Which external hard drive should I buy?

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dferigmudferigmu
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
I have an 80GB Powerbook that will be coming with me in September when I move to Europe for a year. I would like to buy an external hard drive for back-up purposes in-case something happens to the PB's hard drive. I am looking for no more than 160GB of space and the use of FireWire. My questions are:



1. Is it worth it to get a mobile hard drive? I'm thinking I might want to keep my information safe at home and leave the hard drive here. I have heard that LaCie's are very fragile.



2. Who makes the best external hard drives? LaCie? Maxtor? Any model suggestions? I have heard that Maxtor's fail easily.



3. What's the difference between LaCie's d2 and Porsche models? Is one preferable over the other?



4. Once I buy the hard drive, how do I make successful back-ups of my PB hard drive?



Your suggestions would really be helpful!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    geekdreamsgeekdreams Posts: 280member
    I've gone through just about every brand of external drive; if you use them enough, it's inevitable that they will fail eventually. I've had good luck with the LaCie drives so far... have one 160GB Porsche model as my iTunes/iPhoto/BitTorrent drive, and another exactly like it as a backup.



    LaCie drives come with a free backup app called SilverKeeper (you can download it from here even if you don't have a LaCie drive) which works okay, but I think there are better apps on VersionTracker, I just haven't used any.
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  • Reply 2 of 6
    asaphasaph Posts: 176member
    I love my LaCie! it's a 160 porsche that I got on clearance for 100 bucks from the lacie website. i love it and would never own a notebook without one.



    as an aside, i use 'ccc' from version tracer to back up my files.
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  • Reply 3 of 6
    resres Posts: 711member
    OWC Firewire Drives are very well rated, and I've been using them for years. I also have a LaCie porsche drive that I got on sale and it has not given me any trouble.
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  • Reply 4 of 6
    a_greera_greer Posts: 4,594member
    As long as it has firewire, I say just go for the prettiest, they are all the same thing inside the box, an eide or sata 3.5 inch 5400 or 7200 rpm hdd, and I say to save a little money, consider picking up a used Lacie enclosure and a 200+gb drive and put it together yourself.
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  • Reply 5 of 6
    cosmonutcosmonut Posts: 4,872member
    I have a LaCie d2 Extreme drive and it's great! Solid case, quiet drive, and quite reliable.
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  • Reply 6 of 6
    aplnubaplnub Posts: 2,605member
    I have a 300 GB seagate external fire wire I use for daily backup operations. Quite and looks nice. I got it at CompUsa but I can't remember the price.
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