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

External Hard Drives (Pulling My Hair Out)!

S

sammyman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 21, 2005
998
66
My wife is a professional photographer. We wanted the best external hard drive that money could buy, so the apple store suggested we look at G-Tech drives. We bought a 1tb eventually, but have had problems with it. It seems to love to unmount whenever it pleases. This has made my wife upset and she is always talking about getting a Mac Pro, just so we don't have to deal with external hard drives.

Are there any good external hard drives that are reliable and will let my wife work without the frustrations of a failing disk? Do you think I got a lemon with the G-Tech, or do they pretty much suck?
 
Internal hard drive can fail also. A MacPro is an expensive way to improve storage space. WD drives have been reliable for me in the past. However, you probably just have a lemon drive.
 
eawmp1 said:
Internal hard drive can fail also. A MacPro is an expensive way to improve storage space. WD drives have been reliable for me in the past. However, you probably just have a lemon drive.
Click to expand...

+1 for WD. I have two of them, a Passport (portable) and a mybook. They have done very well and I have had the passport for about a year and a half and the mybook for about a year. So far no complaints/issues.
 
eawmp1 said:
Internal hard drive can fail also. However, you probably just have a lemon drive.
Click to expand...

GGJstudios said:
I've had great success with OWC drives. Check out the OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro™ series.
Click to expand...

Yes to both of those.

I would be on the phone to g-tech 20 minutes ago -- they have a warranty.

Im a huge OWC fan, never a bad anything from them in the last 10+ years and their prices have always been good. great customer service as well. I have met and had dinner with the owners at MWSF, nice guys. Oh, and their warehouse is powered by a windmill =0
 
More info, please?

sammyman said:
My wife is a professional photographer. We wanted the best external hard drive that money could buy, so the apple store suggested we look at G-Tech drives. We bought a 1tb eventually, but have had problems with it. It seems to love to unmount whenever it pleases. This has made my wife upset and she is always talking about getting a Mac Pro, just so we don't have to deal with external hard drives.

Are there any good external hard drives that are reliable and will let my wife work without the frustrations of a failing disk? Do you think I got a lemon with the G-Tech, or do they pretty much suck?
Click to expand...

What kind of interface are you using - USB or FireWire? Do the unmounts
occur because you turned off your computer, or did not access the drive for
a long period of time? In other words, is it possible the unmounts are
"normal"?

Personally, I've gotten to the point that any external drive I buy now must
have an on-off switch. This way, I can control when the drive is mounted
and unmounted, and ready for use.

Also, I remove any of the bundled s/w tools that come with some of these
drives - I reformat them before I start using them.

My $0.02 . . .
 
First off, try to fix the G-Tech. If you are going firewire, then try USB and vice versa. Obviously try new cables. Check if your computer and/or drives are trying to sleep. Go into your power savings and turn off all everything. Never let hard drives go to sleep or even the computer. Then search the internet as the G-Techs are supposed to be great.

I've used OWC for a lot of drives, but found my newest won't mount well if it is own before I boot. So I just turn it on afterwards. I also had trouble with a recent order, so I'm annoyed with them.
 
thegoldenmackid said:
http://guides.macrumors.com/
Click to expand...

No, no, no. You got that link wrong.

http://guides.macrumors.com/External_Hard_Drives

You have been here for a while, so you should know where that guide is. Tse, tse.

4381979828_d15af7c609_o.jpg
 
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2

I own the AL Pro Qx2 and like it very much. Quad interface (fw400, 800, USB and eSata) plus a simple switch to configure RAID settings. It provides great combination of speed and reliability. I use in RAID 5 w/ 4 1TB drives, so have 3TB of striped storage with redundancy for security. (Not sure the striping helps much on an external drive...)

Great product, although a bit pricey over $300 for bare enclosure.
 
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