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Hi there

I am about to upgrade my systems, and want to find the best, most reliable external hard drive option specifically for Time Machine backup.

I am thinking of 1Tb, firewire, and either LaCie or G-Tech (or any other options available in the UK that you might think of)

I have had pretty great experience with LaCie Triple and Quad drives, of which I have extensively used about 35-40 units, with only one failure. I hear very good things about the G-Techs from my pals from the States, but have never used one.

Any thoughts or experiences would be much appreciated.

Many thanks

Stephen

There's no such thing as an infallible hard drive. It doesn't matter who you ask, you'll eventually hear tales of woe from users of all brands. The weak link in ext drives is usually the power supply and controller chip set. There are few drive makers left, so your drive will either be WD, Seagate/Maxtor, Samsung or Hitachi/IBM. I've never had a Maxtor or LaCie fail, but I've heard many failure stories. So, take whatever advice you get as anecdotal.

Best practice now is to buy external drives in pairs, using one as a daily or weekly clone (depending on how much work you can afford to lose). Since you're asking about Time Machine, which is presumably for backing up your boot drive, this might not apply. But, I suggest that if you can't clone a Time Machine drive back to your internal, in case of internal / boot drive failure, that you also keep a separate drive around that you can clone your boot drive to (via SuperDuper or CCC), in the event your boot drive fails, or you install some software or an upgrade that doesn't work out as planned. Restoring from a clone is often much faster than a clean install and update of all your disk contents.

I have set-up and repaired a lot of computers over the past 23 years and my experience is that Western Digital (formerly Quantum) has been the most reliable mechanism, and by far Maxtor is the worst. Unlike Jim... (I have NEVER experienced a Maxtor drive which "HAS NOT" failed). Currently Seagate is experiencing some serious firmware issues with its drives so I would be careful.

If your going external in addition to the points that Jim mentioned Heat Dissipation is also a big factor in drive failure. LaCie only makes the enclosures, so you may want to check which mechanism they bundle.

Ive heard a lot of horror stories about Lacie drives.

I have a G-Tech G-Drive 500GB, it's great because it makes very little noise (its fanless). It's quite new but not had any issues, and it looks great sat next to the macs.

A lot of people reckon 1TB drives start to get ineffective when they head towards capacity, where 500GB drives don't.

if you can afford it, a Glyph drive would do you very nicely. Have a look on Jigsaw, they're very good for music-production or film-production HDDs.

Thanks guys for all the recommendations!

I will maybe try a G-Tech for my purposes... thanks for the tip about 500Gb vs 1 Tb... that would be good advice for Time Machine.

I usually buy my project drives in pairs anyway (also good advice!!) so at the end of each day I backup the days work. The only time I had a project drive fail (a Lacie, one of dozens as I mentioned) I only lost about an hours worth of work.

However, twice in the last couple of months Time Machine has saved me. My G5 got very confused with a digital audio loop between ProTools and DP and my two audio interfaces, and the boot drive completely froze. TM had just done its thing and I had the boot drive restored within an hour or two.

The other one was even more wonderful.... I accidentally dropped a small magnet onto my MBP, and it attached itself firmly to the hard drive..... which immediately stopped spinning, never to spin again!!! I was about to go on the road and not in a position to have the internal replaced.... so I managed to restore to a small portable external drive... all worked fine for me until I was able to fit a new internal.

I would love to have Time Machine also backup my day to day audio/film projects, but the sheer amount of data would be prohibitive.... but it is fantastic for the boot drive and smaller daily files.

Kind regards


Stephen

Oh yes, one word of advice.

The only program that needed attention after restoring was DP. It required the original CD and the keycode.

I made sure that when I was on the road with my MBP and Time Machine drive that I had the disc and the keycode with me, just in case.

Protools, Photoshop, FCP, and all my plugins (which are on iLoks anyway) were fine. I think that Rocket Science was the only plugin that needed a new authorisation, and AudioEase were good at sending me a new one swiftly.

Cheers

Stephen

I've owned three LaCie drives, all of which failed in under a year of usage. My Seagate drives have never failed; nor my Hitachi drives.

What really gets me about LaCie is that they don't disclose the mechanism (unlike newertechnology and Glyph).

Not only that, but they pull archival specs as soon as they update, which is every six months or so.

This makes it almost impossible to track their products; including the ones you own. But they did use Western Digital for awhile at least.

I'm aware of recent Seagate problems, and they don't seem Maxtor-related. I guess they got sloppy or arrogant or both.

I need a new drive right now and am afraid to buy due to the Seagate foul-up. Hard to know how long before that inventory is cleared out.

LaCie uses any number of mechs in their drives, based on price and availability, so it's impossible to tell on the high-end stuff what mech is inside the case. In regards to the different brands of mechs, one's as good as another, these days (which isn't saying much ) For best results with a LaCie drive, make sure that your Mac OS is up-to-date and, if you have older drives, say 2 years or more, that the firewire firmware on the drive it up-to-date. Download and use the Mac updater as the PC one kind of sucks... Also, be nice to your cables and firewire ports and they will be nice to you.

Thanks,
A not-very-disgruntled ex-LaCie employee

Thanks for your info, but out of all the external drives that I've had, all my LaCies died molto rapide. I'll never buy anything of theirs again.

syntonica wrote:LaCie uses any number of mechs in their drives, based on price and availability, so it's impossible to tell on the high-end stuff what mech is inside the case. In regards to the different brands of mechs, one's as good as another, these days (which isn't saying much ) For best results with a LaCie drive, make sure that your Mac OS is up-to-date and, if you have older drives, say 2 years or more, that the firewire firmware on the drive it up-to-date. Download and use the Mac updater as the PC one kind of sucks... Also, be nice to your cables and firewire ports and they will be nice to you.

Thanks,
A not-very-disgruntled ex-LaCie employee

Frankly, it was probably bad power supplies. The drives are good, the power supplies not so much. But you didn't hear it from me.

i have 2 ext. OWC mercury elite pros that have always worked fine for me.

My experience:

Two Maxtor drives crapped out before their time.

One Fantom drive that keeps on truckin'.

jeff sanders wrote:i have 2 ext. OWC mercury elite pros that have always worked fine for me.

Ditto. I have two of their 300G triple interface (USB2, FW400 & 800).

The OWCs have a reputation of being built with quality parts. They have a plastic case, yet they're heavier than some Maxtor drives I have with extruded aluminum. So, that tells me that they're putting their money into components, not the case.

My preference has always been to go the external enclosure route and build my own. For the HDs, I've had the best luck with Western Digital and Samsung (Samsung drives have come a long way), and the worst luck with Maxtor. I've been looking for an inexpensive external enclosure lately, but haven't seen anything I like. The trend has been to get away from internal power supplies and go with wall-warts. Not my cup of tea. Most of the units I've liked with internal power supplies are over priced. Oh well.

Phil

WD all the way for me.