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WD vs Seagate vs Lacie

J

Johnpartridge

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 24, 2006
126
0
Hello, Im looking to buy a new External Hard drive.

Amazon.co.uk have some pretty good prices on these 3 drives at the moment. But im not to sure which to go with. Im Looking for a 500gb Model.

LaCie, Desktop Drive , Design by F.A Porsche, 500GB, 7200RPM, USB2.0 - £65

Western Digital My Book 500GB Essential USB2.0 - £76

Seagate FREEAGENT DESKTOP 500GB Hard Drive UK-VER 3,5" 7200RPM USB2.0 - £68.86

Which would you suggest?

John Partridge
 
hello
I can only speak for the Western Digital, I have the 320GB Firewire/USB2.0 Deluxe hard drive (with blue light). I haven't had any problems with it, load and access times are good and it's incredibly quiet. That's a good price for that one too. You might want to check www.newegg.com as well as www.tigerdirect.com They usually have good prices too.
 
they are all low-end drives. i wouldn't even consider a single one of them. the LaCie d2 drives, or the G-Tech drives, or maybe the OWC Mercury drives are the quality drives out there.
 
Lacie Refurb

I have had great success with Refurbished Lacies. I have two of them (one is a 4+ year old 120Gig 7,200 rpm FW400 only and the other is less than a year old 250Gig USB 2.0 FW 400/800. The second one had some problems and I sent it back and they fixed it (You get all the warrenty perks of buying a product brand new). The Hard Drives run like a charm.

What you also need to ask yourself when purchasing is what are you using it for. If you are doing ProAudio/ProVideo Apps on it and are using it as a dedicated drive, then you want to make sure that (whatever brand you choose) you are using a firewire drive that runs 7,200 RPM.
 
I've been using various MyBooks for the last few years and they've been very reliable, no complaints at all.
 
Hello, thanks for the reply's so far. I know the 3 drives I have selected are pretty low end spec. However for the needs of this workstation, I dont really need to spend the extra money on a Lacie D2 for example. I already have 2 of those for my photography work. This latest workstation will simply just need a simple backup drive. And I dont see the need to buy another D2 for this. Also, where this drive will be located is quite a "viewable" position, so I would like something with good styling, something which the D2, I dont think has.

I prefer the Lacie on styling, but i've heard many bad reviews for this Drive, and i'm swaying towards the Seagate. However could be tempted with the mybook.

Can anyone help me out more?
John Partridge
 
pwrbkdude said:
they are all low-end drives. i wouldn't even consider a single one of them. the LaCie d2 drives, or the G-Tech drives, or maybe the OWC Mercury drives are the quality drives out there.
Click to expand...

I'm not a big fan of LaCie hard drives based on experience, but their DVD/CD drives have been totally reliable. We run G-Tech exclusively for video editing and have had NO problems. I don't have any personal experience with OWC drives directly, but their RAM, and other products have given us NO grief ever.
 
Actually it's possible to change the hard drive inside a LaCie D2-chassis. I tried to open one of mine about a year ago, and it was pretty simple. A maximum of 10 screws, but I don't have the exact amount.

The D2 chassis is very nice imo., so I'll just change the drive when it's out. Much cheaper than a new D2, and so on. :)
 
Thanks again for the replies, but no one is really giving me recommendations to which drive to go with :p , were going a bit off topic.

Can anyone help? Im looking to buy today.

John Partridge
 
Johnpartridge said:
Hello, Im looking to buy a new External Hard drive.

Amazon.co.uk have some pretty good prices on these 3 drives at the moment. But im not to sure which to go with. Im Looking for a 500gb Model.

LaCie, Desktop Drive , Design by F.A Porsche, 500GB, 7200RPM, USB2.0 - £65

Western Digital My Book 500GB Essential USB2.0 - £76

Seagate FREEAGENT DESKTOP 500GB Hard Drive UK-VER 3,5" 7200RPM USB2.0 - £68.86

Which would you suggest?

John Partridge
Click to expand...

IMO, and as having just purchased a WD product, I just did the research.
Lacie has reliability issues based on people's comments. Seagate used to be a quality product, but they recently purchased Maxtor and quality has slipped. WD has solid quality reviews based on 60 purchases.
I bought this one,from NewEgg.com, the only place I buy.
Western Digital Elements WDE1U3200N 320GB 7200 RPM USB 2.0 External Hard Drive - Retail

Western Digital Elements 320GB 3.5" External Hard Drive - Retail
Image Viewer

Western Digital Elements 320GB 3.5" External Hard Drive - Retail Western Digital Elements 320GB 3.5" External Hard Drive - Retail Western Digital Elements 320GB 3.5" External Hard Drive - Retail Western Digital Elements 320GB 3.5" External Hard Drive - Retail

Original Price: $91.99
You Save: $10.00
$81.99
3 Business Day Shipping $7.81
(Not available in HI, AK and PR)
In Stock

Cheffy Dave;)
 
The bad comments on LaCie depends probably on the Porsche drive. That disk/chassis had serious heat problems, and therefore a short lifetime. :)
 
23am said:
The bad comments on LaCie depends probably on the Porsche drive. That disk/chassis had serious heat problems, and therefore a short lifetime. :)
Click to expand...

Guess again: d2=junk. No fan, electronics pressed against hard drive was a big design cockup.
 
I recommend avoiding LaCie ... we used to have quite a few of them in the office, until we started having a very high rate of failure. Something like 70% of them failed in the first 2 months.

I have personally always used WD, they have an ultra fast turn around on RMA drives. I don't have anything negative to have about Seagate, I just trust WD more over years and years of happy service.
 
I'm so down on Lacie; I've had 3 fail in the past 1.5 years (250gb, 320gb, 500gb). I'm now on a WD MyBook Pro 500gb, and it's been running for 8 months strong. Not going to risk buying another Lacie drive :mad:
 
In my experience with 2 Lacie drives (250GB USB and 500GB network drive) Lacie has terrible service. After them both failing they shipped them to be fixed and I didn't get them back for 5 months:mad:
 
I'd vote for the Seagate also--based purely on the five year warranty and the fact that I've had one for three years with zero problems.
 
Another NO vote on LaCie

I owned two LaCie D2 (or was it D3?) drives. The first failed catastrophically after 3 months. The LaCie tech told me I'd be offered the chance to try to recover my data before the drive was replaced, if it was determined to need replacing. Instead, they simply sent me a new one, and all my data was gone. (I was in the process of rearranging my backup schemes when the failure occurred.) The replacement waited until just under two years from the original purchase to fail in the same way. LaCie wouldn't even talk to me, but I invoked warranty doubling via the credit card I used to buy the original one, and spent the money on another manufacturer's products.

Some of the LaCie drives seem to have some custom electronics for doing something like RAID striping, and I'm told that when these electronics fail, as they tend to do, they trash all the data they write on all the platters in the drive.

I vote for anything with an IBM drive in it made by any firm other than LaCie.
 
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