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External Seagate Drive - Buy or don't

DEXTERITY

DEXTERITY

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 14, 2004
683
363
I know there a million threads on external drives, but I've never seen this one mentioned:

http://www.seagate.com/products/retail/external/usbfirewire

It is an external seagate hard drive. I don't think it has Firewire 800 but I was wondering what people thought of it. I usually purchase lacie external drives, but came across this while searching around.

I'm a little weary of getting an internal seagate drive with an external case for it (not sure how reliable they are when it comes to music, video, problems, and the cases available). I'm real paranoid of losing my studio sessions, etc.

Anyone ever use one of these externa seagate drives?

Thanks..
 
DEXTERITY said:
I'm a little weary of getting an internal seagate drive with an external case for it (not sure how reliable they are when it comes to music, video, problems, and the cases available). I'm real paranoid of losing my studio sessions, etc.
Click to expand...

Why not conside one of MacSale.com's enclosures with a Seagate drive? I have two now and they are flawless. Absolutely flawless. And quiet, unlike my Lacie. I'm really wary of losing my image library and these don't phase me a bit.
 
I have Seagate's 300 GB external HD. The same shape as the 500 GB you are thinking about. So far, I like Seagate unit as I have not experienced anything bad so far. I also installed Seagate's 100 GB internal drive in my Ti PB and it is also chugging along without problems. I think they make a good hard drive.
 
I'm currently using a 300GB Push-button one, with firewire and usb2.

My younger brother owns a Maxtor II USB/Firewire, and as usual, the older brother wins the fight. The maxtor usually shuts off at random times and rarely re-connects, even after restart. Mine hasn't had any problems. The noise is the only burn-off imo. When you leave the seagate external hd inactive, it takes a 5-10 seconds to whirl up after you click on an app (pertaining to the external hd). This is f-in annoying because its rather loud and imo long. the maxtor is rather mild, but seagate's annoying. aside from the noise, it's a reliable source. For the 229price i paid for it last year, it was a helluva bargain.
 
I have no experience with the particular drive that you are looking at DEXTERITY, but I have used several Seagate HDDs in the past and have been quite pleased with them.
 
I bought a Seagate internal IDE drive and a cheapo USB2 enclosure from CompUSSR and it works great. More than likely cheaper too if you shop around a bit for the hard drive.
 
Thank you for the feedback guys. Appreciate that. Now I'm tempted to try both the Seagate external and on of macsales drives. So the macsale drives are definitely good? I thought someone said if you have the wrong case they can fail or whatever problems that happen?

I was looking at them yesterday (someone posted a link to them in another thread). Is the external Seagate firewire 400 or 800? Thanks again.
 
I actually own that model of Seagate external Hard drive. It's one of Seagate's flagship models. I however wouldn't buy ANY external drive thats over 200 Gigs. For some reason All Seagate, WD, and Lacie drives over 200 gigs are defective. No manufacture at this current time can really make a reliable external drive over 200 gigs. Don't believe me read some reviews. I will say my 200 gig drive is whisper quiet and stays surprisingly cool even under a hard work load (thats the most important selling point of this Seagate external drive). Essentially I'm giving this drive the thumbs up on reliability, temperature regulation (staying cool), and value (the 200 gig drive is pretty cheap on Amazon and buy.com). I will say however that this 7500 RPM drive is on the slower side (this is by comparison to my brother's Lacie). The slowness might have to do with the specially designed super quiet motor. Basically this drive doesn't sound like a blender like most externals do. Truth be told I can't even hear this drive while it's working. Remember I'm speaking about the 200 gig drive; anything larger than it pretty much sucks. Also from what I've read the the 300 and 500 gig drives are pretty damn slow (even when you use the FW connection provided). Also the 300 and 500 gig drives are pretty damn load. People on Amazon usually return their 300 and 500 gig drives for the 200 gig one. Basically the 200 gig is quieter and a hell of a lot more reliable than it's bigger siblings. I'll say that this drive comes in a smaller size 160 gig model thats just as reliable as the 200 gig drive.
 
I have the 200GB one like the one shown in
that link, and it is not FW800, just 400.

The noise when the drive starts up is a little
irritating, but not horrible. Mine works great
and I keep it constantly connected. I'm hosting
my iTunes library and my backup files on it.
 
