western digital vs. lacie vs seagate external 1TB hard drive?

[alainr]

i am a new imac owner and have looked into external hard drives for time machine. the apple store and macmall recommend lacie vs. western digital. Tech at store recommends western digital and does not like that lacie lacks a fan and use other company's hard drives. Online, there are a lot of complaints about western digital studio book. help!
i don't know what to buy.
i read on macrumors that buffalo is good and cheaper but it is not cheaper online.
do i need one that is geared to the mac so it is easier to install? seagate/buffalo require formatting for the mac-- i do not quiteknow what that means.

 

[Angsty]

My 500GB LaCie external drive came with 1 year warranty, and you guessed it - it DIED 2 months after warranty expired.

I went with Seagate drives for the replacement - they offer 5 years warranty so I am expecting them last longer.

 

[Orlaville]

Don't buy a LaCie

I bought a LaCie 1TB Big Disk about 2 years ago, and just after the guarantee it stopped mounting on my desktop. It was making all the right noises but I couldn't access my files. I had a suspicions that it might be the connectors not the hard drives that weren't responding, so I bought a new Big Disk took off the case and transfered the old drives into the new case.
I learned two things: LaCie disks have Seagate Barracuda hard drives inside them which work great, LaCie make shoddy housings that fail.

Recently the exact same thing happened again.

Go with the Seagate.

 

[J&JPolangin]

...I just got a simpletech 1TB HDD since that's what the base PX carried and the price was ok at $189.00 (plus NO shipping charges or shipping wait)...only time will tell if it will last though...

 

[PrettyNPink]

I use a WD 500gb drive. Came with a 3 year warranty.
First one I bought died within a month but I had no problem exchanging it for a new one and now this one is still going after about 6 months.

 

[Scarlet Fever]

i have a 1TB WD My Book studio, and its a great little drive. It feels really solid, its quiet, its cool, and its fairly light.

 

[Hates]

I have the WD 1TD FW/USB/eSATA drive and think it's great.

 

[scotty96LSC]

i have a 1TB WD My Book studio, and its a great little drive. It feels really solid, its quiet, its cool, and its fairly light.

We just bought two of these for critical backups and then for redundency backups. Nice drives and quiet.