[hempcamp]

Quote:

Originally Posted by freckling /img/forum/go_quote.gif You call him a child instead of refuting what he says with information. No offense, but you look like the child here.

I did refute him, but he responds about style every time, then links to a Wikipedia list of logical fallacies after a long list of his own logical fallacies (ad nauseum and tons of false attribution -- I never said Newegg was "bad" or "evil" or that WD or LaCie were "unclean" or any of that trash). It's just baiting for a Mac-vs-PC debate in a thread where an avowed Mac user asked for a suggestion.

What I said was OWC is a great choice for many stated reasons aside from style. It helps that it looks nice next to a Mac. End of story.

There's no need for an argument here.

--Chris

 

[obobskivich]

uh dude, first of all, learn to understand this thing called sarcasm

second of all, the wikipedia link wasn't all I posted, I provided you a lot of credible information, including information FROM oxford, which basically tears your arguement a new a-hole

as far as "have it look nice", why not buy the Fantom Green Power drive for like $120 at newegg, that looks almost identical (OH GOD, you have to brasso the logo off if you want it to match 100%)

seriously, I could care less what OS you use (by the way, a "mac" IS a PC (...can I say duh? if i'm really really nice and say it in a really polite way? please?)), my point is, don't waste $100 just to be trendy or keep the whole apple-esque-image thing going (given that Time Capsule is only like $299, and you're already about there in price, why not get Time Capsule? given that its wireless and a few other advantages for the OS X platform, and see, thats another direction I'd support)

this isn't at all a debate over OS', its a debate over how stupid can you be with your money

::edit
here's me accepting a point of wrong-ness, 1TB time capsule is more like $500, so it isn't "just $30 more", although, it would match flawlessly
some other looking around at the apple website:
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/hom...ge?mco=MjY0Njg

they have a lot of things that match, including a 500GB time capsule, and a number of other drives

have fun bitching about apple's customer service or whatever other random little piece of this entire post you'll attach to and cry over, it seems style is your hang-up, but honestly, i'm done dealing with this, my suggestion to ditch wasting $100 extra stands, unless that $100 extra gets you something better, like 1.5-2TB, or if its 1TB as a RAID1 array, or something super cool like that

 

[mofonyx]

Would Apple Macs need specific harddrives? I can recommend to you my set up which is truly awesome

Cooler Master X Craft 360 case, which has USB, eSATA

with WD10EACS, which is the Western Digital 1TB Green Power. Very quiet, very silent, unless seeking which makes it tick a little, otherwise quiet as can be.

So there.

I hope you get around it.

 

[obobskivich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mofonyx /img/forum/go_quote.gif Would Apple Macs need specific harddrives?

no, as has already been established, they do not

only very old apple computers, from the mid to late 1990's, actually required "specific harddrives", and even then, it wasn't something that non-apple hardware could not use, it just required some other components that non-apple hardware usually didn't have (such as a SCSI controller)

however, thats all internal disks, not external disks, which have never been a conflict for apple (because it could connect with whatever it wants inside the enclsoure, hell, it could just have a squatting dwarf writing the numbers with a light pen to the USB interface, it'd still work

), so all it needs to be compatable is a compatable interface, in this case its going to be USB, and possible firewire (not sure exactly what the standard load-out for ports is on the Powerbook G4, I know on the Mac Pro Firewire is available, and the Powerbook G5 has firewire as well, so I'd guess the G4 does too), however, as has been established in many online articles and other head-fi threads, there is not really a difference between modern USB 2.0 and FW400 (however, if his G4 only has USB1.1 and FW400, he'd want to go with FW400, is it worth $100+? no, but if it was a $10-$30 difference, I'd go with the FW400 over USB1.1)

now, as far as "no real difference" between USB 2.0 and FW400, that IS an abstraction, as far as the end-user (EU) knows, its going to be basically the same, it accomplishes the same thing, and the performance is nearly identical, from an engineering perspective, FW may be more elegant, however 99.99% of EU's dont care (kinda like "if your application already runs fast enough, do you care about making it faster?", no, you generally dont, you only want the stuff that lags to run faster)

 

[hempcamp]

I prefer to use FW because I can chain multiple drives without using a hub -- I already have a mess of devices sucking on the available USB ports. I use FW800 since it's there, but I don't really benefit from its speed advantages since I don't move around large amounts of data.

I bought a quad-interface enclosure because of long-term flexibility. I will have high-speed options well into the foreseeable future no matter what other computers I purchase.

If I didn't have either of these preferences, I would have purchased a WD MyBook, as their Passport drives have a solid build and have served me well. They also look decent enough to share my desktop, but style has very little to do with it.

To be clear, the 400GB WD drive I currently have in my OWC enclosure was purchased from either Newegg or ZipZoomFly -- I have nothing against either retailer and purchase from them often.

To highlight what I mean by great customer service, on two occasions OWC has shipped me replacements on a return (or in one instance I accidentally ordered the wrong item -- an IDE enclosure instead of a SATA enclosure) before I even returned the other product, on my honor, no extra charges or restocking fees, never being put on hold when I called. That kind of service got my loyalty.

Paying more for something isn't always a vain endeavor. Sometimes it has to do with personal connections, brand loyalty, reliability, and consistent availability of products tailored to your needs (which as a Mac user can be different sometimes). I'm happy to pay more for OWC components for the same reason I'm happy to spend more on well-made audio equipment from people like Jan Meier and Todd the Vinyl Junkie.

