Replacing Seagate drives w/WD?

darrell · Post by **darrell** » Thu Jun 10, 2010 11:49 am

Hi all. Hope I'm in the right spot. I have 3 Seagate Freeagent drives that just crapped out on me. I just today read about their mass failure of drives---too late, of course, to do anything about it.

I'd like to switch, I think, to Western Digital drives, but am a little confused about their "Mybook" series for Mac. I have a Macbook Pro Intel core duo with only Firewire 400. I'm gonna stick with external drives for the time being, because sooner or later gonna get a tower. ESATA runs only on FW 800, no?

ALL suggestions greatly appreciated!!

thanks,
Darrell

newrigel · Post by **newrigel** » Thu Jun 10, 2010 11:57 am

I put SSD's in lots of laptops and they make them run 100% better. Plus, you can use them in anything you use later. FW anything will be a bottleneck so no matter how fast a drive you use, FW will be the determining factor overall.

HCMarkus · Post by **HCMarkus** » Thu Jun 10, 2010 1:19 pm

Have you looked into warranty replacement? Although Seagate has had issues now and then, most batches of their drives are fine. They may send you replacement drives at nominal shippng cost.

I'm running Seagates and WDs, and can assure you from experience, ALL HARD DRIVES DIE. It's just a question of when. So make sure you always keep at least one back up of everything you ever would regret losing.

newrigel · Post by **newrigel** » Thu Jun 10, 2010 6:33 pm

Sorry but you stated "ESATA"... Unless you have a 17 MacBook Pro or a model with expansion ports then you can use ESATA... otherwise, FW 400 is your only alternative for external HD's. WD makes some fast drives, it all comes down to what you want to spend. Since the IEEE 1394a (FW 400) has it's limits, a good caviar black edition would work great. You could get a velociraptor and use it in your tower later and they are an enterprise HD and can take on heavy loads for sustained periods. It's all about how much you want to spend but the my books are more for file storage and backup rather than a HD for sustained read and writes over extended periods like you'll be doing in a session.

buzzsmith · Post by **buzzsmith** » Sat Jun 12, 2010 11:37 am

Whatever you decide, if you go with WD, don't make the same mistake I did.

I inadvertently bought their Caviar Green, which is vari-speed depending on demand. They are not "true" 7200 rpm drives.

I don't think I've experienced any real issues, but would recommend the "Black" if you go with WD.

Buzzy

billf · Post by **billf** » Sat Jun 12, 2010 6:46 pm

What Buzzsmith just said. Western Digital Black is the way to go if you switch to WD.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Sat Jun 12, 2010 7:10 pm

I went with black too in mine and so far so good.

NazRat · Post by **NazRat** » Sun Jun 13, 2010 4:19 am

With external drives, one thing that happens is that the drive itself is fine, but the case electronics/adapter fritzed. If you need to recover data and you can get the drives out of the cases to attach them some other way, sometimes they're fine. If it's a drive mechanism failure though, much more prolematic.

Anyway, I'm using WD Black also. No varispeed and spindown issues.

buzzsmith · Post by **buzzsmith** » Sun Jun 13, 2010 6:45 am

NazRat wrote:With external drives, one thing that happens is that the drive itself is fine, but the case electronics/adapter fritzed. If you need to recover data and you can get the drives out of the cases to attach them some other way, sometimes they're fine. If it's a drive mechanism failure though, much more prolematic.

Anyway, I'm using WD Black also. No varispeed and spindown issues.

Yes.

My original G4's HD (Hitachi) was being used externally with my newer system just to access a few files (mainly old email) with a universal HD case adapter via USB.

The new Mac finally would no longer recognize the older drive. I could hear the platter spin up, but no mounting. Turns our the problem is in the electronics of the original drive housing.

2 solutions:

1. HD recovery...$$
2. Wait and find the exact same housing for the original Hitachi.

Fortunately, it's just about 4 months of email that didn't get transferred so it's not mission critical, just an annoyance.

Buzzy

darrell · Post by **darrell** » Tue Jun 15, 2010 4:23 pm

THANKS, guys, for all your responses....this makes it much easier for my feeble brain to process.

darrell

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Mon Jul 05, 2010 9:58 am

buzzsmith wrote:Whatever you decide, if you go with WD, don't make the same mistake I did.

I inadvertently bought their Caviar Green, which is vari-speed depending on demand. They are not "true" 7200 rpm drives.

I don't think I've experienced any real issues, but would recommend the "Black" if you go with WD.

Buzzy

Let's see... you have no real issues. Why was this a mistake?

I am using the Green drives for Time Machine and Time Capsule and have experienced no problems at all. Of course, these are for backup so speed is not an issue.

My question then, is there a noticeable difference between 7200 and 5400 drives with DP? Is 10K really better?

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