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Would You Recommend YOUR External Hard Drive?

C

cuanurse

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 26, 2007
129
0
Virginia
With Leopard and Time Machine I realized that I needed an external hard drive. I went out and bought a Lacie d2 quadra 320g for $180.
It is super noisy (even being under my desk). Every time it is in use it makes the noise of that an old computer used to make while thinking- remember that?!
Because Time Machine backs up so often I hear it all of the time. I was even thinking of turning it off unless I wanted to back up, which would defeat the purpose of Time Machine.

Would you recommend yours?
 
I did some very limited "research" before buying a HD backup. Namely I looked at the MyBook and the Lacie. Most people seemed to have an issue with the Lacie HD.

I've been using the MyBook since I installed Leopard. It is quiet and it is great. It's a short amount of time but I haven't had any trouble with it.
 
shlauncha said:
I just bought a Seagate 500GB USB 2.0 drive for $130 at Circuit City and I love it. It's quiet and it was super cheap. :)
Click to expand...

I bought the same one, except it was at OfficeMax. I concur that it is a good HD. Just to note: I believe it is a SeaGate FreeAgent 500-GB external HD.

Have fun ... Tony.
 
cuanurse said:
With Leopard and Time Machine I realized that I needed an external hard drive. I went out and bought a Lacie d2 quadra 320g for $180.
It is super noisy (even being under my desk). Every time it is in use it makes the noise of that an old computer used to make while thinking- remember that?!
Because Time Machine backs up so often I hear it all of the time. I was even thinking of turning it off unless I wanted to back up, which would defeat the purpose of Time Machine.

Would you recommend yours?
Click to expand...


It cost a little more but I purchased the G Tech G Drive Q 320MB for use with my MBP and Time machine.

Quite honestly I was startled at the quality of this drive . Its running a nice Hitachi 7200RPM 16MB Cache drive that is SILENT and in an Aircraft grade Anodized Aluminum case that REEKS of massive quality. Id buy again in a heartbeat.

Oh and it has USB2.0, FW400, FW800 and eSata ports. Perfect.
 
I've got the Seagate 750Gb FreeAgent Pro, and love it.

Given, its hooked up via my PC in my office, whcih is then served via the wireless network. I want to look into getting a portable small/quiet 120+gb drive. Anyone use a portable drive?

Edit: Looks like the WD Passport got decent reviews on newegg...
 
xfusejc said:
Most people seemed to have an issue with the Lacie HD.
Click to expand...

LaCie happen to be 1 of the best external drive manufacturers in the world. I've used their drives for years now. I have 3 here now a LaCie NAS, and 2 Quadras.

I really don't know what the TC is talking about when it comes to noise. Sure the LaCies have fans in them, but they are hardly loud.

Would I recommend LaCie? In a heart beat!
 
I STRONGLY recommend buying a good enclosure and slapping your own drive in there. I bought this one from OWC:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEFW912AL2/

It's a dual drive set up. I have a 500GB Seagate that I got from Tiger Direct for $109 that I use for Time Machine. I'm going to buy a second one (maybe a 750GB) to use with Super Duper! strictly as a clone. And maybe some scratch storage that doesn't need backing up.

The enclosure has fans, so it's not super silent. But it's beautiful and works great.
 
I used 4 hard drives and here are my thoughts.

- My Book 1TB: Looks nice, firewire 800 works great, i can turn it off via the button in the front and is quite. I have had some problems with Western Digital before and i don't trust them 100%.

- G-Tech 500GB: Best looking hard drive, super quite and had 0 problems with it. I would give this my number one vote.

- LaCie (i have used LaCie since 4 years and tried many of there products): I used over 20 LaCie Hard Drives over the last 4 years, i run a LAN with 10 gaming PC's and 4 laptop. I needed lots of hard drives and just walked into a store without researching my purchase, luckily i picked LaCie and i have had no problems with them. I would not recommend you buy one till the release some new models.

- Seagate FreeAgent 750GB: Every single internal hard drive i buy is a Seagate, they make the best hard drives i have ever used. I am using one Seagate FreeAgent 750GB and so far i like it a lot, thou i have not had it for long.

The only hard drive i have had a problem with was the Western Digital, after a few days of use it stopped working but that was a year ago and i have not had any problems since then. Whatever model you do decide to get make to use firewire 400 or firewire 800 since it is a lot faster.
 
My most recent external purchase was G-Drive. I would recommend them to everyone. Really high quality stuff. My time machine is running on an OWC Mercury AL Elite that I bought a year and a half or so ago. Been running like a champ the whole time. That's a great drive too.
 
I looked at a few of the g-tech... the apple store was mostly sold out of everything. I think many people starting with Leopard had the same idea I did.

Do I have to partition my external HD? Will TM rewrite over information or just start deleting old days when it is full?
 
cuanurse said:
Do I have to partition my external HD? Will TM rewrite over information or just start deleting old days when it is full?
Click to expand...

Shouldn't be a reason to reformat. When the drive starts running out of space, TM will delete the oldest archive and start working forward to free up space.
 
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