My beautiful 12" PowerBook has a 60 gig hard drive, which I assumed would be plenty, but I've acquired quite a few video projects for school, thousands of songs (legally), and some bulky software, and poor Macky is almost out of room. I want to get a 200 gig (more or less) external hard drive with fire wire compatibility. I asked around before I thought of bugging Hatrack and was told that Oxford chips are the most reliable, and to make sure that the spin speed of my internal hard drive isn’t faster than the external one.
So
1) Where do I find my current hard drive spin rate? (I tried looking in the system profiler but I wasn't getting anywhere)
2) Has anybody had any good/bad experiences with external hard drives?
3) What should I buy, I'm not too worried about price, but I don't want something that's going to erase all my data or burn my house down
Posted by dantesparadigm (Member # 8756) on :
Am I allowed to bump my own thread? It seems vaguely wrong considering I'm making demands on all you nice people without offering anything in return. It's not an interesting topic, but my Google fu was failing me and I was hoping someone had something to say on the subject. As an extra incentive...
Q: What do you do with a dead chemist?
A: Ba
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
You're overthinking this.
External hard drives are basically commodities, and since new Macs also have USB ports, you can use basically any external drive on the market.
Don't worry about the chipset or the spin rate; it really, really won't matter to you. What WILL matter is the long-term stability of the drive. Unfortunately, most external drives are used by manufacturers to offload their least reliable drives -- which means that you should avoid Western Digital externals like the plague, because even the most reliable WDs are less reliable than the average drive.
You'll need to decide whether you want a small, easily portable, cable-powered drive or a big drive that you're leaving in one place and just using as a media storage bay. There are advantages to each.
Once you've made that decision, though, what you do is this: look through your Sunday newspaper ads to find whichever drives are cheapest per gigabyte. (For externals, a good price is around 75 cents per gig.) As long as it's not a Western Digital, and as long as it's the type you want -- small and portable or big and stable -- buy it.
Don't spend more than $120, since capacities are increasing all the time and you'll feel silly in three years, having spent $200 for 300GB, when 1TB externals will be available for $250.
Posted by human_2.0 (Member # 6006) on :
quote:Oxford chips are the most reliable
That is what I've heard as well. Most everything uses Oxford afaik.
quote:make sure that the spin speed of my internal hard drive isn’t faster than the external one.
I've never heard that.
quote:1) Where do I find my current hard drive spin rate? (I tried looking in the system profiler but I wasn't getting anywhere)
System Profiler, ATA, click on all busses in the list. My first one was the CD drive. The second was my 12" PB drive. I copied the model number (ST9120821A) and googled it.
quote:2) Has anybody had any good/bad experiences with external hard drives?
You can use iPods.
At work we have so many Lacies that I can't ever keep them straight. And I have so much data, that I end up using too many. I need to just splurge and buy two 1TB raids so I can put everything on them and sync them so that I have all my data both at work and at home (I can't stand to copy down from work via slow broadband...). In other words, my problem is that I'm too spoiled.
My point is that if you buy one external drive, it will only be a matter of time when it wont be enough... I remember when all my data fit on a 20 gig drive...
quote:3) What should I buy, I'm not too worried about price, but I don't want something that's going to erase all my data or burn my house down
I don't know that it matters that much. TD's advice is probably just fine.
Posted by rollainm (Member # 8318) on :
Tom,
I've heard the same about Maxtor. I've never had a problem with my Western Digitals. Plus they have quite possibly the best warranty support.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Warranty support don't mean jack when your data's gone.
Posted by human_2.0 (Member # 6006) on :
Every drive is susceptible to failure. I've seen lightning storms destroy drives. There is no substitute for backups. Which is why I'm considering 2 mirrored raids in different locations.
Posted by dantesparadigm (Member # 8756) on :
I backed up my important things to my ipod, but I have a lot of videos and music that I use on a regular basis. If my hard drive were to spontaneously combust I would still be relatively fine, I was just looking for something to store my secondary items while I worked.
I did a little more searching and found out my school technologist used to work for Apple, and he manufactures external hard drives, so I could probably work something out through him. If not I found two 160gig modules online that seem to work, although they have some reviews that worry me a little. Thanks for all the advice everyone, I promise I'll keep my groveling to a minimum in the future.
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I've never heard that.