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DaSal

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 19, 2008
334
298
The Netherlands
I'm looking for a new external HDD, has to have firewire 800, preferably USB too. I was looking the Lacie D2 quadra but the amount of reported failings is turning me off. On the dutch Apple site it has exclusively negative reviews, and on many other sites the ratio to good/negative reviews is alarming, to say the least. Many people report it dying after a year and losing data.

I was wondering if someone could suggest to me which brands are known to be most reliable?;)
 
After Taking Part in Numerous Threads and Purchasing Numerous Drives after Research, I have come to a couple of suggestions and a massive "guide."

thegoldenmackid said:
As much as I was happy buying a G-Tech, I bought my G-Raid was the assumption that one of my other drives would fail like I read about online, every drive I have owned has worked flawlessly, so for me the G-Tech was not really completely worth it.

But 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.

For the most part no one is going to post "I Love My _____ Drive" unless two things occur. Either: A. They just purchased the drive – hard drives fail, if it worked out of the box, that's a good thing; but, to give a positive rating takes at a bare minimum six months, if not a year in my book. B. Someone said that _____ Drive is bad. Remember these companies ship millions of drives. Western Digital, Seagate and Hitatchi all make tons of drives internal and external; a couple of users are going to have some problems, but for the most part – most customers drives probably work.

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...

Other User's Recommendation's:
Buffalo: techfreak85 (DriveStation Combo4 1TB)
Build Your Own: uberamd, kufford, SaSaSushi, nanofrog, Ti_Poussin, bigdaddyp; Cave Man, chkdg8, kdp.slider, mahen
Drobo: gatepc recommends it, further mixed discussion here. A Drobo v. alternative discussion was had here.
EZQuest: LizKat has owned a variety of Monsoons
G-Tech: RebornKillah recommends the G-Drive Quad 500GB, but it's currently out of production; Bill Gates (500GB Mini); Digital Skunk notes the great warranty; jaysmith & tcphoto recommend G-Tech
Hitachi: Trag (SimpleTech Signature Mini 500GB); J&JPolangin (SimpleTech 2TB SimpleDrive Pro Duo); BlizzardBomb recommends the Go; bigdaddyp recommends the Signature Mini. Thedesolateone also recommends Hitachi. Also of note is that Hitachi acquired G-Tech recently.
Iomega: mc3s (Ultramax 34495 1.5 TB); Justin Lee & quantum003 (eGo 500GB Portable Mac).
ioSafe: Tterb recommends.
LaCie: Note: there is an entire thread dedicated to LaCie, I have summed up support from users below, but simply a tally
jrotunda85 & Kronie (d2 Quadra 1 TB); RedTomato, gatepc & eVolcre, Cousin Dirk {although eVolcre owns the one with eSata and Firewire 400}(Hard Disk, Design by Neil Poulton 1 TB); iGary (LaCie Rugged); Gymnut (F.A. Porsche, out of production); VanMac (BigDiskExtreme, out of production); Digital Skunk (2Big Triple, out of production)
Users expressing general support: cmcbridejr, dpaanlka, LethalWolfe, mpsrig, UltraNeo*, iPhoneNYC, chocolate632, Hellhammer, romanaz
Users not so happy with LaCie: surfmadison (not a big fan), accacc57, dave12345 (Little Disk), jaysmith, Jerkfish, auero, mperkins37, dfs & jessica.
cluthz has mixed reactions regarding the (d2 and Neil Poulton)
Maxtor: adamvk purchased a OneTouch 4 1TB (not sure what version)
OWC: GGJstudios (1TB Mercury Elite-AL Pro) & (On-The-Go 200GB)
Seagate: steeler (FreeAgent Desk 1.5 TB); MacMini2009, rick3000, cluthz & soo (Seagate FreeAgent Desk 1 TB USB Mac); suekitch recommends Seagate because of its warranty; Acid303 does not recommend the (new) Seagate FreeAgent Desk series
Western Digital: MacMini2009, xpress1, patrickdunn, iphonematt & MacDawg (MyBook Studio 1TB); Thiol notes purchasing an incredible seven Western Digital MyBook Studio drives all working flawlessly; pprior (MyBook Studio Edition 2TB) Acid303 also notes a positive experience with a non-Studio Edition Western Digital drive; terp2007, odinsride, Samuriajackon, cluthz & matthewscott661 recommend the Passport Series; munkees notes a failure with one of the drives purchased, but a positive experience overall; rikdiddy, RebornKillah & Jerkfish also recommend Western Digital. chrono1081 does not recommend Western Digital & romanaz was also not happy.


Other Threads:
1TB is prbly a good size to start at it, I would say most people looking for non-mobile externals start at that size, here is a (not-so) recent thread about that...
More literature found here.
Here, is another thread on 1TB Hard Drives
This one is about LaCie...
Here is another, there is some more discussion about LaCie in there...
Here is one on USB 1TB, I'd stick to Firewire...
Just for kicks, we had a random thread.
And if all else fails, MRoogle
If you wish to have your name added to the list, PM Me.​
 
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This is a very useful thread. I have been trying to decide what to get and this has helped a lot. Sam's club sells a WD 1TB My Book for 97.84 which is the cheapest 1TB drive I've been able to find. If anyone knows where to get it cheaper let me know.
 
This is a very useful thread. I have been trying to decide what to get and this has helped a lot. Sam's club sells a WD 1TB My Book for 97.84 which is the cheapest 1TB drive I've been able to find. If anyone knows where to get it cheaper let me know.

As soon as I can find a 2TB drive for less than the price of 2x1TB drives I'm getting one!
ATM I have my PowerBook with a 80GB internal drive (1.2GB free) and a 500GB Western Digital drive in a 3rd party external case. It has run fulltime for a year with no issues but has only 970KB free space.
I'm am looking for Western Digital or Seagate Firewire 800 drives, but these are still quite pricey at 2TB.
 
This is a very useful thread. I have been trying to decide what to get and this has helped a lot. Sam's club sells a WD 1TB My Book for 97.84 which is the cheapest 1TB drive I've been able to find. If anyone knows where to get it cheaper let me know.

Check around Amazon, but Sam's club is generally fairly cheap. And yes, I wrote all of that in seven minutes ;)
 
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