Hard Drive Advice: 1 TB or 1.5 TB?

[alexf]

Hi Everyone,

I just have a short question and I am hoping that someone can help me...

I need to get a large hard drive (primarily for back-up, but also for video, etc.) and am debating between the LaCie Big Disk Extreme 1 TB or 1.5 TB. On Amazon.com I can get the 1.5 TB one for less than $10 more than the 1 TB model.

My question is thus: is there any advantage to getting the smaller one (1 TB) instead of the larger one (1.5 TB)? I know, for instance, that 1.5 TB hard drives are relatively new, so is there a danger that it would be less reliable than the 1 TB? For me, reliability is far more important than the 50% more space...

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[Tallest Skil]

Yes. The 1.5TB drives are utterly worthless. Do not buy any hard drives from Seagate for a while...

There's a huge thread here about the troubles people have had.

The firmware update does NOT work in all circumstances, either (mine was still borked afterward).

Buy a 1TB drive from Western Digital or someone that isn't Seagate (because their 1TB drives have started failing, too) and wait it out until the 2TB drives have been tested and confirmed not DOA.

 

[cube]

Read the news. Avoid Seagate 7200.11, ES.2 SATA, and DiamondMax 22 drives (and any ready-made external using them) for now.

Get a Macpower Pleiades Super S-Combo case and a Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB (unless you are bothered by seek noise).

 

[alexf]

Thanks for the advice. I will definitely avoid Seagate.

I am partial to LaCie because I have two hard drives by them that have been reliable, and also, I love how they look sitting on top of my G5 (they are aluminum, so they match). Silly, I know, but us Mac people are funny like that...

Would you recommend buying a 1 TB Western Digital "MyBook Studio" over the 1 TB LaCie "Big Disk Extreme"? Again, reliability is for me far more important then looks or even max. capacity.

Thanks again.

 

[cube]

You can get a G5/Mac Pro look case from Macpower or OWC. I prefer the mechanical engineering of the Macpower to the OWC (unless the latter has improved from the PATA triple interface to the SATA quad interface, without my knowing).

 

[Jack Flash]

I'm extremely happy with my Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB HDD. Runs cooler and quieter than Western Digital and Hitachi's offerings. This was important in my decision as I was having it installed in my iMac.

 

[cube]

The F1 is great for sequential access, but for random access it is average.
It is already about 1 year old. I have one for backup via FW400. No complaint.

But Samsung's hard drive utilities are only for PC.

 

[Mactagonist]

Stay away from LaCie. Their bigdisk drives are horrible.

The Samsung F1 is a nice cool quiet drive, ditto the greenpower WD.