Muffinresearch Labs by Stuart Colville

What external hard drive do you use? | 12 Comments

Posted in Snippets on 1st June 2006, 2:53 pm by

I’m currently in the market for a external hard-drive with about 250-300GB of storage that I can also boot my mac from in an emergency (so it’ll need to have firewire). I’ve looked at the usual suspects, Lacie, iomega but nothing stands out.

Let me know what your recommendations are.

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  • http://www.removement.com Jeremy

    I also looked around alot for the same thing. I ended up just buying an external USB/Firewire empty case with a fan. Supply my own internal HD and I am good to go. This way it’s not in a seeled case and I can switch HDs with ease. Seems to save on the cash also. Internal drives are a lot less expensive and you determine what size drive you need. Can’t go wrong!

    Good luck in your search!

  • http://www.azcazandco.com Alan

    Never ever had a problem with my Lacie d2 although there are probably better versions of it out by now…

  • http://www.andrewtaylor.me.uk Andrew Taylor

    I use a self-built external drive (£10 caddy with USB interface plus spare IDE hard drive) but recently purchased a 100Gb Maxtor OneTouch III. Not sure if this supports Macs or Firewire interfaces. For those looking for a PC solution, it is recommended though.

  • http://muffinresearch.co.uk Stuart Colville

    @Everyone: thanks for the tips.

    @Jeremy: I will look into caddies as it definitely sounds like a good way to keep the cost down.

    @Andrew: the Maxtor drives do seem to be pretty good. There’s a Maxtor OneTouch II FireWire 800 Edition which has Firewire 400 and firewire 800 as well as USB 2.0. Seems like that’s a good one to go for.

  • http://wait-till-i.com Chris Heilmann

    I am using the Sony VAIO 2.5″ ones you can get for a fiver on ebay http://qurl.com/mvb1c with a Fujitsu HD. Not really grand for all-time-use, but perfect to carry vast amounts of data around with you.

  • http://muffinresearch.co.uk Stuart Colville

    @Chris: That looks like a natty little caddy Chris. The only problem is I really wanted something I can boot my mac from so I’ll need firewire. However, for cheap portable storage this looks like a good one to check out.

  • http://akaxaka.gameover.com/ James / AkaXakA

    I just bought a casing which you can just screw a normal HD into. Very cheap, and you’ll save a lot on the HD itself too.

  • gzip

    Definitely go w/ a case, pref USB2+Firewire but forget Maxtor! They fail and have weak warranties. Seagate all the way, 3-5 yr warranty, can’t be beat.

  • http://www.callendercreates.com Jim Callender

    Ive got a Lacie 250GB ext. hard drive. Have dropped in price recently, and a nifty piece of hardware, using it on USB2 and acts as backup as well as a home for around 90GB of MP3′s.

    When movies become better at downloading, may experiment to see how this works thru the drive. Question is will the computer processor be able to cope though? :)

  • Steve

    I’m using a Maxtor 1 Touch 300 gigger..
    I use it with SuperDuper and it’s been fine, however this is the 2nd one I have. Eight months after I initially started using it the Maxtor just stopped working. Couldn’t mount it or access it at all. No idea why. I returned it to the place I bought it and 10 days later I had a new one. Hope I don’t have to do this again in a few months…

  • Luke

    I’ve had a Lacie d2 320GB for about a year now – no problems at all. The build quality is extremely sturdy – a chunk of aluminium essentially!

    Spec:

    1 x FireWire 400
    2 x FireWire 800
    1 x USB2
    No fan (aluminium case disipates the heat)

    Only issues are the external power supply, a little bit of noise (noisier than my Mac Mini), and I’m sure that an aluminium case isn’t the lightest option – if that is an issue.

    I would definately recommend it.

  • kubox

    I have a G-TECH G-Drive – http://www.g-technology.com/Products/G-DRIVE.cfm

    It’s FW & bootable (I recomend SuperDuper! for making clones), the case feels the most rigid and tough out of any I’ve tried, and it has a great cooling system that negates the need for a fan. Hard drive can be slightly noisy when it spins-up, but you can’t hear it too much over my mini.

    Oh, plus it looks cool in a kind-of industrial way.

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