External Hard Drive Recommendation

Any boffins out there recommend an external hard drive device? Looking for 500 GB or so. Been pleased with My Book but reviews of reliability are a bit varied.

Western Digital MyBooks

I use Lacie/Maxtor

Another vote for the Western Digital MyBooks.

I use WD MyBooks and Maxtor externals. Both have been reliable and quick, although the WD with its FW800 connection is super quick.
The only bad thing I have to say about the WD is that there is no on/off switch; I'm never happy pulling the power lead out

J

I am not expert on this stuff but am looking for similar. Pixmania has maxtor and seagate 500Gb external drives on sale at £69 and WD My Book for £71.

Paul

The only bad thing I have to say about the WD is that there is no on/off switch

There is on the MyBook Premium ones, there's a big, illuminated button on the front.

same here...

Hi Peter

I have four Lacie 500Gbyte External Hard Drives, currently £69 from dabs

Dabs Lacie 500Gb

I have owned them for the last few years and so far I have not had a failure. I only switch them on when needed and they are just used for backup and archiving so USB2 is fast enough for me.

regards

Sean

Maxtor have had a bad reputation in recent years and I think Seagate have recently taken them over. I would stick to WD or Hitachi. The problem with products from Lacie and similar marques, is that you do not know whose drives (WD/Maxtor/Seagate) have been installed in product.

thanks all. I like my WD Mybook so I'll buy another.

I had Western Digital/Maxtor and had issues with both... i have now 3 Terra bite of Buffalo hard drives with memeo Auto back up and i love it!
Rene de Heer

Maxtor STM305004EHCB01 500Gb - I've got 4 of them and they never skip a beat, very pleased with them.

From personal experience I'm not keen on Hitachi HDD's.

My vote also is for WD MyBooks. Also have a couple of system backups for the macbook on WD Passports - very small and powered by the Macbook USB. Just remember all hard disk fail eventually so backup on several disks.

There are basically around 3 main manufacturers left in the industry now - WD, Seagate and Hitachi. Most other manufacturers will use a drive made by one of these three in their products - and you can't guarantee which you'll get. ie Rene's Buffalo will probably not have the disks made by them, and Lacie use 3rd party drives too. So, take your pick, and be prepared to replace in a couple of years .

The WD MyBooks are generally OK - sometimes get a bit of noise/vibration from them. Don't go for external ones above 500Gb at the moment as they're generally two separate drives in one box. The internal HD's I use are all WD 250/500Gb units and I'll probably move onto 1Tb units soon - no operational issues with any of them in 2yrs of running.

I've 4 older Maxtors which have been fine - several years old (pre seagate), but still going strong.

Seagate - wouldn't touch with a barge pole as I've had very bad experience with several (internal) drives failing in quick succession.

Hitatchi/IBM - should be OK, although I once had 6 out of 12 drives in a server setup in the US go down within a few weeks of each other too .

Lacie - Mac users usually swear by them...but they also have a name for overheating in some quarters...

The My Books look good and haven't heard of any issues. I use Lacie drives. Had a Maxtor OneTouch that failed on me so can't recommend them. As Nick rightly said, there really are only 3 drive manufactures reproducing under license, so its more about the software and interface systems. My Lacie drives are on nearly all day every day, and have not had a murmur of trouble.

I use Lacies at work and they're trouble free. Any manufacturer has their Friday afternoon products and I don't think it makes a difference who you use as long it's the brands mentioned in this thread.....just my opinion

A vote of confidence for Lacie from me, no issues so far with mine two years on.

Hope that's not the kiss of death..

A