External Harddrives... Recommendations?

[LobsterSan]

Well, I'm putting the final touches on ordering a Dell Inspiron notebook (damn you Jude and Neil!), and I'm gonna need some mega storage to replace my old desktop harddrives.

I'd prefer firewire connectivity, and I need at least 120GB. Does anyone have good or bad experiences with external drives to share? I always choose Western Digital over Maxtor (I've had 2 Maxtor drives fail on me, and all my Western Digital experiences have been positive thus far). I was wondering if the bargain brands were worth consideration, or are they just super prone to bad sectors and other problems?

Also, has anyone tried the external casing kits? That might be another solution for me -- to just buy two kits to house my current drives.

BTW: I'm kicking myself for not ordering before 4/25... I could have had an extra 10% off the already discounted prices.

 

[ServinginEcuador]

I will try and get the brand name on the firewire HD I bought last year, but it used one of IBM's incredible HD units in it, along with an Oxford parallel to firewire bridge that is suppsoed to be second to none in terms of speed and reliability. I actually found my unit thru a digital photo web site of all places. It is faster at transfer to and fro than my internal HD, and in the review of the unit it beat a SCSI run internal HD also.

Think! is the company that makes it and here's the review I found again:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/thinkfirenice/

 

[ServinginEcuador]

Here's the company's web site where they have the 120GB version for $325.

http://www.thinkmemory.com/dpreview/

 

[Squalish]

My recommendation is to get one of the empty firewire IDE boxes, and a normal desktop drive. It comes out around half the price of a USB2/Firewire drive if you shop around(these sites are good places to start.).

This Deal plus a $60 IDE/firewire converter will get you a 200GB nonbootable drive working on firewire, plus a 256meg compactflash card(although those have been going for dirt cheap lately) for about something like $160 after rebates. Granted, this relies on 3 coupon codes, 2 manufacturers rebates, and a referral link from Fatcash, so YYMV.

As usual(I read way too much about stuff outside my financial reach), I don't have any personal experience with one of these, but here's a decent review of one. I get the impression that most of them are based off the oxford chipset, although I don't know how much the firmware varies, so if you're going to compare the results of that one with other oxford chipset ones, do it with a grain of salt.

 

[penvzila]

Quote:

Originally posted by LobsterSan Well, I'm putting the final touches on ordering a Dell Inspiron notebook (damn you Jude and Neil!), and I'm gonna need some mega storage to replace my old desktop harddrives. I'd prefer firewire connectivity, and I need at least 120GB. Does anyone have good or bad experiences with external drives to share? I always choose Western Digital over Maxtor (I've had 2 Maxtor drives fail on me, and all my Western Digital experiences have been positive thus far). I was wondering if the bargain brands were worth consideration, or are they just super prone to bad sectors and other problems? Also, has anyone tried the external casing kits? That might be another solution for me -- to just buy two kits to house my current drives. BTW: I'm kicking myself for not ordering before 4/25... I could have had an extra 10% off the already discounted prices.

I would reccomend housing internal drives in casings. They're SO FREAKING CHEAP now. I just bought a 200gb WD special edition for 149.99(100 rebate)!!!! The bigger the drive, the less per gig you pay. I personally don't know about other drives, but this is my fourth WD and i've never once had a problem with any of them.

 

[tommyatkins]

I used to work for a electronics store, but it's been a while. I had looked into getting an external HDD a few months ago while I was working there, but I can't remember what I liked from my research. What I do remember (and the actual point of this post

) is that most of the major HDD manufacturers recently changed their warrenties. (I'm thinking of IBM, Maxtor, and Western Digital, in particular, I think). Anyways, one of them still actually has a good warranty, but I can't remember what one.

Just keep in mind that 3 year warrrenties are good (which is what they were a year ago...I donno what they are now

)

TA

Wow, lots of nothin'

 

[CaptBubba]

Quote:

Originally posted by Squalish This Deal plus a $60 IDE/firewire converter will get you a 200GB nonbootable drive working on firewire, plus a 256meg compactflash card(although those have been going for dirt cheap lately) for about something like $160 after rebates. Granted, this relies on 3 coupon codes, 2 manufacturers rebates, and a referral link from Fatcash, so YYMV.

