DVX100Shooter
Veteran
I am thinking about getting an external firewire hard drive instead of an additional internal SATA drive. I was told not to get a Maxtor are they not good? I know Western Digital seems to be the choice by many. Any thoughts?
Hard Drives
- Thread starter DVX100Shooter
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Sol M.
Veteran
Re: Hard Drives
I've used Maxtor, WD, and IBM. I've had good drives and bad drives with all three companies. I once purchased 10 120GB IBM drives for external firewire cases. 3 of them died within the first few months of use. I currently have a 80GB maxtor (2.5 years old) going through it's death throws, but I have another 120GB (1 year old) that's still going strong. There are a lot of factors that lead a drive to die (heat is a major one, which may have been the problem with my IBMs), so it's hard to say that one company is worse than another.
The truth is, once a drive from a company dies on you, your hatred for said company is directly relational to the importance of the files stored on the drive.
Just make sure you get a good price and have some sort of backup scheme, because a drive will almost surely ALWAYS crash when you least want it to.
I've used Maxtor, WD, and IBM. I've had good drives and bad drives with all three companies. I once purchased 10 120GB IBM drives for external firewire cases. 3 of them died within the first few months of use. I currently have a 80GB maxtor (2.5 years old) going through it's death throws, but I have another 120GB (1 year old) that's still going strong. There are a lot of factors that lead a drive to die (heat is a major one, which may have been the problem with my IBMs), so it's hard to say that one company is worse than another.
The truth is, once a drive from a company dies on you, your hatred for said company is directly relational to the importance of the files stored on the drive.
Just make sure you get a good price and have some sort of backup scheme, because a drive will almost surely ALWAYS crash when you least want it to.
Re: Hard Drives
Check out drives with 3 year warranty's. I know WD only has a few models with 3 year warrantys (I think the Caviar drives), they are more spendy but it's because they put more reliable parts in em' (from their scsi drives I think).
As far as bad drives go it's a crap shoot - they are so cheap now I say just buy a bunch and back stuff up.
Jive - you didn't have a few IBM 75GXP "deathstars" did you? From what I understand those drove IBM out of the hard drive business, it's now handled by Hitachi.
Check out drives with 3 year warranty's. I know WD only has a few models with 3 year warrantys (I think the Caviar drives), they are more spendy but it's because they put more reliable parts in em' (from their scsi drives I think).
As far as bad drives go it's a crap shoot - they are so cheap now I say just buy a bunch and back stuff up.
Jive - you didn't have a few IBM 75GXP "deathstars" did you? From what I understand those drove IBM out of the hard drive business, it's now handled by Hitachi.
G
Guest
Guest
Re: Hard Drives
Any opinions on the LACIE external HDs for MAC?
Any opinions on the LACIE external HDs for MAC?
DVX100Shooter
Veteran
Re: Hard Drives
I heard the Lacie drives are NICE!!!! I am thinking about getting a external firewire drive from them.
I bought a Maxtor 120 internal SATA drive last week and noiticed something puzzling. I had the store where I bought my Mac put it in for me and when I turned it on and pulled up that drive it said I had 114.65 gigs available. What happened to the other 6 gigs? There was absolutely nothing on the drive when I turned the computer on. Is that normal to not get the full amount of gigs?
I heard the Lacie drives are NICE!!!! I am thinking about getting a external firewire drive from them.
I bought a Maxtor 120 internal SATA drive last week and noiticed something puzzling. I had the store where I bought my Mac put it in for me and when I turned it on and pulled up that drive it said I had 114.65 gigs available. What happened to the other 6 gigs? There was absolutely nothing on the drive when I turned the computer on. Is that normal to not get the full amount of gigs?
Sol M.
Veteran
Re: Hard Drives
Yes, the 120GB is the unformatted capacity. Once the drive has been formatted, a certain amount is lost the to the formatting scheme as well as what must be allocated for the disk to function properly.
Also, I have heard nothing bad about Lacie drives. A friend of mine has a 320GB model and loves it (though he's only had it for about 2 months). However, they are expensive. Of course, the cheapest route would be to buy an external case and a drive separately as you can get pretty good prices on bare drives, while complete firewire drives are still sold at a premium.
Yes, the 120GB is the unformatted capacity. Once the drive has been formatted, a certain amount is lost the to the formatting scheme as well as what must be allocated for the disk to function properly.
Also, I have heard nothing bad about Lacie drives. A friend of mine has a 320GB model and loves it (though he's only had it for about 2 months). However, they are expensive. Of course, the cheapest route would be to buy an external case and a drive separately as you can get pretty good prices on bare drives, while complete firewire drives are still sold at a premium.
Re: Hard Drives
I and a few friends of mine all have LaCie FW drives, and so far they've been excellent.
Mine is the 180Gig; I've captured to it and edited an entire program using it as the main 'editing' drive........although Apple doesn't reallly recommend it, I've had no problems at all with it.
I and a few friends of mine all have LaCie FW drives, and so far they've been excellent.
Mine is the 180Gig; I've captured to it and edited an entire program using it as the main 'editing' drive........although Apple doesn't reallly recommend it, I've had no problems at all with it.
Sol M.
Veteran
Re: Hard Drives
Just a note about my friend's Lacie HD. It is currently DEAD. He lost all his data and is currently looking into some very costly data-recovery options.
Keep in mind, this does not really say anything about the Lacie drives. In truth, it's not like Lacie makes the actual drives, they just make the enclosures. Therefore, they'll react like any other drive if tilted, shaken, etc. while the disk is spinning. That seems to be the main cause for disk failures; people who don't know how to properly handle them. I've got a 200GB Maxtor in a no-name FW/USB2 enclosure (it's direct from the OEM that sooo many companies buy and rebadge). I don't move it, and I make sure to properly remove it from the OS (windows,mac,etc.) every time I'm done using it. Hopefully, by doing things like this, the disk will last a long time.
Just a note about my friend's Lacie HD. It is currently DEAD. He lost all his data and is currently looking into some very costly data-recovery options.
Keep in mind, this does not really say anything about the Lacie drives. In truth, it's not like Lacie makes the actual drives, they just make the enclosures. Therefore, they'll react like any other drive if tilted, shaken, etc. while the disk is spinning. That seems to be the main cause for disk failures; people who don't know how to properly handle them. I've got a 200GB Maxtor in a no-name FW/USB2 enclosure (it's direct from the OEM that sooo many companies buy and rebadge). I don't move it, and I make sure to properly remove it from the OS (windows,mac,etc.) every time I'm done using it. Hopefully, by doing things like this, the disk will last a long time.