Storage: Need some advice for buying an external drive
Need some advice for buying an external drive
by Blind_Sight - 7/1/07 3:47 PMI'm in the market to pick up an external drive but have been having trouble deciding on one. I know that the names to stick with are Seagate, Western Digital, and Maxtor. I am also aware that I could go and build myself one with an internal drive and enclosure, but I'd prefer to avoid the hassle. I'm interested in using the drive as a storage device to replace a 200gig desktop drive that is being sold with the system once I get the external drive as well as a backup for my 80gig laptop drive. So I've been looking at 500gig external drives.
Now, I've been looking at a Western Digital Elements 400gig external drive for $129.99 but haven't been able to find any reviews for the product. The price is definitely right, but I don't want to pay for a junky drive. Another drive I was looking at was the LaCie Porsche Design 500gig USB drive for $169.99. Again, the price seems to be right but I'm not entirely familiar with the LaCie brand - also I think my boss had a LaCie drive where the enclosure failed. The last one that I've been keeping an eye on is Western Digital's My Book Essential 500gig for about $205. Good name, but slightly more pricey, especially when you add on the extended warranties.
[All the above listed in Canadian prices]
Does anyone own any of these drives and, if so, could let me know what they think of them? Or, if anyone has any advice as to which drive I should invest my cash into (from any of the list above or any other unlisted drives), it would be greatly appreciated.
Please?
by Blind_Sight - 7/1/07 9:21 PM In reply to: Need some advice for buying an external drive by Blind_SightPlease? Anyone have anything for me?
I'm hoping to buy something in the next day or two so any help would be greatly appreciated.
Advice for External HD
by dsbrg - 7/2/07 2:06 PM In reply to: Please? by Blind_SightI am also in the market for an external hard drive. Would like to know of any experience with Beyond Micro products. Their speeds (7200 rpm) seem better than the Seagates and others.
One of the ...
by jackintucson
- 7/2/07 2:09 PM
In reply to: Need some advice for buying an external drive by Blind_Sight
Western Digital 500gb drives should do you well.
and life goes on...
Jack
Consider Iomega
by dratner - 7/6/07 12:53 PM In reply to: Need some advice for buying an external drive by Blind_SightI just purchased my second Iomega USB HD (500gig). The first one, 160gig, I've had for 3 years and it runs quietly and efficienly. I was considering the WD Mybook until I read of a number of early failures.
bought a Western Digital
by xarophti - 7/13/07 9:34 PM In reply to: Need some advice for buying an external drive by Blind_SightI recently bought a Western Digital 400 GB external (the Elements USB 2.0). So far, I'm liking it. It came formatted as FAT 32, so I reformatted it to NTFS (so I could store a larger file than 4 GB on it - I bought it to back up my PC) and partioned it into 3 smaller virtual drives. The only issue I've had is that even after turning off drive indexing, Windows XP doesn't want to "let go" of it - the "safely eject hardware" function isn't working. "Drive cannot be stopped at this time. Try again later." Don't know if this is due to open file handles, or what. Technical Support suggested just shutting down the PC to solve this. I shut down my computer regularly anyway, so I don't find this a problem. I also only hook it up when actively backing up, so it's not a big issue with me. This problem could have been caused by "operator malfunction" - I didn't know to turn off indexing until "after the fact" and had done a backup onto it, and additionally had a power down issue during the inital formatting (sudden storm with power loss) (I re-did it, of course)
This drive came with a decent warranty out of the box, and I was lucky enough to find it at Staples for $129.99 US with $50 rebate.
xarophti
Seagate working well for me
by retexan599 - 7/14/07 6:27 AM In reply to: bought a Western Digital by xarophtiMy external hard drive: Seagate 160GB USB2; ST3160026A-RK; S/N: 5JS66Q45; PN: 9W6044-543; $60.00. This is the ‘USB only’ flavor of this ‘kit’. One year warranty: ST3160026A-RK. Had to reformat it to NTFS to work with Vista. I use it for the Automatic Backup function.
Disconnecting external hard drive
by Patndianne - 7/14/07 7:37 AM In reply to: bought a Western Digital by xarophtiI have also experienced "drive in use" message when shutting down my external hard drive. I have a 320GB Acomdata external drive, Windows XP-SP2. It sounds like an issue with the operating system. Every time I want to shutdown the external drive I have to kill the power to it. I have been using the drive this way since purchasing the unit last year. So far I have not encountered any additional problems as a result of closing the power switch to the drive.
external drives
by wcoffey81 - 7/14/07 8:27 AM In reply to: Need some advice for buying an external drive by Blind_Sighti have had several customers asking the kinds of questions you are so i have done some research and looked at what my suppliers offer. my conclusion was to assemble the external drive myself. i am a stickler for providing products with the best warranties i can as long as the price stays in line. i was dis-satisfied with the 1 year warranties on preassembled drives. then i started looking at the actual drive specs and that sealed the deal. the new drives by seagate are impressive in what they offer and the cost, but i just couldn't get over the warranty. i decided to assemble the drives using a thermaltake enclosure, 3 year warranty, and seagate SATA2 hard drives, 5 year warranty. the cost is a little higher but this is supposed to be a back-up containing data that you don't want to lose. the use of an enterprise class drive with a 16Mb cache and 5 year warranty was the only solution i could find that i liked. the extra 10% to 20% in cost is a small price to pay for the security of data.
if you have ever worked on a PC the assembly will not be any trouble. thermaltake actually includes a small screwdriver in the package and it's the only tool you need. if a customer buys both the drive and enclosure from me i assemble it for them and i'm sure i'm not the only business to do that. just ask
If you haven't already made a purchase....
by forkboy - 7/14/07 12:05 PM In reply to: Need some advice for buying an external drive by Blind_SightI purchased an external backup hard-drive about six months ago. My research through CNET's Reviews section was helpful as was my subscription to Consumerreports.org.
Based upon both I opted to purchase a Black Series desktop backup hard drive from Iomega. It came with software that was the express (read: less powerful) version of backup software that also came highly recommended by the folks at Consumer Reports. I've been using that software and have been satisfied with both it's ease of use and features.
I had originally considered Western Digital products seeing how my home-built PC uses two WD hard drives and I've been very satisfied with them. However, the WD backup drives didn't seem to fair as well in the reviews process, especially with Consumer Reports. In addition, the Black Series I purchased came with the option of USB and FireWire connectivity, which was handy for me as I had a free FireWire port.
Be careful of LaCie
by stephen7144 - 7/14/07 1:24 PM In reply to: Need some advice for buying an external drive by Blind_SightI have a dozen different external hard drives and from my personal experience, I would advise anyone to stay away from LaCie at all costs and be wary of Western Digital. I have two LaCie usb/firewire 800 drives that were very expensive and both totally failed within 6 months of use. To make it a really bad situation, Lacie's polite but ignorant tech support dragged me through a lot of useless fixes until the 1 year warranty was up and then refused to do anything to repair or replace the drives under the warranty. They repeatedly ignored my protests that I had reported the problems just 6 months after the warranty started, so I would say let the buyer beware when it comes to any LaCie product. Review of their user comments would also bear this out.
I have two external Western Digital drives and one of them failed within 8 months of purchase. WD is willing to replace the drive with a used one but I will not trust my data to WD again. The drive that failed was used as a backup of scanned photographs and was carefully stored 99% of the time I owned it. It was subjected to little movement or use at all and still I lost all data on the drive.
I have the best luck so far with Seagate and Iomega drives and would recommend any model of these two brands.
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