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So, I'm in the market for an external hard drive for my Powerbook, as the USB drive proved to be slow for what I need. My main requirements are that it be at least 80 gigs, at least firewire 400, but more ideally firewire 800, and hopefully won't break the bank.

I was going to get a LaCie external drive, but I've been reading some horrendous reviews of the company on Cnet. Can you guys give me any advice?

What type of budget are you looking at?

General Zod wrote:What type of budget are you looking at?

Ideally, I'd hope to not break $200, but I am selling my old drive to help offset the price of the new one.

My advice would be to head over to newegg or your favorite etailor and pick up the case you desire then go to www.slickdeals.org and wait for a HD that fits the case you chose. Definatly won't run you over $200 bucks; unless you get an expensive case.

Newegg has several drives for under $200 that would meet your needs. Some of the better brands are Maxtor & Western Digital. Linka.

Question about the Maxtor: is it mac compatible?
Another ignorant question: with the one-touch backup drives, will I still be able to read and write as if it is another drive, or is it a different feature?

Well my LaCie 250gb USB2 works just fine, and it was cheap.

Faram wrote:Well my LaCie 250gb USB2 works just fine, and it was cheap.

How long have you had it, if you don't mind me asking?

Saurencaerthai wrote:Question about the Maxtor: is it mac compatible?
Another ignorant question: with the one-touch backup drives, will I still be able to read and write as if it is another drive, or is it a different feature?

The brand of hard drive should make no difference to the operating system if it's an external. Since you're not loading any OS software onto it, it should simply show up as an extra drive letter.

FW400 should be more than enough for all but the fastest hard drives. One route you might consider is buying your own hard drive and enclosure.

Saurencaerthai wrote:

Faram wrote:Well my LaCie 250gb USB2 works just fine, and it was cheap.

How long have you had it, if you don't mind me asking?

two months, no problems so far...

Faram wrote:

Saurencaerthai wrote:

Faram wrote:Well my LaCie 250gb USB2 works just fine, and it was cheap.

How long have you had it, if you don't mind me asking?

two months, no problems so far...

That's the thing. The same story seems to be croping up: the drive is 16-18 months old, dies, and the company won't support it.

If you get just an external enclosure and put a regular hard drive in it, then you could get a hard drive with a five-year warranty.

phongn wrote:FW400 should be more than enough for all but the fastest hard drives. One route you might consider is buying your own hard drive and enclosure.

Bonus with this method is you get the typically longer internal drive warranty (Seagate, for ex, has 1 year external drive warranty, but 5 year internal drive.)

Have to be careful and make sure you get the right hard drive; some manufacturers only give three or even one year warranties on their hard drives.

Saurencaerthai wrote:That's the thing. The same story seems to be croping up: the drive is 16-18 months old, dies, and the company won't support it.

Really? All the reviews I saw said LaCie was extremely reliable, lasting a very long time with no problems. I have had a LaCie I have used for backups for 2 years with no problem, and my father has 2. I also have an external I use continuously (250gig), but I have only had that a few months. It seems to be Maxtor that breaks down pretty quickly, both according to reviews I have read any my own experience (my dad had 2 maxtor drives break after only about 6 months). In fact, I read up on several major brands and LaCie seemed to be the only one that didn't have reliability issues.

TheBlackCat wrote:both according to reviews I have read any my own experience (my dad had 2 maxtor drives break after only about 6 months).

I'll try and put this as gently as I can.

Anecdotal evidence towards the reliability of hard drive brands is worthless.

Seriously, across the internet you will find people that swear by Maxtor drives because they had a couple of Maxtors that lasted forever and their Western Digitals all died. You'll find people that refuse to use Maxtor because they had a couple of drives die on them.

The instances of a particular brand or model having a significantly higher failure rate than their competitors are quite uncommon - one of these was the infamous IBM "Deathstar" debacle in which there was a defective run of the 60 and 75GXP Deskstar hard drives.

If you're going to assert that a given brand or model of hard drive has a higher failure rate than others, please give us some hard data to look at rather than "well my dad had a couple fail, and one of my friend's hard drives makes this clicking sound".

Now, a much more valid argument for buying one brand or model over another is the warranty. When I put together my personal file server a few months ago, I specifically bought the hard drives I did because they have a five-year warranty.

Generally, the biggest killer of hard drives is the environment, most often the drive running at high temperatures. Enclosures sometimes don't provide adequate cooling or ventilation, and the hard drive gets warmer than is best for it and the failure rate increases. What you're seeing with the different brands of external hard drives may not be a function of drive reliability so much as enclosure design.

(There's a story I heard, which I cannot confirm, that one of Microsoft's data centers started suffering hard drive failures after the temperature had been raised by five degrees (Fahrenheit) when one of the cooling units died, because the hard drives had settled in so thoroughly to their environment.)

Seagate typically offers 5 year warranties for its drives, but they are not cheap.

Er... they're not that much more expensive than their competitors.

Uraniun235 wrote:Er... they're not that much more expensive than their competitors.

Their externa HD solutions are very limited, and there is a small price premium, especially since I have yet to see a Seagate sale where I live.

Master of Ossus wrote:

Uraniun235 wrote:Er... they're not that much more expensive than their competitors.

Their externa HD solutions are very limited, and there is a small price premium, especially since I have yet to see a Seagate sale where I live.

Seagate external drives have the same 1 year warranty as everyone else.

I side with phong; you could always go internal HD in an external enclosure. Much cheaper, and same functionality.

If you don't mind getting a 3 year warranty, you can get a 160 SATA-II Hard drive and an aluminum external hard drive enclosure for under $100.