Reliable External Hard Drives?

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m01etym01ety
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Hey folks,



I got one of SmartDisk's shiny new 120 GB external USB2/FireWire CrossFire drives back in December. The unit died on me in a week, causing severe, irrecoverable data loss and tears. (To this day I've not been able to get in touch with their "tech support". The fact that their information on their site is obscenely out of date and doesn't even properly list my model also doesn't help.)



Needless to say, I'm in the market for a new external hard drive, and no, I don't intend to ever buy anything from SmartDisk ever again. I'm looking for a product from a no-nonsense company that is competent and has excellent support. What brands would you guys recommend?



I keep hearing good things about LaCie. Should I go with one of their offerings? If possible, I'd also like the drive to be relatively quiet and cool.



Any tips/tales of experiences with nice drives most appreciated.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    macasaurusmacasaurus Posts: 243member
    I built my own external hard drive. What you do is get a firewire enclosure, which usually runs from 50-150 dollars (depending on quality, I got a 50 dollar one which works just fine). Then you go and buy a hard drive, stick it in and you have an external hard drive. If you can build a computer or put together a lego set, you can do this too.
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  • Reply 2 of 4
    redericrederic Posts: 124member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Macasaurus

    I built my own external hard drive. What you do is get a firewire enclosure, which usually runs from 50-150 dollars (depending on quality, I got a 50 dollar one which works just fine). Then you go and buy a hard drive, stick it in and you have an external hard drive. If you can build a computer or put together a lego set, you can do this too.



    But generallyy, the firewire enclosures have fans and are noisy. I have just got rid of this setup and am trialling a Maxtor 160GB "Whisper Quiet" Firewrie HDD. It truly is whisper quiet!!



    It also has a neat feature in a one touch button. You press the button on the front of the drive and the supplied Dantz Retrospect software makes a backup of your main Mac drive (or whatever you tell it to backup) to the external HDD.
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  • Reply 3 of 4
    macasaurusmacasaurus Posts: 243member
    I guess it depends on how picky you are. I'm kinda picky about noise, but I don't really hear my hard drive fans (I have 2). I guess I've gotten used to them... they're like white noise to me. I think the noise level really isn't that bad. Then again, I've never heard the quiet HDD you have. I'm sure if I heard it, I'd probably complain about the noise on my external hard drive, haha.
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  • Reply 4 of 4
    sobelizzardsobelizzard Posts: 130member
    I've got a 200GB LaCie d2 drive... and I love it. its quiet enough for me, looks incredibly slick and has the triple interface (USB 2, Firewire 400 and Firewire 800) that will let me use it any gear that i might be purchasing in the next few years... Plus, the blue light on the front looks sweet



    So, there's a vote for LaCie.
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