Check the warranty.

If you buy an internal Seagate Barracuda drive, you'll get a 5 year warranty.
Put in a firewire case of your choice. The case will have one year, the drive mechanism still 5 years.

Many bundled externals come with only a one year warranty on everything, (coundn't tell from the included link on this one) It's not worth losing 4 years of warranty in order to buy the drive in a fancy(er) case.
 
hmmm decisions, lol. Thanks for the feedback. I was actually going to get a 500 HD (external or internal in an external case). I guess I will stay away from that. Thanks for the heads up. Do you think a 500 internal in an external case would have problems as well?
 
is a gigabit ethernet network storage device out of the question? Why do people want firewire drives so much? I get the portable, machine swappable mass storage aspect of it, but for production purposes... I mean, do that many people actually work on large files off of external drives?

I can understand playing music off an external drive, but wouldn't you want to transfer huge files like videos to internal disks before working anyway? Do audio producers actually keep samples and tracks on a firewire drive and produce tracks in Live with files off the external?

In that case, if I needed 500 gigs of firewire storage I would look into a RAID device. Maybe RAID5 or RAID 0+1 setup using 4 250 gig drives with one backup drive on hand... You can always start with 2 or 3 drives and add more... (which could become a pain)
 
DEXTERITY said:
Thank you for the feedback guys. Appreciate that. Now I'm tempted to try both the Seagate external and on of macsales drives. So the macsale drives are definitely good? I thought someone said if you have the wrong case they can fail or whatever problems that happen?

I was looking at them yesterday (someone posted a link to them in another thread). Is the external Seagate firewire 400 or 800? Thanks again.
Click to expand...

The Macsales one's rule. I've had the big old Lacie 1TB and the Maxtor's and these are my favorite, hands down.
 
iGary said:
The Macsales one's rule. I've had the big old Lacie 1TB and the Maxtor's and these are my favorite, hands down.
Click to expand...

how did they compare on whine/noise?
 
iGary said:
The Macsales one's rule. I've had the big old Lacie 1TB and the Maxtor's and these are my favorite, hands down.
Click to expand...


cool. I think I am going to try them out. What is the difference in having a raid drive?

Thanks..
 
go esata

i recently looked into adding more storage. depending on what your needs are and what your current cash flow is, i highly recommend going with an esata enclosure. it's more expensive upfront, but way more expandable and down the road, better dollar value.
last august, i bought a 400 GB gdrive from g-technology. i absolutely love the drive itself, but value wise, i'm going to get way more from my esata enclosure.

i purchased the fusion400 from sonnet with a card and a 500 GB maxtor HD. i still have 3 bays left of which i'll continue to fill with 500 GBrs to add another 2 TBs of space.

of course, it also depends on what your are doing, but saving studio sessions sounds like you may need to go this route. you can raid them too if you like.

more info at sonnettech.com

ps. you can also buy 2 bay esata enclosures. it's the fastest type of connection out there too as it's essentially an internal HD hooked up directly to your motherboard via pci card :)

if you do go the external route, my gdrive is fantastic. if i ever bought another external, i would buy from them.
 
sk1985 said:
I actually own that model of Seagate external Hard drive. It's one of Seagate's flagship models. I however wouldn't buy ANY external drive thats over 200 Gigs. For some reason All Seagate, WD, and Lacie drives over 200 gigs are defective.
Click to expand...

That's big pile of crap. All drives over 200GB are defective? Pu-leeese.

Get a Seagate drive. They're fine and carry a five year warrantee. I agree that it is better to put your own together and I have the OWC Mercury Elite Pro enclosure that has been referred to here. It works flawlessly.
 
I guess I'm gonna check the macsales out and the above drive recommended for studio sessions (sonnetech).. Thanks..
 
What I use is a Macally (sp?) aluminium enclosure with any 3.5" drive that happens to be sitting around at the moment.

The Macally enclosures are really well constructed and never let me down, I strongly recommend one of those :)
 
thanks for the link.. can't decide between macsales (cheaper in price may sway me here) and this sonnettech (anyone else check this out, it seems pretty interesting). I assume the price for the sonnettech is just for the case and it doesn't include the hard drives and anything else I would need?
 
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