Best 500gb External Hard Drive For Hd User?

abalex

abalex

Well-known member
just looking to buy another external hard drive, I've heard the MYBOOKS are kind of good but I want to make sure I buy the best drive, one that is not going to crash on me. Any thoughts? Advice?

thanks for your help.

gv.
 
I got the mybook premium and so far so good... although I have no idea what makes drives crash. That's a scary prospect... maybe I'll go buy another one just to clone the one I've got... which is something else you should consider if it absolutely positively is the end of the world if the drive crashes.

We shot a flick earlier this year using P2 cards into mybooks and we had TRIPLE redundancy. 3 of 'em with the same thing on them... and I think we used something like 6 or more total.
 
I've got a few of the WD MyBooks - Never had a problem with any of them crashing, but I do, on occassion have to unplug/plug the FW cable a few times before they want to mount. Never had that problem with my G-Tech. Also, check out G-Tech's warranty/support...
 
I have a WD 500 My Book pro that's been great. I also have 2 WD MyBook Pro 2 1TB RAIDs that I wouldn't wish on my worse enemy.
 
Ming said:
I have a WD 500 My Book pro that's been great. I also have 2 WD MyBook Pro 2 1TB RAIDs that I wouldn't wish on my worse enemy.
Click to expand...

Sorry for the tangent, and I don't want to open a can of worms here, but maybe folks should re-think some sacred cows and things which are simply assumed and never questioned.

Namely, why do you think that drives in a RAID offer any reliability advantage over non-raided drives?

I believe this RAID reliability has been a sort of nerd "old wives tale" which lives on in repetition without having been rigorously tested.

My understanding is that recent research done by Google and some other researchers (a woman, from I believe MIT, I forgot her name), have shown conclusively that if anything, RAIDs offer LESS reliability than non-raid configurations. Now, Google does research on drive reliability because they deploy hundreds of thousands of drive farms, and have vast experience with them. And I take that into account much more than the "he said, she said" anecdotal hearsay passed on unthinking from one web site to another. Looks to me, that at this point, RAID is mostly a way to profit financially by selling more expensive solutions with the false promise of greater reliability while offering lesser reliability. If you want to buy into the RAID myth, that's up to you, but do you actually have solid peer reviewed research to back up such beliefs? Caveat emptor.
 
Just bought a Seagate Free Agent 320 G. If anyone has any opinions on that. Its been good to me thus far.
 
I bought a MyBook Pro 500gb, which crashed after 9 months. I did the freeze trick (shoving it in the freezer for a few hours) and was able to pull off all of my data, and then, after about the 10th freeze cycle I heard a loud pop come from the drive, and now it works perfectly again! I don't use it, as I bought an Iomega 750gb, which I like because it's thinner and fits easier in my laptop bag. I'd go for the 1TB MyBook as you can stripe it or mirror it, which gives you more crash protection....Funny thing though, a few of the pre-built external hard drives I've bought have crashed on me, but the drives I've shoved in cheap, third party enclosures five years ago haven't give me a single problem.
 
I've been using a 500 gb Seagate solid for about 2 years now. Very happy with the purchase. Cheap too! So we bought 2 more. If I remember correctly I think we got them for $120 each.
 
I'm telling you, stay away from the 1TB my book pro 2s. I've posted on this in other threads with detailed explanations of the reasons, but to summarize they're prone to issues and the customer support blows.

I have to agree that the non-RAID drives/enclosures I've slapped together piece meal have been the most solid. Just back up.
 
I have an OWC 500Gb RAID 0 that's been running smooth for almost a year now. I still need to get a second drive (either a straight 500 or a mirrored RAID) for even more back-up protection.

Brandon -- you must be one of the lucky few to not have a Lacie crash. Mine was worthless.
 
Well.....lots of folks here using MYbook but I'm still freaking out just with the thought of having another crashed. My computer crashed two months ago and lost most of my data and footage from NO MIDDLE GROUND.

This is why....

gv.
 
There are many threads about this. But I have settled on Seagate internal drives in an external enclosure. I have an enclosure that can be configured as RAID 0, but I just use it JBOD. I always, ALWAYS have at least 3 copies of my footage.
 
I just keep one copy of the footage once I've completed a project. My projects are entire horse shows, so that's like a TB of footage. Can't afford to keep more than that feasibly. I save all my DVD images as well so I can make copies later for clients.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top