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External Hard Drives

OP requested Amazon links, so here's what I gots...
320 GB from OWC MacSales
linky

And the 1tb Fantom Drive.
link
its 7200, 16mb cache with USB and eSata

Not sure the 'brand' that's in these boxes, but they've both performed phenomenally w/o a hitch; I have the OWC unpartitioned and the Fantom is partitioned into 6 sections of varying sizes and formats (ex a NTFS partition to share w/windows machines as I need to -which is rarely; a partition for using as a scratch disk for PS and FCP- the first partition, closest to the core of the drive for the fastest possible performance, a good trick to know; and some other parts for Time Capsule and media, etc.

I primarily use the esata connections using a Rosewill express card not on Amazon

I can't really shuffle about with the express card, but thats not an issue if you're have your laptop on a table.

I noticed greater leaps in performance from adding an external esata connection and setting a drive's partition for a scratch disk than I did maxing out my RAM.

The OWC enclosure has more i/o options, but I primarily use the eSATA and don't miss the other i/o missing on the Fantom; the OWC is a bigger 'quality' looking case, but the Fantom performs just fine and is more potable as it is smaller. I'd recommend either of these enthusiastically.
 
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My 2 cents

I have purchased from OWC (www.macsales.com) several times and have always found their service and prices to be very good.

Currently I am using the following:

OWC Mercury Elite Pro AL bare case SATA/ eSATA, FW800x2, FW400, USB2.0, 1 year warranty. I added a Samsung 750GB drive to the unit without any issues.

I currently use this external drive with an eSATA connection to bit image my boot drive (and select data files) for disaster recovery. I have recent backups safely stored in my gun safe. The safe is rated for over 1400F for 45 minutes and the fire department is about two miles away. They have more equipment than cities ten times our size. (One good thing living here is that our FD loves to have its toys, e.g. multiple pumpers, arial platforms, heavy rescue trucks, command units, hover craft, etc.) :)

While reading the paper several years ago, I mentioned to my Mother that the local FD was purchasing a Huey with a water bucket to help put out house fires. She did not think that I was being a smart ass as this was pretty much the norm for our town. In over 30 years, no fire levy has been voted down. I guess that things could be much worse in not having enough protection.
 
My first external was a LaCie d2 triple Extreme 160 GB purchased March 2005. I used it with my then iMac G5. Mainly used as storage. Never had an issue. Retired in 2007. I still have this drive today and gave it to my parents who use it for Time Machine/Storage. 160GB is not really acceptable as an external in today's standard but the thing still works. Never a problem from 2005-2010.

In spring 2007 I purchased a LaCie d2 Quad 500GB. About a month in the drive failed to mount on my then iMac G5. It was sporadic. Finally started to hear click click click and the blue light was just pulsating. I knew it was toast. I sent it back to LaCie and they sent a new one to me. 2 months in it failed to mount and i tried to fix it. Talked with LaCie online and on the phone. Nothing worked. Sent it back and after a month or so returned it to me and guess what. Failed to mount. I basically gave up and gave it to a friend who said he wanted to try it with his iMac. He later told me the drive failed and it became a nice lookin paperweight. Never again.

Around summer 2007 I bought a Western Digital MyBook Essential 500 GB. Unreliable out of the box. At that time I had just purchased the new iMac 2.4 and was using Pro Tools and photoshop. The Western Digital MyBook crashed constantly (spinning beach ball of death to not being able to catch up while using iMovie, etc...) I returned the drive within the 14 day return frame.

After returning the Western Digital Essential I thought why not try the Western Digital MyBook Studio? I think I just got lemons. The drive out of the box failed to mount to the iMac right off the bat. Had to reformat it, etc... Then it worked but again, using programs like Pro Tools and Photoshop, iMovie, iDVD the drive crashed. I started to think it was my iMac. But a friend that had this specific drive said he had no issues with it but he only used it for storage. So I returned it within the 14 day period.

Finally I decided to try the G-Technology G-Drive 500 GB. I used that drive for 1 year straight with no problems. Summer of 2008 I ebay'ed it and stepped up to the G-Drive Q 1 TB. Used that for one year with no problems. Sold that to a friend this past November 2009 and I stepped up to a G-Drive 2 TB. Its too new to comment on. But so far so good (knock on wood!). I am now considering their G-RAID 4 TB product to add to my set up as I'm doing a lot more HD video editing. My current G-Drive 2 TB is more than 50% full already.