Dell laptops, as well as Gateways, can boot from firewire HDs. Just put "Removable Devices" before "HD1" in your boot order and you are good to go. I have not actually tried this myself, but I was told on no uncertain terms by Dell and Gateway's tech support that it does work. The only problem would be if you try to boot an OS that does not have native 1394 support (for example: if you boot linux 1394 mass storage support has to be compiled into the kernel, not a module). This could be a nice way to avoid the performance limitations imposed by the slow laptop hard drives.

I would agree on the external enclosure though, because then you get a nice manufaturer's warrenty on the drive itself in case it fails, not the cruddy 1 year thing that the enclosure/drive combos seem to come with. Plus you could back up data, then store the HD in a secure location (safety deposit box, fire proof safe, etc), which is always a good option to have.

 

[Eagle_Driver]

tommyatkins, IBM is no longer selling hard drives under its own name; it had sold off that division to Hitachi.

Maxtor, Seagate and Western Digital are the companies selling their own hard drives to both OEMs and in retail packages nowadays. Of those brands, only Western Digital still offers a 3-year warranty - and only on its "Special Edition" drives. (All other internal ATA hard drives are covered by a cruddy 1-year warranty.)

CaptBubba, read the last paragraph above. Except for Western Digital's Special Edition drives, all internal ATA hard drives sold in retail packaging now have the very same cruddy 1-year warranty as the enclosure/drive combos on the market. (Hitachi sells its hard drives only to OEMs and system integrators, and does NOT sell them in retail boxes.) In addition, the very same companies that have shortened their warranty from 3 years to 1 year have applied the same 1-year warranty to both retail and OEM drives.

 

[wallijonn]

LobsterSan,

you mean you didn't see the Sony VIVO laptop with the w-i-d-e screen?

 

[AIM9x]

Quote:

Originally posted by LobsterSan I always choose Western Digital over Maxtor (I've had 2 Maxtor drives fail on me, and all my Western Digital experiences have been positive thus far).

crazy.... I cursed WD. i've had 3 maxtor drives work fine for me. I've had 2 WDs and my buddy has had two as well... all of them went to **** within 1.5 years.

 

[LobsterSan]

damn, i wish i had payed attention to squalish's post earlier... 200gb drive for $100 ain't bad at all...

as it stands, i've found a way to get a 200gb WD SE (3 year warranty, woo-hoo!) in a firewire shell for about $200, using penvzilla's post and a Bytecc external enclosure. Bytecc is a little shady, but the deal is pretty good at $49 for the enclosure. I figure if speeds are really sucky with the IDE/1394 bridge that Bytecc is using, I can probably ebay the enclosure and pick something else up. The important thing is making sure the actual disk drive is of high quality.

thanks everyone for the advice and links. much appreciated. i'll also let everyone know how the enclosure works out when i get it all setup (probably in a few weeks... especially since finals are heating up).

 

[LobsterSan]

Quote:

Originally posted by wallijonn LobsterSan, you mean you didn't see the Sony VIVO laptop with the w-i-d-e screen?

The VIVO's were compelling... but in terms of price/performance, the Dell systems were really shining (especially with all the rebates and such).

Damn you wally... always trying to lead me into something new

That akg 240DF comment you made way back when had me searching for a cheapy used pair frantically for a good week or so.

 

[LobsterSan]

Well, all the pieces are here and they are now assembled.

The final result?

A very fast 200GB Western Digital, 7200RPM, 8MB cache, with 3 year warranty external firewire drive in a stylish external casing all for $200. A great deal, IMO, and it is working beautifully so far. The Bytecc case mentioned looks as good in person as it does in pictures, and the Oxford IDE-Firewire bridge contained within is giving pretty good transfer speeds. The installation of the drive into the casing was a snap (if you've ever installed an internal hard drive before, this is about the same difficulty). The instructions were a little sparse, but if you use common sense things shouldn't be a problem.

I'm quite pleased with everything so far. Here is a product pic of the Bytecc case (matches iBook styling very well):

 

[penvzila]

VERY NICE

 

[MadDog5145]

I have that enclosure too and highly recommend it! It works great with my internal cd-writer making it one of the fastest external cd-writers out there.