External Hard Drives

[tutusue]

Re: External Hard Drives

[...]Tutusue, if you need Mac work of any kind, contact MacMouse. They are around the block from ChumpUSA. These guys have great overnight service...and I mean over night too! Anything you need done they can do it for you at a very resonable price. They use to have free OSX classes there too. Gosh, I can't think of the bosses name right off hand, but they make a great alternative to going to the Genius Bar!

Rolf and Big Mike! But the REAL bosses there are Hinahina and Pili...Mac dogs (both are boxers) extraordinaire!

My office and their store are in the same building. There have been many times I've run across the parking lot in a computer panic! Overnight service for any computer shop depends on how busy they are. True of any business, tho'! I also have ProCare which comes in very handy for help learning applications. The Untechie Tutu in me needs all the help she can get!

My DV SE hard drive was larger than 13 gb to begin with then had it replace with an even bigger one when the old one crashed. I still have it but no longer use it. I'm totally laptop now.

[jkpescador]

Re: External Hard Drives

Are any brands prefered over another?

[pzarquon]

Re: External Hard Drives

There aren't altogether too many manufacturers of hard drives. Hitachi, Fujitsu, Western Digital, Seagate... Lots of people have brand preferences, though many just shop by price.

The "MyBook" 500GB drives they sell at Costco seem like a pretty good deal. I think you want to aim for 50 cents per gigabyte or better.

[speedtek]

Re: External Hard Drives

Becareful I had 3 customers External Hard drives die last week.

bottom line: back it up! Trust no-one.

Lacie 500gb (drive died, power supply bad)
Iomega 160gb (electronics on interface died, drive OK)
Maxtor 250gb (electronics on interface died, drive OK)

[shaveice]

Re: External Hard Drives

ain't that the truth. if everything depends on one backup source and that one fails for some reason, you're in trouble. it becomes more expensive and a bigger headache, but having two backups somewhat guarantees your precious cargo...

[craigwatanabe]

Re: External Hard Drives

I build my own external hard drives. My latest is a 250Gb Western Digital 8Mb cache 7200 RPM internal hard drive mated to a Bytecc aluminum USB 2.0 external hard drive case.

I've never had any problems with Western Digital or Hitachi but have had Seagate's fail on me twice already.

LaCie makes a really nice external but they are fragile beasts that cannot seem to dissapate heat well.

[reineke]

Re: External Hard Drives

Some nice external enclosures out there, working with firewire, a beaut.

[Hellbent]

Re: External Hard Drives

Hmmm...I'm on a Mac so my experience may be different but I find that firewire is faster than USB 2.

I wonder if my info is incorrect or if its because firewire is mac and usb2 intel?

edit:
googled, looks like mac doesnt fully support usb2: http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.html

According to this article, usb1 is 12mbps, firewire is 400-480mbps, and usb2 is 240-480 or about 320mbps.
http://www.canadiancontent.net/tech/...b-vs-firewire/
http://www.everythingusb.com/usb2/faq.htm
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,844061,00.asp

so it looks like firewire can do more stable sustained speeds but it depends on the usb controller, software and cable. meh.
all i know is i tried to hook up my nano to my pc and it said it doesnt support firewire on pc.

[Vanguard]

Re: External Hard Drives

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16822144340R

Western Digital is good.

[Miulang]

Re: External Hard Drives

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16822144340R

Western Digital is good.

Maxtor drives manufactured in Malaysia were having quality issues a few years back; don't know if things have gotten any better. I usually buy Western Digital now.

Miulang

[tutusue]

Re: External Hard Drives

A bit off topic but still dealing with ext. hard drives...

My laptop's hard drive unexpectedly bit the dust this past Sat. afternoon. SmartReporter gave no warning like it had in the past. When I got back to the office and booted up things obviously weren't right. I hadn't backed up anything in a month. The good news, other than the computer's still under warranty? I did a back-up on Friday night! I swear that my computer was just waiting for me to do that then went "phhhhhhheeeeew" and crapped out!!! I gave it a big hug and took it to Dr. Apple at Ala Moana where he diagnosed an imminent failure. It had to be sent to intensive care on the mainland.

Ext. hard drives rock! As mentioned in other threads I have 2 250gb drives, one at home, one at the office, and a portable 40gb drive...just in case!

Then...yesterday my iPod bit the dust so it was back to see Dr. Apple. It, too, is still under warranty but that contained my only currently usable iCal back-up 'til my laptop returns! And without iCal I'm a has-been, a forgetful loser, useless to society! Seriously, I'm completely dependent on it. Fortunately last Fri. night I also backed up iCal and iTunes to my portable drive in addition to the 250 drive. So, I was given a brand new iPod and Dr. Apple was able to load it up from the port. drive. I'm back in business!

Back up...

Back up...

Back up...

I was soooo lucky!

[craigwatanabe]

Re: External Hard Drives

I back up all my stuff.

My master hard drive in my computer is an 80Gb but the data is held onto another internal 80Gb slave drive. Then I backup everything on the slave drive to my external. I use 80Gb drives because they are less prone to crashing than large format drives and are easier to defrag.

Twice a year I reformat my Master and Slave drives so they run optimally.

I imagine eventually flash drives will replace conventional hard drives as compression technology becomes better and better. Can you imagine a bank of them? Right now I think flash drives are up to 4Gb? With two four-port USB hubs you can run 32Gb of storage.

[speedtek]

Re: External Hard Drives

the biggest problem with the external drive cases is poor airflow or CHEAP fans. I have one that cools well but the fan got stuck after a month (from newegg, purchased 5 of them, all bad/noisy fans within 3 months). I have been trying to find the replacement fan with ball bearings but I guess it is too small.

Lacie cases run too hot and kill the drives.

I stay with WD, maxtor seagate and samsung cant take the little bumps.

[Hellbent]

Re: External Hard Drives

I imagine eventually flash drives will replace conventional hard drives as compression technology becomes better and better. Can you imagine a bank of them? Right now I think flash drives are up to 4Gb? With two four-port USB hubs you can run 32Gb of storage.

They are making hyrbid drives - conventional hd with larger flash drives for buffer. Theres already been announced a 32GB flash drive prototype.
I also heard of a pci card that RAM mounts on - making it act like a hard drive.

[jkpescador]

Re: External Hard Drives

What about portable externals?
Any recommendations?