So my experience is that G-Technology drives so far have served me very well. That old school LaCie d2 160 GB is still workin also!
 
Remember that every product has its good/bad reviews; sometimes once in a while drives just go bad and people have bad experiences. This happens with every brand (at least with me over the years). The only drives I've had failed on me were only the internal ones, though...never had an external one fail on me (yet). Probably because I use the internal drives for like 10 years until they give up and die.

I have a relatively old 100GB Seagate ST90000U2 USB 2.0-powered external HDD, and I've been using it for several years now (maybe around ~3 years, more or less). It's been working fine since then, but it's a bit bulky so I'm not sure if it's still sold anymore. It's a little louder than the quieter ones these days, but not by much. It's only loud if you're making it do a lot of activity (like copying huge files onto it).

WD Passport 120GB: This one is kind of old too; I bought it about a year after I bought the Seagate mentioned above. Still works fine, relatively quiet, but the USB cord is a bit short (but not a problem for me).

Seagate FreeAgent Go 320GB: This is the most recent one I bought, about a year ago. Still works fine, very quiet, and the cord is a bit longer than the WD one mentioned above but not by that much (again, not an issue for me).

If it matters, I have all my drives entirely formatted in ext3.

Related Product:

I also have a Vantec SATA/IDE to USB adapter that I use to connect my internal HDDs to my computer via USB 2.0 (I've never used 1.0, 1.1 before). It does the job with 2.5" laptop/notebook drives as well as the larger 3.5" drives. A couple of plastic pieces broke off because of the cheap glue, but other than that it works fine (I just taped the plastic parts back on even though it doesn't affect the performance). I've owned this product for about a year now.
 
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WD Passport 160GB, Seagate FreeAgent 1TB, HP SimpleStore 1TB, IcyDock+whatever

I'm fairly new to the pre-fab external HD scene.

The one I have the most experience with is a 160GB Western Digital Passport, which I've had kicking around with me in my laptop bag for two years now. No problems with it whatsoever, although note that it will not work with PowerBook G4 USB ports (not enough power supplied to them to drive it ... it flashes its light and clicks until you unplug it). No problems with this drive at all other then its relatively meager capacity.

The first "big" hard drive we got was a Seagate FreeAgent 1TB drive. Plugged in and worked just fine, although there was a noticeable 30-ish second delay between plugging the beast in and it being available to mount on the computer. And it was loud. Used it for about a week, then it tipped over on the shelf while doing a Time Machine backup and was toast. I wouldn't recommend the form factor until they widen the base or lower the center of gravity.

Replaced that one with one HP SimpleStore (wider base, lower center of gravity because it doesn't have the goofy "base" beneath the drive itself) plus two large bookends to make sure it stays upright :) We've had this running Time Machine backups for three MacBooks for about three months now, and it's performed quite well. Still a slight delay between plugging it in and the computer seeing it, but not the long 30-second delay the Seagate gave us. The only qualm I have is that the drive comes up as both a drive and a "CD" in OS X. The CD is not ejectable; you have to eject the drive itself, then unplug and the CD goes away. Never get a warning from the OS about not properly ejecting, and trying to eject the CD doesn't do anything, so I can only assume that this is the way HP "designed" it (probably the "CD" has an autorun to do special backup stuff on a PC).

Other than the pre-fabs, the one I have the most luck with is an IcyDock shell which gets filled with whatever drive gets "sized out" of my PowerMac. I use this to do external backups of Aperture and Final Cut documents. It's fast in mounting (just about instant, which is why the long delays with the Seagate and even with the HP still have me scratching my head) and in writing. The only downside is that (like the larger-form Seagate and HP) it needs a power brick and plug in addition to the USB port. But, the major advantage here is that when I replace a drive for a larger one, the "smaller" drive still gets to live on as an external backup. Also, at least when I got it, IcyDock + drive was cheaper than any of the pre-fab drives. I don't think that's the case any more though (IcyDock was something like $50, on the high end for enclosures; I think the internal/external price differential is now more like $20.
 
Freecom

Bought a 1TB Freecom 3.5" external HD with FW400 interface at an authorized Mac reseller, specifically to be used with Time Machine. Asked the store guy whether it's possible to use the same drive for TM backups of multiple machines. After asking around, he told me he didn't know for sure but I could always repartition. The drive was already HFS formatted.

