External Hard Drives--Things I Should Know...

strayfoxx

strayfoxx

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I'm looking into getting an external hard drive to back-up my music collection, my Powerpoints and Notes for the college classes I teach, and photos of archival sources.

I'm mainly looking for a brand that is reliable and that works with Mac. I thought shopping for these would be simple, but like with all electronics, people seem to be spouting off their blind brand loyalty to the point where I can't sift through the mess. Seagate seems to be the top contender..

Are there any brands I should strictly consider? Is there anything else I should know?
 
What's more important to you - mass storage size or actual size of the hard drive?

The 3.5" (they're either the IDE or SATA HDD's that go into your desktops) external drives are cheaper per gig - $70-100 for 750GB to 1.5TB, but the trade off is that they require an AC adapter (wall plug)

The 2.5" internal drives are smaller (they're laptop hard drives inside enclosures), but the trade off is that most if not all are powered by just 1 USB cable (sometimes 2 USB cables for older models). The price? They're about $60-80 for 250-500GB's.
 
Pretty much every hard drive will work with a Mac, so don't worry about that. I'd just find one on the cheap and get it.
 
If you've got a Fry's near you, they've got a Buffalo 1TB DriveStation Turbo USB external for $80.
 
As far as brand..everyone has their preference.

Ive gone with Western Digital with the 4 I have....1 250gb, 1 320gb, and 2 1Tb's.....

Ive had problem with only 1 and when I called them about it, I was told it would essentiall cost me more than what I paid for it to have my info pulled off the bad one and replaced back onto the replacement. I politely asked for someone higher up and explained that I shouldnt be charged for a product failure after less than a week of use. They agreed and didnt know why the other rep told me what they did so they sent me a prepaid package to send it in, took a couple of weeks to get back, and all my stuff was back on it...just out the time it was gone.

After that, Ive never had a single problem...however Im sure there are people that will tell you that WD is the devil and theyve had nothing BUT problems with em.
 
I like the western digital, I have a 250gb from 3 years ago and its still working well.
If you are gonna use time machine be sure to partition your drive. I got mine split into 2 hfs+ partitions, one for time machine and another for movies/videos which i use to watch on the 360.
 
I still personally prefer the "make your own" route, where you buy an external enclosure and then put your own drive into it. That way if the drive ever broke down, you still have a usable enclosure.

But otherwise you probably can't really go wrong with buying the cheapest one you can find.

I prefer Seagate because - last time I checked - they had the longest warranties at five years, which struck me as absurdly long.
 
Decide how portable...carrying wall plugs around sucks.. if its literally just a backup box, then its not as big of a deal. and I might suggest two, one to backup the backup...As with anything its always best to be safe.

I ordered a Green Drive and my Mother has one as well. I forget which brand is inside, but this thing works great.
newegg.com of course.
 
Make sure that when you do get the drive that you format it to FAT32, NOT the common Windows format, NTFS.

Unless something has changed recently, macs can only read, not write, to NTFS drives. FAT32 can be read and written to by both Mac and PC.
 
[quote name='Strell']I still personally prefer the "make your own" route, where you buy an external enclosure and then put your own drive into it. That way if the drive ever broke down, you still have a usable enclosure.

But otherwise you probably can't really go wrong with buying the cheapest one you can find.

I prefer Seagate because - last time I checked - they had the longest warranties at five years, which struck me as absurdly long.[/QUOTE]

Yea, I have 3 external drives made this way. And if its only for storage (as in you dont mind having it plugged into a wall) probably the best way to get a huge drive for the money. As stated, I have had enclosures/HDD die just from use or other problems, and this kept my data fluid so to speak. I rmemeber I had an issue with a drive that was a I/O magic and was very dissapointed because nothing I did could get it to read properly. Ripped that bitch apart, and plugged it into one of my other enclosures, and works like a charm. Of course this is very DIY, not in a complicated sense, but more than some people are willing to do.
 
I'm going to 3rd(?) the buying of a WesternDigital drive. I bought my 500GB two years ago, and it's been good to me over that time. And maybe it's just me, but anytime I go shopping, I seem to always find at least one external drive on sale. So you could possibly go that route depending on your luck.
 
I wouldn't choose anything but a Western Digital. I've had nothing but bad experiences with others, including Hitachi and Seagate. I'm even hesitant about the fact that my Macbook doesn't have a WD hard drive. I almost want to replace it with one.

EDIT: Also, I've had a WD Passport for more than a year, and this thing has been to hell and back and it still works. They're tough, and they don't die. Just remember, you get what you pay for. And data recovery on a broken hard drive is few hundred bucks. ;)
 
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