External HD recommendations....

[timriley]

I recently got an Avastor external drive, one of the SDX range. I've had no problems at all so far, except that the fan perhaps seems a little noisy.. They also have a HDX range of drives which look really good..

I got mine from here.
http://www.protape.co.uk/products/hard-drives.html

[Stuartfox]

I've had every brand of HDD let me down at one time or another, however I can say that I have 3 external hard drives here,

A Lacie 1TB
A Lacie LaCie Biggest S2S
and a Buffalo 1TB

The Lacie 1TB has been working flawlessly for 10 months or so. It looks pretty too

The Buffalo drive has done some strange things, I backed up some data onto it, and now whenever I plug it in the computer wants to reformat it. I will have to go into it with a disk utility at some point to see if it actually lost the data (it was nothing that I need so I'm not worried, I just wouldn't trust it now).

And the S2S is just silly - I plan to stream all my Virtual intrument content from that Should be good!


As I've said - EVERY brand of HDD has let me down so bare in mind you can't trust any of them, but going by my current experience - this one works well for me!

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=11014

Stuart
www.goodsounds.co.uk
www.myspace.com/music4screen

[lodstudios]

My suggestion, build your own. You can save money and get the enclosure you want.

I have built my own for the last 3 years and have never looked back. I prefer Seagate because they never fail me, but you know it will at some point. Check out http://www.otherworldcomputing.com, they have everything you will need...setup takes less than 5 minutes and you are off and running.

I have a 500gb Seagate and love it, it is a workhorse!

[bongo_x]

People keep using the terms "drive" and "enclosure" interchangeably. They're 2 different things. Companies like LaCie don't make hard drives, they use different drives inside their cases. Any company I've ever seen that isn't an actual hard drive manufacturer will use all kinds of drives in their cases. Only in the last few years have hard drive companies like Seagate started selling a lot of their own external enclosures, naturally they would have Seagate drives in them.

If you external drive goes out make sure and check whether it's the drive itself or the case. It's easy to swap them out. Usually a case goes bad because of the power supply or causes the drive to die because of overheating (poor design). I've had both those problems with LaCie in the past, but that depends on the specific case and those problems may have been fixed. The quality of cases is all over the map. Try to bet one that doesn't really on a $.03 fan to keep the drive from overheating. And leave some room around it to breathe.

As for actual drives, the quality is so good in the last 10 years or so that I don't pay much attention. Most of the major companies have been very reliable outside of a few specific cases. I was just discussing this with a computer tech guy who had the same opinion. It used to be much more of an issue.

bb

[analog1]

Iomega firewire someone ?
Any experience are welcome
thanks

[inhouseprod]

Has anyone ever considered a Drobo?

http://www.drobo.com/products/drobo.php

I've looked at this for a while now - a bit pricey but from what I hear, they have the redundancy part down. Is it fast enough to store VI libraries on?

[Jim]

Iomega firewire someone ?
Any experience are welcome
thanks

Many of my experiences with Iomega are bad. But like many others have said, they don't make the drives, just an enclosure. I don't think they have the best design or build quality. I did have a SCSI Zip drive that was great, but I went through two or three of their Jaz drives, and had a really high failure rate on their Jaz disks. Left me with a bad taste for the company in general.

I second or third or fourth or whatever the endorsement to go with OWC. The seem to have the most reliable power supply you can get on an external drive.

I just don't understand this mentality of having to have something RIGHT NOW, so you go to Frys to get whatever crap they have in inventory, when you could just keep your shirt on a few days, and get something solid from Macsales.

I've been hearing trash talk about the Drobo lately. Google the forums.

[HCMarkus]

I bought a PC Power supply ($40) and used it to replace a failed supply on an OWC case. Worked great, and I can power 6 externals or more with this single supply as my various outboard supplies fail.

Here's how I did it:

I went to Fry's after doing a little web hunting for compatible External HD supplies without much success. Since my enclosure holds two drives, more power was required than a typical single-drive enclose supply would provide. Fry's had nothing either, untiI came up with the idea of buying an inexpensive PC Power Supply (Antec Basiq, 430 Watts for $40.00) and surgically attaching the old power wire via Molex connector to the new supply. Works like a charm, and when my second OWC (or any of my other external drive's) power supply dies, I will simply power the enclosures from my new switching supply. Plenty of power here to give a boost to all my external drives at once. My drives are now humming along nicely.

Here's a good site with info that came in handy: http://web2.murraystate.edu/andy.batts/ ... supply.htm I didn't get as fancy as this guy, just soldered a few wires together. The load resistor is not necessary when driving HDs, as they provide the load necessary for the supply to function. Just make sure you get the pin out right (it varies from external enclosure to enclosure - even similar enclosures from different production runs can have different pin outs - check the power supply that came with the enclosure for pin out), and don't forget to jumper the green wire to ground (any Black wire), 'cause the supply won't operate unless you do. Yellow wires provide 12 volts. Red provide 5 volts. You don't need the 3.3 volt (Orange) wire to be hooked up. If you really want to make it simple, and if your enclosure is fanless, just drill a hole in the enclosure and directly hook up one of the SATA power plugs that come pre=attached on modern power supplies to your drive.

Another idea is to simply buy a standard computer case with built-in SATA power and fans and mount all your eSATA drives therein. Takes up more vertical space, but way cheaper than multiple small enclosures.

[kgdrum]

The only Lacie I ever had was a dud,it died within 2 years,I have had good experiences with Seagates but earlier this year when I changed most of my drives I went with(5)Hitachi drives(OWC recommended)they work well.
They are a bit noisy but all have been OK.