Lacie Hard-Drive Alternatives?

C

crot0019

Well-known member
Hey guys two part question here.

Okay so I'm in need of some firewire 800 storage solutions for my iMac. At the moment I have a 1tb Lacie Drive that has served me fine and now that it's full I've been doing research and everyone suggests not to go with lacie. So I would love to know some alternatives to Lacie that people use and trust.

Second part is I see now that on the newer generation iMacs, they have thunderbolt inputs with allow you to safely daisy chain a number of hard-drives. My question is regarding us slightly older generation iMac users who don't options other than firewire. Is the best Idea really to unplug and plug in which ever drive you need into the solitary fw800 port on the iMac or are there other solutions?

Any help would be greatly appreciated :)
 
Personally, I've used LaCie for years and only ever had one of my drives crash... and that was in the early days of FW drives. The power supplies have gone bad on a few, but the drives are fine (still cranking after 7 years) and a replacement power supply got me up and running in no time. (I did have a client bring me a project on two LaCie Quadra drives, and one failed, but that was a known issue with that run of drives.)

I also use G-Tech G drives. You do have an option other than FW: USB. If it's just for storage, USB is fine. And even for editing, USB works. Apple just doesn't send video in or out of USB as far as capture from camera and output to tape. I have FW drives for editing, and USB drives for archiving and storage.

Daisy-chaining FW drives can limit your bandwidth, which is only as fast as the slowest device in the chain (no matter where in the chain that device is). I tend to use only the drive(s) I need on any given project, and swap them out when I move to another project.

There are a few folks around here who rave about OWC drives, as they are incredibly inexpensive compared to LaCie and G-Technologies yet seem to hold up just as well (if not better). I have not tried them myself, though.
 
If you are short on FW connections, you can add a hub for not much. Some FW devices have in - out ports, but I have had mixed results with this, in particular on G-Tech products.

Foe a vendor, look to OWC. They manufacture housings and sell drives. Their Mercury line is top shelf and reasonably priced. Great service too.

Grant
 
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