Seagate FreeAgent Desk for Mac - 1.5 TB too big?

[Khryz]

So I'm in the market for an External HDD and from what I've been reading the new Seagate HDD's are being reviewed and rated very well from people.

But when I was searching for External HDD's before I remember people saying that the bigger drives are less reliable than say a 320, or a 500 GB drive.

I can get this 1.5 TB drive for $190 on Newegg, and the 500 GB is about 140. So I can easily say the extra $40 is worth it for another TB of storage - but is it still too big?

Can people safely say really big HDD's are more reliable now than before?

 

[sickmacdoc]

There are apparently still a lot of firmware issues with Seagate 1.5Tb drives that remain to be worked out- and there have been several threads here that would lead me to believe that currently those drives would be quite a bit less than totally reliable. So IMO- the current state of HDs would lead to pretty much equal confidence in a single drives up to 1Tb, but I would then start to have concerns with solutions larger than that at this point in time.

 

[Khryz]

There are apparently still a lot of firmware issues with Seagate 1.5Tb drives that remain to be worked out- and there have been several threads here that would lead me to believe that currently those drives would be quite a bit less than totally reliable. So IMO- the current state of HDs would lead to pretty much equal confidence in a single drives up to 1Tb, but I would then start to have concerns with solutions larger than that at this point in time.

So you think 1 TB is limit before HDD's start getting less reliable?

 

[anirban]

I agree, I purchased a 1 TB drive, which was actually two 500GB drives daisychained to form the 1TB drive. Just after a week of using it, I started getting a feel that the drive was going to fail- the HDD activity light kept going even when I was not accessing anything, the drive was unusually hot.

The drive worked just fine, but I felt that it had a high chance of failing on me...


From now on, I only suggest getting external drives with only one drive in it.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

I would set 750GB as my maximum for a HDD. 500GB or 320GB for a notebook 2.5" drive though.

 

[sickmacdoc]

So you think 1 TB is limit before HDD's start getting less reliable?

Yes, personally I would consider anything up to 1 Tb to be pretty much equally safe. Were there notable problems similar to the type noted with the 1.5Tb drives there would be plenty of threads here and in other forums you can count on that!