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Is there such thing as an external drive that doesn't 'freeze' up the system?

S

Scott-n-Houston

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Apr 27, 2008
1,023
338
Houston (duh)
I have 5 external drives... They are Seagate and Western Digital Drives.
The worst of the bunch is the Western Digital My Book Studio Edition (1TB) that I have connected via FW800. The 2nd worst offender is the Seagate 750GB Free Agent connected via FW400. The most dependable appears to be a Western Digital USB drive, but it's the slowest performer.

The issue is this: I either have a freeze up that requires an unplug from the Mac as well as power, then re-mount to get working again, OR, when I start up the Mac, it just hangs at the 'apple' and never fully boots. I have to unplug the drives and boot, then plug them back in after the boot.

It's getting very frustrating. Do you all have a successful setup with external drives?

Is LaCie the way to go? Is it because WD and SeaGate suck?
 
Are you kidding? I was planning on buying either the 1TB WD My Book Essential or a 1.5TB Seagate FreeAgent tomorrow morning at Best Buy. (I'm not kidding, I have been planning on this for a week) Maybe I should choose a different brand.

I currently have a Toshiba 250GB external and it is great. I have never had any problems with it and I highly recommend Toshiba as an option.

And Yes, I have not seen any bad reviews on the LaCie's... they are just a little more expensive.
 
alexbates said:
Are you kidding? I was planning on buying either the 1TB WD My Book Essential or a 1.5TB Seagate FreeAgent tomorrow morning at Best Buy. (I'm not kidding, I have been planning on this for a week) Maybe I should choose a different brand.

And Yes, I have not seen any bad reviews on the LaCie's... they are just a little more expensive.
Click to expand...


I'd get the SG over the WD, but yeah, I've had issues with each drive I have except the WD USB drive.


BTW, I wouldn't buy at Best Buy. I'm now a HUGE fan of B&H. The same drives are usually much cheaper, plus no sales tax when buying outside of New York state. (I don't have any connection other than being a new loyal customer)...

This is the drive(s) I'm planning on buying now to replace my current drives, and my old drives will become backups of the backup. lol

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/535472-REG/LaCie_301304U_1TB_Hard_Disk.html

Good luck in your hunt... sick of dealing with this.
 
I just bought a 1 TB WD from Staples a few weeks ago. I haven't had any problems with it.... now, the Maxtor I have many problems with...
 
Scott-n-Houston said:
I'd get the SG over the WD, but yeah, I've had issues with each drive I have except the WD USB drive.

BTW, I wouldn't buy at Best Buy. I'm now a HUGE fan of B&H. The same drives are usually much cheaper, plus no sales tax when buying outside of New York state. (I don't have any connection other than being a new loyal customer)...

This is the drive(s) I'm planning on buying now to replace my current drives, and my old drives will become backups of the backup. lol

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/535472-REG/LaCie_301304U_1TB_Hard_Disk.html

Good luck in your hunt... sick of dealing with this.
Click to expand...

$104... thats an amazing deal compared to $164 for a 1TB LaCie at MacMall. I'll have to consider that.

And I added a little about Toshiba's in my last post since you commented. They are also great... but can be a little pricy.
 
Everyone has their own experiences, but I imagine that most of them are positive. Sure, there are these threads about how person x's drive failed and person y wouldn't buy anything but them. I own three drives that there are plenty of horror stories about.

No one would ever post: "I love my Western Digital 1TB Drive", unless someone posts a horror story about one. Companies ship tons of drives daily, not everyone will be perfect.

The best advice is to find one that has a good warranty and excellent customer service. And then avoid reading these threads so you don't lose any sleep.

Or you could be OCD, anal and paranoid like me and have two back-up drives :D.
 
thegoldenmackid said:
Everyone has their own experiences, but I imagine that most of them are positive. Sure, there are these threads about how person x's drive failed and person y wouldn't buy anything but them. I own three drives that there are plenty of horror stories about.

No one would ever post: "I love my Western Digital 1TB Drive", unless someone posts a horror story about one. Companies ship tons of drives daily, not everyone will be perfect.

The best advice is to find one that has a good warranty and excellent customer service. And then avoid reading these threads so you don't lose any sleep.

Or you could be OCD, anal and paranoid like me and have two back-up drives :D.
Click to expand...

Everything you posted is true... however, I have 5 drives by 2 manufacturers, and they all give me problems. It's a pretty significant sample for me.
 
Scott-n-Houston said:
Everything you posted is true... however, I have 5 drives by 2 manufacturers, and they all give me problems. It's a pretty significant sample for me.
Click to expand...

That's true. I mean the other rule of thumb, you get what you pay for can be applicable in some regards. I have a G-Tech drive in addition to the other three drives, that turned out to be a waste of money as the cheaper drives are just as reliable. But i bought the G-Tech drive for the reliability/customer service idea.
 
I have 4 500gb WD MyBooks (2 USB, 2 FW400) and a 2TB G-RAID2. I haven't had issues like you are describing... In the 3 years I have had the WDs I think twice one of them has failed to mount on a restart, but worked after being disconnected and then reconnected.
 
5 drives (sometimes 6), plus DVD burner on single FW800: Seagate FreeAgent Desk Mac > Rosewill FW800 > CoolGear FW800 > (FW800 spare) > FreeAgent Pro FW400 > FreeAgent Pro FW400 > FW400 LightScribe Burner.

Never a single freeze.

17" UB MBP; I had a similar setup on 17" 2.33 MBP
 
I have my external drives (2x freecom 1tb network drive pro + time capsule) connected directly onto the network. Slightly more expensive than using usb or firewire, but because the drives are not directly attached to any of the computers, they can not cause this sort of problem. You can also access them regardless of which computer you are working on at the time, which was my actual reason for doing it this way. Never had any problems, and the styling of the freecoms matches the imac nicely.
 
I have one 500 Gb iomega usb hard drive, one 1Tb iomega FW 800 hard drive and one 250 Gb conceptronic self build hard drive from my old windows pc. They all work great. Never had a problem with one of them (only the 500, but that was on the windows pc, stupid thing wouldn't recognize the disk).
 
I have never heard of those strange boot things. I have got two WD My Studio 1TB's. Both of which perfectly when connected to my iMac. If they are connected and not used they automatically shutdown the discs but still appear on the system. This is a OS X option to allow hard drives to shutdown when not used and will of course take about 5 or 6 seconds for them to spin up again. When they spin up it appears that the computer is actually frozen, although it isnt really because its waiting for the discs to send a signal.

Infact i have 'dasiy-chained' them because iMac only has one FW800 port. and the one connected directly to the imac is the one i use most. but never the less they still work very quick when daisy chained

i highly recommend the WD ones. heck i still have an old WD from about 4 years ago which was 160gb and cost a fortune and still works perfectly. even though it has literally been dropped and moved around loads.

also the WD has either a two or three year warranty as standard from WD themselves.

by the way, WD and seagate produce some of the best hard drives imho. why many companies (such as sony PS3) use them in the machines.
 
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