--Chris

 

[obobskivich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hempcamp /img/forum/go_quote.gif I prefer to use FW because I can chain multiple drives without using a hub -- I already have a mess of devices sucking on the available USB ports. I use FW800 since it's there, but I don't really benefit from its speed advantages since I don't move around large amounts of data. I bought a quad-interface enclosure because of long-term flexibility. I will have high-speed options well into the foreseeable future no matter what other computers I purchase. If I didn't have either of these preferences, I would have purchased a WD MyBook, as their Passport drives have a solid build and have served me well. They also look decent enough to share my desktop, but style has very little to do with it. To be clear, the 400GB WD drive I currently have in my OWC enclosure was purchased from either Newegg or ZipZoomFly -- I have nothing against either retailer and purchase from them often. To highlight what I mean by great customer service, on two occasions OWC has shipped me replacements on a return (or in one instance I accidentally ordered the wrong item -- an IDE enclosure instead of a SATA enclosure) before I even returned the other product, on my honor, no extra charges or restocking fees, never being put on hold when I called. That kind of service got my loyalty. Paying more for something isn't always a vain endeavor. Sometimes it has to do with personal connections, brand loyalty, reliability, and consistent availability of products tailored to your needs (which as a Mac user can be different sometimes). I'm happy to pay more for OWC components for the same reason I'm happy to spend more on well-made audio equipment from people like Jan Meier and Todd the Vinyl Junkie. --Chris

if you'd just pointed this out when I first brought up issues with the OWC costing $100 more, we could've saved a lot of time, instead of you wanting to yell at me, call me a child, call me ignorant, tear me down, beat me down, etc

its often easier to just say what you're gonna say the first time

i still say, go with the Fantom or similar, unless you've got an extreme case like hemp here (who apparently has like a dozen or so drives (in which case, yes, FW does pose some advantages, but the average user has 1 or 2 external disks))

 

[hempcamp]

Quote:

Originally Posted by obobskivich /img/forum/go_quote.gif its often easier to just say what you're gonna say the first time

I did. Maybe not as elaborated, but I said the exact same reasons in my first response to you as the last: reliable, connection options, included software, customer service, and style to boot.

--Chris

 

[obobskivich]

you were talking about style, and the hardware inside as the main reasons for it costing more

if you'd cited what their customer service did, that'd really've stopped me, because any company that will cross-ship like that IS above and beyond

from my side, just seeing something for nearly $300 with some decent connectivity and style, theres a lot less expensive alternatives, you just gotta know which features you want, style, or a selection of connections, and some guy screaming that I'm a child if I don't agree with him...

its all good though, now that we're on the same page as one another, haha

 

[aphinity]

well, I just got back the Milwaukee Brewers' victory @ Miller Park in the NL Division Series and I'm glad to see all your input in this thread.

Will research all the companies mentioned soon - thanks all.

W/ a new external drive, I really am not that concerned about style & all that. What I am concerned about is the integrity and safety of my music collection, logic/ableton projects, and other data.

It's clear that you pay a premium for pre-assembled drives - seems to be the case across the board. I mentioned G-Tech and OWC because I've read good reviews about their reliability (enclosure + drive performance); style element was not really a factor.

I mentioned macs in the thread title because I use macs and wanted to tap into other mac users' experiences - plain and simple.

Cheers all + here's a company that someone recommended in another forum i frequent:

Data Robotics, Inc.

just putting this out there; doubt i'll go this route - do appreciate the concept though...

 

[leveller1642]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aphinity i do realize that all drives die eventually. however, wondering if anyone has any shining recommendations for external drives/brands that are 1tb best of class.

As a Mac user, I strongly agree with what hempcamp says. Get a Oxford 924 chipset based enclosure. Anything else is a gamble with a non mounting drive and/or data corruption. To be fair I have had a MyBook USB drive and it was ok, if rather slow to mount. The problem with buying a combo USB/FW drive is that it is either difficult or impossible to determine the chipset used. You could end up with the notoriously bad Prolific 3507, which I guarantee will cause you a lot of pain. Spend the extra and buy from a Mac accessory retailer.

 

[ozz]

I have had good luck for the last year with Lacie on my MacBook Pro
but it is noisy and I noticed that the new WD Studio ll run a lot quieter
and thats what is used at my work but they have only been in use for
a couple of months so time will tell.

 

[vapman]

buy a Western Digital Black 1TB and an external enclosure to put it in. It's less expensive, and the WD Black is the most reliable drive out there at the moment that I know of. I use a Seagate in an OKGear enclosure from Newegg for my ext. drive right now, but supposedly WD is even more stable.

 

[bigshot]

I prefer Seagate drives in the Maxtor One Touch III enclosure. It costs more, but it has two Firewire 800 ports, making it easy to daisy chain them at very fast speeds. I have 9 TB online storage on my main computer... 5 external 1.5 TB Maxtors and two internal drives. Zoom!

See ya
Steve

 

[krmathis]

Imo you can't go much wrong with a LaCie.
Great looking stable drives, with the benefit of FireWire 800 if you pick the right one.

 

[Aimless1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by hempcamp /img/forum/go_quote.gif 1.0TB Western Digital 'GreenPower' SATA-II HD... (WD10EACS) at OWC Probably that one. The "green" WD 1TB. And another one of these: OWC Mercury Elite-AL Quad Interface eSATA... (MEFW934AL1KS) at OWC Although if you're not picky about drive type and don't care about FW 800 or eSATA, one of these is much much cheaper at 1TB: 1.0TB OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro EcoGreen P... (MAU4S7E1TB32) at OWC And I might buy the enclosure from OWC and the drive itself from whomever has a good deal on it according to DealMac.com. --Chris

Thanks Chris. I have been looking for an external h.d. that was quiet, ran cool and is green. Most that I looked at failed in one or more of these categories. Arrived the day after I ordered. It was simply connect and use with my macbook. Quiet, cool and green...everything I was l looking for. 1st back up went very fast. I am very satisfied.

Appreciate the links and the advice.