Harddrive Advice

[oldMac]

Clarification (does Lacie make drives?)

Hi All,

Just to clarify things a bit...

Saying that Lacie doesn't make drives is misleading. Lacie doesn't make hard drives in the same way that Apple doesn't make computers. Apple doesn't "make" computers, they design them and use other companies parts and hand off manufacturing to various companies in China/Taiwan.

In the same way, Lacie doesn't "make" hard drives. They design enclosures, choose other companies parts (including the physical hard drive mechanism) and (probably) hand off manufacturing to some other company.

So, while they don't necessarily "make" the drives, they certainly have a large hand in whether or not they work correctly and are ultimately responsible for whether or not they do.

My personal experience is that Lacie makes reliable stuff and that Maxtor's products are not as reliable.

Reliability mostly has to do with design and choosing good components, and it's my impression that Lacie generally does a good job with this.

While you can buy an external closure + hard drive and put it together yourself, there's very little savings to be had when it comes to quality. I've gone the "cheapest route" before and usually the result is something annoying like the enclosure fan stops working after several months.

I say "buy the Lacie".

 

[~Shard~]

Just to clarify things a bit...

Thanks for this - I tried to make this clear in my posts, but this detailed explanation is good to ensure people understand properly. As I said in my earlier posts, Lacie drives do get ranked very high when it comes to quality, so I have nothing against them and I think they sell solid products, however I have seen that a common misconception by any people is that Lacie is a HD manufacturer, when this is in fact not the case.

While you can buy an external closure + hard drive and put it together yourself, there's very little savings to be had when it comes to quality.

Yes, quite true, but it depends on the quality of the product you're looking at - and it goes both ways. A crappy external HD or a crappy internal drive and/or enclosure of course makes a difference, and this is indepedent of the actual solution you're implementing - one is not inherently better than another. As for cost savings, as I said before, the only point I'll make here is that byte for byte, internal drives are cheaper than external drives. Sure, you have the added cost of the enclosure, but you also have the freedom knowing you can pop a new drive into the enclosure if you ever need to. Whereas with an external drive, you're stuck with that drive for good. With the ever-increasing capacities and ever-decreasing costs/byte, this is something to consider. But it all depends what your needs are and your level of comfortability (is that a word? ) when it comes to simple DIY projects. Some people prefer having the external drive even though using an enclosure is the further thing from rocket science.

I've gone the "cheapest route" before and usually the result is something annoying like the enclosure fan stops working after several months.

As I said above though, it's not necessarily "the cheapest route". A person could buy a cheap external HD (and have it crash) or a cheap enclosure solution and have problems - neither of these solutions is inherently flawed or "cheap" on its own. You can get very high quality external drives, just as you can get very high quality enclosures to ensure the fan does not quit, as you cite in your example.

So, I'm not saying external HDs are bad, I'm just trying to get all the information out there so people can make educated decisions based on their requirements knowing all the options available to them along with the corresponding pros and cons.

 

[EricNau]

Hard drives are very useful when you can access them.

I'm assuming you meant the exact opposite of what you said. So you are referring to storing it away? I just meant that if the HD was simply for storage - backing up your system, or archiving a bunch of data (perhaps someone has a "Illegally Downloaded Movies" HD ) - then you could put that HD away and plug it back in when needed, meanwhile putting in a new HD into the enclosure if necessary. With an external drive, what you have, you're stuck with.

oops, ya that's what I meant. and now I see why someone might want to stash a HDD drive away.

 

[~Shard~]

oops, ya that's what I meant. and now I see why someone might want to stash a HDD drive away.

No worries...

Yeah, I know many poelpe who do just that. I personally have spindles and spindles of DVDs of burned data stored away, but could do the same with HDs if I wanted to, there's no difference really.

 

[EricNau]

No worries...

Yeah, I know many poelpe who do just that. I personally have spindles and spindles of DVDs of burned data stored away, but could do the same with HDs if I wanted to, there's no difference really.

DVD's are probably cheaper, unless of course your storing Terabytes worth of data.

 

[Counterfit]

You can get very high quality external drives, just as you can get very high quality enclosures to ensure the fan does not quit, as you cite in your example.

Or you can get an enclosure that doesn't even use a fan.

DVD's are probably cheaper, unless of course your storing Terabytes worth of data.

These work out to about 5¢ per GB. This works out to be about 39¢/GB. Of course, HD's are much faster, and can hold more in one space (kind of expensive to do a RAID with multiple DVD drives )

 

[~Shard~]

DVD's are probably cheaper, unless of course your storing Terabytes worth of data.

Yeah, and that's why I use DVDs. When I downloaded my complete Doctor Who collection (yes, I'm a big geek) I had over 170 GB of video, so I backed them up to ~40 DVDs. They sit nicely in a spindle on my shelf, next to my 20-some DVDs which house my entire BBC Essential Mix collection, and my - well, you get the idea...

 

[~Shard~]

Or you can get an enclosure that doesn't even use a fan.

These work out to about 5¢ per GB. This works out to be about 39¢/GB. Of course, HD's are much faster, and can hold more in one space (kind of expensive to do a RAID with multiple DVD drives )

Exactly - it all depends what your needs and intended uses are. DVD storage is cheap, but isn't suited for all applications as you have pointed out.

 

[sjpetry]

One More Question

____Ok after searching around I found these two. The Enclosure and the HardDrive.

I just wanted to check with all of you enlightened Mac fanciers that both of these will work together. Will their be heat problems?

If these will works I will be extremely happy. It will have twice the cashe, a much better enclosure with FireWire and USB 2.0, and 50 more GBs for $9.46 less.

Once again you guys taught me something.

 

[~Shard~]

Ok after searching around I found these two. The Enclosure and the HardDrive.

I haven't heard of PAA before, but that enclosure looks cool. The main thing though, is does is have the Oxford 911 chipset? This is a must in my books.

As for the drive, I dislike Maxtor drives, but that's just personal preference. Between myself, my friends and my coworkers, it seems like Maxtor drives have caused more grief than any other drives. But as I said, that's just me, I'm sure many people have had no troubles whatsoever with their Maxtor drives.

Personally, I would recommend Seagate. They have very high quality drives and a 5-year warranty, which Maxtor does not. Again though, just personal preference.

Once again you guys taught me something.

That's what we're here for, glad to be of assistance.

 

[EricNau]

I haven't heard of PAA before, but that enclosure looks cool. The main thing though, is does is have the Oxford 911 chipset? This is a must in my books.

As for the drive, I dislike Maxtor drives, but that's just personal preference. Between myself, my friends and my coworkers, it seems like Maxtor drives have caused more grief than any other drives. But as I said, that's just me, I'm sure many people have had no troubles whatsoever with their Maxtor drives.

Personally, I would recommend Seagate. They have very high quality drives and a 5-year warranty, which Maxtor does not. Again though, just personal preference.



That's what we're here for, glad to be of assistance.

What is this Oxford 911 chipset?

 

[~Shard~]

What is this Oxford 911 chipset?

It's the chip used for the FireWire connection. It's essentially the industry-best chipset in this capacity.

 

[Counterfit]

If your computer has FireWire 800, go for the Oxford 912 instead