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Recommended External Hard Drives?

Sbrocket

Sbrocket

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 3, 2007
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Which brand/specific external hard drives do you recommend? I'm in search of a 500gb external drive to go with my new SR MBP, and while I can find plenty of them from various online stores...everyone seems to have a different opinion as to which is the most reliable. I'm planning to use as half TM backup and half extra external storage. It'll be sitting in my dorm room almost 24/7, so portability is no requirement.

I'm leaning towards the LaCie 500gb d2 Quadra right now, especially since its quad-interface and still less than $200 on Newegg. Seems like a good deal to me, but how's the reliability of LaCie drives? I've seen a few posts about fast-faulting circuitry between the multiple drives in the housing.

What would you suggest?

:apple:

Edit: Hrm, how did I end up in this forum...
 
I've got several (2 Lacie's, a Toshiba, 2 3rd party enclosures, and a Freecom 500gb). I prefer the Freecom to all of them... looks great, very solid build, whisper quiet... so far anyway.
 
318MF18ZJAL._AA280_.jpg


i got myself a WD mybook pro for my 2.16 mbpro. the finish matches the mbpro perfectly :D
 
I just bought a 750 gb quad interface drive from OWC. I also bought a SIIG eSata expresscard adapter. The drive comes with 4 CABLES! (firewire 400, 800, USB2, eSata) I ordered this Saturday afternoon and received it early Monday morning!

the best part is the whole setup costed me $479.00 shipped to my door.

Also came with some backup software and a ton of old apple commercials. The eSata connection IS significantly faster than firewire 800. (I also have a Lacie 500gb firewire 800) I can film a quick video of transferring files to it if anyone would like to see an eSata drive in real life use with the expresscard adapter. I know I had trouble finding tons of eSata information before I bought this. But all and all great, fast, quiet drive.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
 
I bought an external HD from the Apple store its the WD Mybook Premium, because i had a store gift card, f you can buy it online the prices are much cheaper, it's amazing. i love it. Easy to use just great and apparently that have great long lives.
 
I have used LaCie, but more recently I've bought and installed G-Tech G-Drives. Beautiful looking, they match the Mac Pro and MacBook Pro perfectly, but more importantly, they perform very well. I have a couple of 250 GB HDs and a couple of 500 GB HDs.
 
A friend of mine has had two lacie drives die on him recently, the two drive versions, the board dies for some reason.

I have a small 100gb lacie mobile drive that's been chugging along for about a year now, and it works fine.

As for 3.5" external drives, I wouldn't go with western digital. I like seagate drives myself, they have the best warranty, 5 years. I've had to use that warranty once, real awesome, you get an rma, ship it in, and they ship you a new one, no questions asked. (remember to backup you stuff, btw, i almost lost 400 gb of video).

Anyway I'd go with a OWC AL Pro (that one is usb2/fw400/fw800, but they have just fw 4/8, and ones with usb, fw4/8, and esata.) case and a seagate drive from newegg. Usually putting the drives together like this is cheaper, plus you know what's in there, and you know the warranty.
 
Sbrocket said:
...I'm leaning towards the LaCie 500gb d2 Quadra right now, especially since its quad-interface and still less than $200 on Newegg. Seems like a good deal to me, but how's the reliability of LaCie drives? I've seen a few posts about fast-faulting circuitry between the multiple drives in the housing...
Click to expand...

I've bought a LaCie 500gb d2 Quadra to complement my 2.2 machine (as in sig)... depending on how willing you are to wait I can let you know my experience of combining the two... Although you may be after longer standing external hard drive users! :)
 
desk003 said:
A friend of mine has had two lacie drives die on him recently, the two drive versions, the board dies for some reason.

I have a small 100gb lacie mobile drive that's been chugging along for about a year now, and it works fine.

As for 3.5" external drives, I wouldn't go with western digital. I like seagate drives myself, they have the best warranty, 5 years. I've had to use that warranty once, real awesome, you get an rma, ship it in, and they ship you a new one, no questions asked. (remember to backup you stuff, btw, i almost lost 400 gb of video).

Anyway I'd go with a OWC AL Pro (that one is usb2/fw400/fw800, but they have just fw 4/8, and ones with usb, fw4/8, and esata.) case and a seagate drive from newegg. Usually putting the drives together like this is cheaper, plus you know what's in there, and you know the warranty.
Click to expand...

See, I would do this if it were actually cheaper. First, that enclosure doesn't say it supports SATA drives. Which is kind of weird for an enclosure with FW800, but that's what the page tells me. The version of the enclosure that specifically states SATA compatibility is the $109 quad-interface version. Add on a $115 drive from Newegg and you're past the price range of a lot of the other external drives on Newegg.

Still not sure though. I'd like to do the enclosure + separate drive thing so I know exactly what kind of drive I'm using, but I dunno.

:apple:
 
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