External Hard Drives

There's a lot of arty types on here, and I assume you need loads of data storage, so I'll ask here :) Can't seem to find much good info online... Amazon reviews are usually useless for these.

What external hard drives are good? Which are crap?

Must be firewire 400 (for my macbook, so no 800) so I can use Superduper and boot from it in case my hdd dies. My macbook is 80gb, so at least 160gb for time machine and superduper, then a bit more for extra storage - ca. 200gb.

Those Western Digital My Books look fairly good, but seem unreliable. My sister had one that suddenly died, and she says her friend had one that died too.

LaCie look good - don't know much about reliability.

Other things that are preferable: not too big, and not noisy. I hate fans. In fact I'd probably spend a bit more if it was near silent.

Ta :)

I use an earlier version of this, before it was designed by sam hecht
http://store.apple.com/us/product/TQ311ZM/A?fnode=home/shop_mac/mac_accessories/storage&mco=Njg4NjU1&p=2&s=topSellers
And it's amazing. silent and tiny.

Research what hard drives are reliable and buy a external hard drive with that brand of hd inside.

Also do consider usb for your hd. Firewire 400 can transfer at 400 Mbit/s USB 2 at 412 Mbit/s plus most computers have usb 2 so if you are round a mates house and want to grab some data off of him / her your life will be easier with usb.

the lacie power bricks often go pop. now i just buy drives based on their warranty, currently using WD my book premiums (or they may be pro's?) as the warrenty is longer, think it may be 3-5 years.
my advice would be to buy 2 drives and keep the other one at a different location.
don't get usb only as you can't boot from it (you knew this already).
do not get any of the drives that package 2 drives in one case like the lacie terrabyte ones as they span across 2 drives as one volume so twice as likely to lose your data because of 2 drives being used (but fast access/write speeds)
do not buy the iomega ultramax thingy from the apple store it's shit, i had to send 3 back as one drive wouldn't mount, it couldn't be seen as 2 volumes and a third one the drives were loose inside the casing. you also have to phone tech support in the netherlands and when you want to escalate your complaint they charge you 25euro to do so!

the lacie power bricks often go pop.

They go pop in the weirdest way.

You would think a power brick going bad would just mean you can't get thing to appear on your machine wouldn't you ?

But when the LaCie bricks go this tends to mean that writing to your HD becomes very very slow, you can still read at normal speeds, so opening up a file is fine, but saving or copying to the drive is unbelievably slow.

This problem is common, I have had it twice, the power bricks are something like £35 for a replacement.

Bastards.

I have a Freecom 500gb hooked up to my home network via a Linksys NSLU and it works a treat. Never had any problems with this hard drive

I have a 160GB Iomega. You definitely want a 2.5" portable drive because having to plug it in to the wall is just not good. I was originally going to use superduper or CaronCopyCloner but for some reason I don't anymore. I just have it partitioned as Backup HD and Storage HD. Backup is for TimeMachine and Storage is for videos that I don't want cluttering up my Macbook.

I'd have to say that I'm considering stopping my TimeMachine backups because If my Macbook were to suddenly go pop I'd have to get my Leopard CD and HDD and it would take a few hours of installing and recovering to be back up and running. With something like SuperDuper of CarbonCopyCloner you can be up and running off the external drive in seconds.

Also I think Intel macs can boot off USB so that's not so much of a problem. One problem however is that you can't have a bootable drive that is readable on a PC (I think)

I've got a WD with 2x USB2 and 2x firewire, it's 360gb and was 26 quid new....have had no probs

you can't boot from usb on a mac it needs to be firewire 400 or 800. why does it definitely need to be 2.5? if you want cheap reliable and fast backup then the bigger drives are better value and faster.
for a similar price as the iomega with 1 years warranty you could get a 3.5 250-300gb drive with 2-3 year warranty.
or get both? i use a small drive when backing up shoots on location and then use this small drive to back up to one of the main backups at home.

if you want speed and reliability - go for firewire
if you want compatibility and portability - go for usb
on paper usb is faster, but this is only measured at the peak of the data transfer rate. firewire has been shown to average a much faster speed over a sustained period.
2.5" drives are great and really portable, but use slower disk speeds than 3.5" drives.
you can get some 2.5" drives which have a usb cable for the power supply, but actually transfer the data with firewire. maybe this is a good compromise although you'll still have a slower disc speed.

On paper usb is faster, but this is only measured at the peak of the data transfer rate. firewire has been shown to average a much faster speed over a sustained period.

+1

I noticed this when Apple stopped supporting firewire in the iPods. It was a sad day. First they take away the cable so you have to have one or buy one. Then they just take away the compatibility. Again. It was a sad day.

I just prefer the 2.5" drives because it frees me from the wall. Most of the time I'll have the laptop plugged in but I don't want to have the HDD plugged in too. I don't have a desk though. I'd imagine if I did I'd probably have some sort array of things that could be plugged in to my laptop when it was on the desk.

my 2p: external dedicated storage is generally more expensive, less reliable, slower read/write, & more stealable. i use mine only for 2nd level backup now (i.e. warm stand-by). 3rd level being off-site DVDs in a fireproof safe.

If you do use external storage, install a product like easyrecovery, so you can deep scan the drive *when *it goes bad.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,123728;page,1/article.html

Can anyone recommend an affordable external drive, bus powered, fast and capacious?

Vendors of same would be good to know also.

find something with a 3-5 year guarantee. western digital or seagate

what's wrong with using your ipod?

Other than I don't have one?

Seagate jobbies are awesome...

I've got several Western Digital passports. They're awesome. Sizes up to 320gb I believe.

Big Pockets have a good range of hardware & offer free delivery on most items.

www.ebuyer.co.uk also very good for cheap prices and lots of choice. Also check the "Super Specials" on www.aria.co.uk.

I just use an old laptop harddrive in a usb enclosure which I bought for about 15coins.

yep, ebuyer are good. Also http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/products/a752x1y0z1p0s0n0m0 have a few good drives.

I like the Western Digital Pasport range- a friend of mine has one and also recommends it.
My issue is that it comes with sync software that is windows only, and I run Linux.
I assume that it would just be recognised as a HDD under Linux?

www.dabs.com

I just use an old laptop harddrive in a usb enclosure which I bought for about 15coins.

i tried that, but for some reason the hardrive wouldn't let me add/remove anything???