[chasej]

I am looking to buy a good external hard drive to back up the files on my mac and was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on which is best.
The External hard drive needs to have a USB 2.0 and preferably under $250.

Thanks.

[Ken Gracey]

Welcome to the forums chasej, asking for advise on hard drives, will give you all sorts of answers, I personally like Lacie drives, but many others will probably say Western Digital, its really horses for courses.

I guess the best starting point is, how much data do you have on your current macs drive, you can find this out, but selecting your hard drive, and selecting get info from the file menu.

Normally a good rule of thumb to keep the price down it to pick a drive that offers you double whats on your current drive, or if your budget allows go as big as you can afford to ensure, you wont fill the drive to fast and need to buy another one in a hurry.



TL

[chasej]

Thanks alot TLCAUS I will look into Lacie Drives. I dont have much data on my drive only about 33 GB so I imagine to shouldn't be too hard to find a reasonably priced one.

[Ken Gracey]

Which state are you in ? If you are in melbourne, you could check out www.streetwise.com.au, they are a regular advertiser in Australian macworld magazine.




TL

[chasej]

I am looking on the Apple online store now, thanks for the advice.

[golfer]

I have some WD and Maxtor, but my favourite is my Lacie 1TB Quadra drive that is hooked to my iMac with firewire800 and it's brilliant.

[Xavier Verhoeven]

I'd also recommend a Lacie external. I've got an older one of these, and it's never had a problem for me. Before that I had a DIY job with a HDD I bought and put in an aluminium case, but it makes all kinds of odd noises now, so I think it's on its last legs.

But the Lacie drives are both good looking and reliable. The 1TB one I've linked to would be hard to go past - and I'm sure it can be gotten cheaper than the RRP. It might be worth trying resellers and even PC hardware stores - they're likely to be cheaper than the Apple store.

[Ben_]

I can also recommend LaCie. I have a 500 GB model of the type Xavier mentioned. It has been running for a couple of years without any trouble. Plus it has a power switch on it which is useful. Some cases have not power switch, meaning you have to switch them off at the wall.

But don't get one of these if you are looking for a quiet drive, the fan is quite noisy and the case seems to amplify the sound of the drive head moving around. Plus the LED light on mine is a bit flakey, sometimes it doesn't come on at all.

One thing to remember about LaCie is that they make cases, not drives. So there is no way of knowing what brand of drive is in the case. But they must use reliable brand drives because they have a pretty good reputation.

I got mine at Dick Smith for a good price. I recommend shopping around PC stores in your area as well as stores like Harvey Norman, Myer, etc. They sometimes have specials.

[JZ]

I have a G-Tech G Drive 500GB, it's a great external drive and has great reviews. It's been upgraded since I got mine but take a look here:

http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-DRIVE.cfm


jz

[aeroTreacle]

Make sure it has SMART. (Internal hardware self-checking.)

Don't buy a Seagate.

[skyhawkmatthew]

I currently have three LaCie external drives connected to my Mac daisy-chained through FireWire 800 - a 500GB Rugged with my movies etc on it so I can take it with me, and two d2 quadras (500GB and 1TB). They are great drives - fast and reliable, although the Rugged, being designed for performance, sucks a HUGE amount of power, making it not the best for watching movies on the go on the MacBook Pro. A few weeks ago, the mechanism suddenly failed in my 1TB d2, so I sent it off to LaCie and I had it back within a week, good as new.

And yeah, don't buy a Seagate (which is Maxtor ).

[thomasina]

I'm also very happy with my LaCie d2 Quadra. Among other things, it's quiet!

[Dylstra]

I just had a Lacie 320GB external drive die on me. It was a couple of years old, but hadn't been used all that much.

I have a 500GB WD that has been used as a TM volume for 2 years with no problems.

I just recently got a WD My Book for Mac 2TB for $225. I had to update the firmware to disable the annoying included back-up software.

[Ken Gracey]

I just noticed in the paper Office works have 1 terabyte drives for $95.00, I cant believe how fast drive prices are dropping





TL

[Ben_]

Make sure it has SMART. (Internal hardware self-checking.)

Don't buy a Seagate.

I don't know about Firewire drives, but I'm pretty sure USB drives don't support SMART. While the drive may have the ability to report the SMART status, I don't think the USB interface allows the status to be transmitted to the computer.

[rachp]

Apart from freeing up a USB port is there a reason to buy a HD with a FireWire connection? I currently have a USB HD and the speed is fine. I know the FW drives are more expensive as well.
Also if I buy another USB HD is a USB hub suitable to use them with?

[bitingmidge]

I have a Logitech powered hub which just stopped working! Obviously they have a finite life, get tired of just lying there or something. It has power to it, but nothing else.

Apple sells Belkins so I'm guessing they will work, but there's a bit around the net about some brands which don't.

I was getting ridiculously slow speeds through the hub though, don't know if it was because it was dead or dying or if I always was! The backups take one hundredth of the time now that I've got the drive plugged in directly.

Cheers,

P

[golfer]

I'm using my Lacie D2 Quadra connected to my iMac with Firewire 800 and it is the fastest connection I've ever had.

[rachp]

I currently have three LaCie external drives connected to my Mac daisy-chained through FireWire 800 - a 500GB Rugged

When you say they are daisy-chained, does that mean only one has to be plugged into the mac and then the others plugged into each other? If so can you daisy chain a mix of USB and firewire?

I was getting ridiculously slow speeds through the hub though, don't know if it was because it was dead or dying or if I always was! The backups take one hundredth of the time now that I've got the drive plugged in directly.

I'm using my Lacie D2 Quadra connected to my iMac with Firewire 800 and it is the fastest connection I've ever had.

I think I'll have to fork out the extra for a firewire.

[mickdevlin]

When you say they are daisy-chained, does that mean only one has to be plugged into the mac and then the others plugged into each other? If so can you daisy chain a mix of USB and firewire?

Answers are yes and no respectively (you can't mix USB and FireWire on a chain.)