External Hardrives

ricky

ricky

Member
Anyone have info on inexpensive external harddrives. Looking for a qualiy product buy easy on the wallet. Would love to hear the specs on what others use and what they store.
 
would like to have firewire for speedy purposes just not sure what brands or common practices of products are being used.
 
G-Tech G-Raid, Seagate, Lacie -- In that order, for me.

I wouldn't mess with Westerin Digital. I warned you!

The Seagate FreeAgents seem to come in at a decent price point for 500gb's w/Firewire400 support.
 
I have a western digital with all of my film school footage that up and died right after i graduated.

firewire is way more expensive than USB, which pisses me off, but prices are falling. Buy.com has 250-320 gig firewire 400 drives for less than 200 dollars.
 
Just FYI, I run WD drives all day long and after years have never had a problem with them. I had a Seagate that crapped out on my after 7 months.
 
You're a lucky one. Never had a Seagate give out on me. Western Digitals on the other hand? I don't trust them, at all. I got a free 120gb external USB WD thingy... Won't use it for anything but intermediate transfers.

If it works for ya, though, go for it. It's definitely not my recommendation to the OP.
 
Crap, now I'm freaked out cause I feel like my drives are going to die... Do you use backup drives or do you just buy new ones every once and a while and move all your data to them?
 
I lose my data, cry for a bit, and then never buy that brand again.

I literally stopped illustrating, in my teen years, because I lost ALL of my artwork to a Western Digital HDD failure. Couldn't afford a CD/DVD burner back then.

Hoping to back-up to 50gb Blu Ray by the end of the year.
 
So there is no way to recover the data? Or would it just be really expensive? Because forensics can get data off burnt hard drives.
 
I've had WDs before and they've been fine. Don't listen to every story. But I do buy Seagates usually.

Also, always have at least two copies of your data. I always buy drives two at a time. Never worry about losing, cause I back it up :)

But man, that Seagate 500, WOW is that cheap. What's wrong with it? :)

I've become more of a fan of enclosures. I think ultimately they are cheaper, esp when you get ones that handle more than one drive.
 
As far as I know it's expensive once the hard-drive dies. There are people that do services like that online, but once the mechanics stop operating it's pretty much going to be expensive to recover your stuff.

That's why I'm ready for Solid State to really happen and Blu Ray Dual layer burners to drop in price.

No more hating on WD for me. It's just not my brand.

Harris: It's only 2.0, that's why. Shoulda seen it when it was 129.99 NewEgg special!!!

The firewire/Sata2.0/USB2.0 is 200 for 500gb.

I'm fine with USB2.0 as a storage device and offloading from P2 on set.
 
But I edit off of USB 2.0 all the time...I know it's not as fast as FW 800, but...hmmm, still a good deal to archive if nothing else.
 
Good deal to archive, for sure. Even storing random media junk. I got one meself, still in the box but gonna crack it open soon.
 
Cause more than likely it's a laptop HDD and at 5400 RPMs, just enough to power up via USB2.0 power.

I got a free 120gb Western Digital Pocket Drive, powers up by USB but MAN is that thing SLOW. Didn't pay for it I guess, but still.
 
thanks for the solid feedback on this matter. I think I will look into some Lacie and seagates. It seems that editing off a USB would be slower, is thaI know they are cheaper so if not slower I might be convinced to go the USB route. Thanks again
 
DON'T USE LACIE! If you search here, you'll find they have a very high failure rate. Their circuit boards are flaky.

If you want a drive that you can rely on, get a Glyph GT050. There's no substitute, and they're not outrageously expensive. Extremely fast, quiet, reliable; free overnight replacement and free data recovery for the first three years. They've been in business for a long time, and with policies like that, you know the drives have got to be the most solid things out there. I've been using Glyphs for years (the same ones!) without ever a hiccup. The oldest one - daily, heavy-duty use, for 7 years now - not a hiccup. I have five others from 1-5 years old - not a hiccup. In the same time period I've used about 30 other drives, of various brands (not fort anything critical!). All have had problems. LaCies have been the worst; interestingly, my 6 SmartDisk Firelite bus-powered FW drives have been runners-up in reliability to the Glyphs (though much slower). OWC Mercury drives have been pretty solid, though a bit quirky about what ports they are connected to - the Mercury On-The-Go FW drives (NOT USB 2!) are pretty reliable and fast bus-powered solutions - but make sure they like the port you're gonna connect 'em to before you have anything critical on 'em. The work fine with my powerbooks and 2 of 3 ports on my G5. Utterly reliable. On the third G5 port, though - bye bye data! If you want to deal with worries like that, get any other drive... if you want to be free of such concerns, get a Glyph.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top