Head-Fi.org › Forums › Equipment Forums › Gear-Fi: Non-Audio Gear and Gadgets › Best External HDD?
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Best External HDD?

post #1 of 28
8/16/09 at 4:30am
Thread Starter 
Hi,

I recently bought a new laptop for school (HP HDX18t) that came with 320GB of memory. After a few weeks of ripping Blu-Rays, I have found myself with less than 20GB of memory remaining. That said, I am now in the market for an external drive to store movies on. Right now I am looking into drives that can hold around 1 TB or 1.5 TB, but I am not sure what to get due to reliability issues. So, what are the best/most reliable TB drives out there that would be good for Blu-ray storage?

Thanks,

RTTT
Reply
post #2 of 28
8/16/09 at 4:34am
Probably looking at 2TB, considering a BD movie could be upto 50GB. Oh and it's capacity not memory. I don't have a BD player but try only ripping the movie and the movie soundtrack, no menus, no extra angles, no other audio tracks, no extras.
Reply
post #3 of 28
8/16/09 at 6:36am
The best external hard drives are the one with hard drives you put in yourself.

That way, you can get exactly the model, capacity, and even the enclosure you want.

For example:

Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EADS 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - Internal Hard Drives
Newegg.com - VANTEC NST-360SU-BL Aluminum 3.5" eSATA& USB 2.0 External Enclosure - External Enclosures

Put those two together and you get a 2 TB hard drive!
Reply
post #4 of 28
8/16/09 at 5:51pm
just get something from the wd mybook line. i've been using 2 (500 and 750) for 2 years now with no problems. or just get a hdd dock (something like this: Thermaltake BlacX N0028USU Hard Drive Dock - 2.5"/3.5" SATA to USB 2.0 at TigerDirect.com) and then you can just buy a couple internal hdd and get more whenever you need.
Reply
post #5 of 28
8/16/09 at 5:53pm
Those are allright for shorter transfers but I wouldn't use a 7200rpm drive like that for more than a couple of hours.
Reply
post #6 of 28
8/16/09 at 6:50pm

Ideas

Quote:
Originally Posted by iriverdude View Post
Those are allright for shorter transfers but I wouldn't use a 7200rpm drive like that for more than a couple of hours.
Why wouldn't you use a 7200 rpm drive? The MTBF on these drives is no worse than slower drives.

To RTTT:
I have a good reliable drive that I mounted in an external enclosure that is extremely quiet. It was ranked very good by a comparison publication. I'll try to find that link. Meanwhile:
Samsung HD103UJ 1TB 32MB SATA Hard Drive

and the enclosure I use is this one:

OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Quad Interface eS... (MEFW924AL1K) at OWC

And OWC also offers that enclosure with drives installed.

Aha, here is the review of the Samsung. Edit to attach link:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/14200

BTW I use it with my mac serving up music and I am about to order a second one and enclosure for dual redundancy via a full backup on disk of the first drive.

Hope this helps.
Reply
post #7 of 28
8/16/09 at 11:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Planar_head View Post
The best external hard drives are the one with hard drives you put in yourself.
a BIG x2.

The other huge advantage to building one yourself using an HD inherently designed for an internal installation. The HD manufacturers warrant the internal drives for three years, where as their external drives might only have a one year warranty.
Reply
post #8 of 28
8/17/09 at 6:08am
Quote:
Originally Posted by bixby View Post
Why wouldn't you use a 7200 rpm drive? The MTBF on these drives is no worse than slower drives.

Heat, no cooling.
Reply
post #9 of 28
8/17/09 at 8:41am
Quote:
Originally Posted by iriverdude View Post
Heat, no cooling.
Good DIY external enclosures have built-in fans.
Reply
post #10 of 28
8/17/09 at 9:48am
Quote:
Originally Posted by leftnose View Post
Good DIY external enclosures have built-in fans.
I was talking about that slot in desktop model. Anyway I've had several HD enclosures, bundled with crap quality buzzy fans that shift no air. Always prefer internal ones, or ones in internal caddies direct to PATA/SATA controller, no USB or firewire controller causing problems.
Reply
post #11 of 28
8/17/09 at 12:18pm
Based on the limited research I have done on line, I bought Maxtor HDD's for work and home back ups. They seem to have the best reliability and longevity.
Reply
post #12 of 28
8/17/09 at 12:45pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rise To The Top View Post
I recently bought a new laptop for school (HP HDX18t)
Your laptop has an eSATA port (it's a combo port that shares duty with the 4th USB port). Since you have an eSATA port you should take advantage of it. Look for an external HD that includes an eSATA connection. There are external hard drives that have both USB and eSATA (or even USB, FireWire, and eSATA).

eSATA is much faster for data transfer than USB. If you are copying over gigabytes of data the eSATA will make a noticeable difference.

I use eSATA for my external drives. Backing up 500GB of media files over eSATA takes maybe around 1.5 hours or so (rough estimate) while doing the same over USB would be an overnight process (rough estimate but still takes way too long).
Reply
post #13 of 28
8/17/09 at 12:46pm

1in 12

Carnegie Mellon and Google have done research that shows drive failures at 8% or 1 in 12 over two years. And Google's study stated heat as not a contributing factor. Also FC and SATA drives had about the same failure rate. But being a member of the storage community I can tell you SATA drives in poor enclosures can fail much more than their FC counterparts. Also, people trying to use SATA drives at 90-98% duty cycle also will experience more drive failures than their more expensive brethren. And spin speed has not been shown to be the factor. FC drives generally spin at or north of 10k.

For our uses, the SATA drive is fine. Yes, drives fail that's why there is RAID and warranties and redundant systems.

So find one that suites your needs, performs to your liking and buy it. Backup everything and get a good nights sleep!
Reply
post #14 of 28
8/17/09 at 1:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by jimmyjames8 View Post
Based on the limited research I have done on line, I bought Maxtor HDD's for work and home back ups. They seem to have the best reliability and longevity.
Well Maxtor is a subsidiary of Seagate, who now (for the most part) make some of the best drives out there. I've had poor experiences with WD and will never buy from them again.

I personally use Samsung F1 Spinpoints for my raid array and they work beautifully.
Reply
post #15 of 28
8/18/09 at 12:11am
I'm not sure of your budget, but I just purchased a Drobo from amazon for $300 (no drives included). Then you can add up to 16TB over 4 drives (when 4TB drives are available) and it will be completely redundant storage. Works like a very easy to use RAID solution.
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
Head-Fi.org › Forums › Equipment Forums › Gear-Fi: Non-Audio Gear and Gadgets › Best External HDD?