as Seagate and WD.
Personally, I would agreee with alex_ant and recommend going with a hard drive enclosure instead. You pay a lot for an external hard drive, sometimes 50% over what you would pay for the same capacity drive as an internal drive. With the ever-increasing capacities of drives and the ever-decreasing costs/GB, I think it is most cost-effective to buy the enclosure and the internal drive. Then in a couple years when 500 GB drives are the same price as the current 100 GB models, you'll be laughing.
I have a LaCie 1TB Bigger Disk Extreme and three do-it-yourself-type external HDD enclosures. I recommend going the d-i-y route. Interal IDE drives are super cheap, and when you add an external enclosure to the cost you still save gobs of cash compared to the ready-built external FW hard drives.
Here are four external cases for you to consider:
this one has FW800
FW400 and USB 2
a black one and the same thing in gray
They currently range from $58 for the FW800 case to $40 for the last one. There are cheaper enclosures without fans available from that site, but I wouldn't want to risk a fanless enclosure, unless it's this one or this other one. Of course, these last two are a bit more expensive.
Here are four external cases for you to consider:
this one has FW800
FW400 and USB 2
a black one and the same thing in gray
They currently range from $58 for the FW800 case to $40 for the last one. There are cheaper enclosures without fans available from that site, but I wouldn't want to risk a fanless enclosure, unless it's this one or this other one. Of course, these last two are a bit more expensive.
~Shard~ said:As alex_ant pointed out, Lacie is not a brand of hard drive, they use HDs from other manufacturers such as Seagate and WD.
Personally, I would agreee with alex_ant and recommend going with a hard drive enclosure instead. You pay a lot for an external hard drive, sometimes 50% over what you would pay for the same capacity drive as an internal drive. With the ever-increasing capacities of drives and the ever-decreasing costs/GB, I think it is most cost-effective to buy the enclosure and the internal drive. Then in a couple years when 500 GB drives are the same price as the current 100 GB models, you'll be laughing.
Interesting. I've been following a similar thread started by you Shard, and I at first thought the separate enclosure route was best - bit like separate hifi parts and all that. But then I started doing the research here in the UK and it seems you guys in the states get better range of enclosures... I had a lot of trouble finding a cheap FW800/USB2 enclosure (I want flexibility, hence USB, but most importantly future-proofness - my mac mini can only do FW400 at the moment). MacAlly do a nice one but it's nearly £100! With a drive and cables, it came to a lot more than the £130 Lacie I plumped for in the end. Got it today and am most pleased.
So I guess the moral of the story... shop around, as always. I figure I can always crack it open if I want to change the drive, or keep the drive should the enclosure go bust. At least, I hope you can do this!
dops7107 said:
Interesting, thanks for your perspective, it's always good to hear what's going on in other parts of the world as well, as not al markets are the same. And a good lesson - as you say, you always have to shop around and do your due diligence, regardless of what other people might say or recommend.
Oh, and for the record, I live in Canada, not the States - there's a difference, which I like to point out.
Is there such thing as a DIY enclosure and 400gb hard drive that I could put together myself and be completely silent? I have a DIY enclosure from about five years ago and it has a LOUD fan. I want to build one for music storage. but how can you enjoy music with a loud fan.Rod Rod said:
Perhaps the Rosewill RX30-U2FA with ??? hd???
Right. One way around the problem (it does cost more) is to instead get a stack of smaller 2.5" drives, which can easily run with fanless enclosures, and the notebook drives themselves tend to run quieter than the larger ones too. You can merge 'em into a RAID if you like.hottyson said:Is there such thing as a DIY enclosure and 400gb hard drive that I could put together myself and be completely silent? I have a DIY enclosure from about five years ago and it has a LOUD fan. I want to build one for music storage. but how can you enjoy music with a loud fan.
Perhaps the Rosewill RX30-U2FA with ??? hd???
It wouldn't be completely silent because hard drives (even the quiet ones) make noise. I haven't read the detailed specs of the FW cases I linked but there's bound to be one that can take a 400GB drive (and allow its full capacity to be recognized). You're right, the Rosewill seems good.hottyson said:
~Shard~ said:Oh, and for the record, I live in Canada, not the States - there's a difference, which I like to point out.
I hang my head in shame! Should teach me to read the location below people's avatars...
Rod,Rod Rod said:
Do either of these fanless cases use the Oxford chipset? I have seen numerous warnings about using anything other than Oxford with a Mac, esp. if you are plannng to use it as a boot drive. My current external case does use this chipset, and I have had no problems, but I would like a fanless design. Thanks!
Of course, at the other end of the price/feature spectrum is WeibeTech's "Traydock" enclosure. Painfully expensive at $170!
Never used it, but it looks sweet: no fan, all metal, and you can easily swap out the drive by removing the tray. Also, they make trays for both IDE and SATA (it comes with one type of tray; the other is $50) so if your cute friend's PC bonks, you can recover that person's files -- an maybe get a kiss!
(In fact, this happened to me -- no kiss, but by removing the HD, popping it into a FW enclosure, plugging it in and burning all the important research to a CD, I did get someone to switch. )
Never used it, but it looks sweet: no fan, all metal, and you can easily swap out the drive by removing the tray. Also, they make trays for both IDE and SATA (it comes with one type of tray; the other is $50) so if your cute friend's PC bonks, you can recover that person's files -- an maybe get a kiss!
(In fact, this happened to me -- no kiss, but by removing the HD, popping it into a FW enclosure, plugging it in and burning all the important research to a CD, I did get someone to switch.
)
I agree. It's easy to find nice deals on internal drives and then find a nice case. I did this a couple weeks ago.alex_ant said:
Thanks, I never knew that.alex_ant said:
Anyway I went with a Maxtor One Touch II 200GB. I got a really good deal on it.
Thanks guys.