I thought it was a dual interface drive (FW400 & USB 2.0) but it turned out to be only FW400. Luckily, all my Macs have FW so I decided to keep it anyway. There was also a "quad-interface version" (USB, FW 400 & 800, and eSATA) but that was quite a bit more expensive.

I tried repartitioning, but couldn't get it to work - neither via DriveUtil or via command line. Found out that this is a "known issue" with some external drives.

Then decided to go back to a single partition; this worked. It turns out that TM stores its backups in a folder containing the machine name, so I suppose it will work with multiple machines (haven't verified this).
 
Western Digital My Studio 1tb Mac Edition

Though not owning it for 2 weeks like the original post states, I thought I'd add a comment.

The new drives (ones with the LCD usage display) come bundled with software called WD Smartware (acts like Time Machine). As part of this package a virtual CD is mounted every time you connect the drive to your mac.

WD produced an application to disable this, however the app doesn't work with the current Firmware of the drive (1.1.1.4), the app to update the firmware doesn't work either. Also when you disable the VCD it doesn't delete it, so you loose a little bit of your HDD as well.

I found the performance of the drive to be o.k., it's a nice quiet, smart looking unit with good connectivity for new macs (FW800 + USB2).

However I returned it due to the annoying popup VCD (it can be unmounted via the Smartware software - but I didn't want that installed either - also apparently it comes back after a reboot.).

If you can live the bad software then it's a good value FW800 drive.
 
I have always preferred BYO units. I have a 2 drive case I bought from cooldrives but it is actually listed at the subsite usbgear. It is a good case and similar to the OWC 2 drive cases. I have two Seagate 750 GB 7200.11 drives in it in JBOD. One is used for TM and the other for other data.

I just however ordered this week 2 Hitachi 2TB drives from Newegg ($140 each). I would normally have gone for Seagate or Western Digital but the Seagates were more and the WDs that are comparably priced are 5400 RPM drives, whereas the Hitachis are 7200. OWC now uses the same Hitachi 2TB drive in the Guardian Maximus RAID 1 (which I originally ordered and cancelled) as well as most of their other cases which speaks to the reliability of those drives. I ordered instead of the GMax a OWC Mercury Elite AL-Pro quad interface ($90) and a USB/FW400 case ($50). I will be offloading my Audio/Video library from my internal to the quad drive and using the second as a backup of that. I can still use one of my 750s for TM on the other contents of my internal.

I had thought about saving a little money and going with a pre-config drive, since my local Costco now has 2TB WD MyBook Essential drives at $169.99 but they are USB 2.0 only and they are book style drives. I prefer horizontal style drives I can stack.
 
DoFoT9 said:
thats EXACTLY what i just did a few weeks ago :)

bought this case ($125Aus) and 2x2TB Hitachis ($195 aus each) and RAID1'd them. works like a charm :D i only have 900GB left on it haha!
Click to expand...

Nice case. I opted not to go RAID or even get a dual bay case as I want to be able to move the 2nd 'backup' drive if need be. I could have saved about $40 if I wanted to have a dual bay case even in JBOD for backup, but now I can power down the backup drive if I want. Just more flexibility. And I like horizontally stacked cases, to go with the one I have, whereas the AL-Pro dual is a vertical case with built-in feet.
 
roland.g said:
Nice case. I opted not to go RAID or even get a dual bay case as I want to be able to move the 2nd 'backup' drive if need be. I could have saved about $40 if I wanted to have a dual bay case even in JBOD for backup, but now I can power down the backup drive if I want. Just more flexibility. And I like horizontally stacked cases, to go with the one I have, whereas the AL-Pro dual is a vertical case with built-in feet.
Click to expand...

case feels pretty sturdy! not a good chip on board though, so i opted for software RAID.

this is my main backup for now, i didnt have anything backing up my other 4 external HDDs, so i combined them into one and hopefully it all goes ok for me. :)
 
I will try to update this as much as I can, it would be easier if those that know the Wiki format (it's not that hard, I taught myself to do this) please add yourself on the guide itself.

Thanks to: Dmmcintyre3, Bill gates, Podpacker, Eraserhead, Pilotrtc, Justin Lee & Bsblvnv.
 
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