[Dan the audioman]

I am looking for an extenal hard drive for my IBM R40 laptop. I would like it to work very similar to how the iRiver ihp-120 works. I am looking for something around 80-120 gigs. Nothing special.

Basically what I would like to do is have another C drive that I can just leave hooked up. And I would like to be able to link folders that are used by certain programs to the drive (EAC is an example of a program).

(For Example: I would like to hook up the outgoing files folder of EAC to go to this external hard drive. That way when I rip all of these wav files in EAC, they dont fill up my actual laptop hard drive, but they go to the external one.---is this possible??)

I've been snoopin' around and I came up with a few:

LACIE 80GB USB 2.0 HD 7200RPM PORCHSE DESIGN

IOMEGA® 80GB HDD USB 2.0 EXTERNAL DESKTOP HARD DRIVE

Maxtor OneTouch 80GB 7200RPM USB 2.0/1.1 External Hard Drive

MAXTOR 120GB USB EXT HD ONETOUCH 2MB 7200RPM

If you could take a look at those few that I picked out it would be very helpful. The MAXTOR 120gig and the LACIE 80 gig look like the best deals but I don't know which one would best fit my criteria.

Thank You very much.

Best Regards,
Dan

 

[chadbang]

Man, I just went through this a month or two ago. Found lots of help here.

I bought a 120 gig Maxtor - which I put into a firewire enclosure (external). Well, today (already) it started making funny noises. I ran Disk Doctor on it which found some problem. After a bunch of work, I got it semi-straightened out, but I still feel it's in flakey shape. To make a long story short, I'm putting it out of comission until I can buy a Western Digital 120 gig harddrive to back up the data from it.

I forget who it was (sorry man) here, but he's a techie and he said go Western Digital. I'm sorry I didn't the first time.

I can't recommend Maxtor. I can't beleive it's gone wonky in less than two months.

The Hitachi in my laptop has been used and abused for 5 years with no problems!

 

[Dan the audioman]

Thanks a lot Chadbang!

Anyone else have something to say?

What about the LACIE??

Is Western Digital really the best route?

Best Regards,
Dan

 

[MuZI]

Western Digital, Seagate, get one and put it into a firewire or usb enclosure from newegg for like $29

 

[Dan the audioman]

Thats odd....I have just experienced a delayed double post!

 

[utep10]

I love my Seagate external drive. Very quiet. I should
also say that Seagate employs me

.

Seagate and Maxtor are usually the brands that come up
in our discussions. WD is hardly mentioned. In fact, I
bought a WD drive awhile back and it was noisy as hell.

Just my experiences.

 

[MuZI]

WD had some problems for like 6 months, their hard drives would fail in a matter of weeks and make lot of noise, i'm sure WD is back on their feet.

 

[mbriant]

I've got 5 fulll size ( as opposed to laptop size) external Seagate 120 gig Barracuda drives plus 2 internals. They've been both quiet and dependable. There are several styles of external enclosures around, most of which come with the HD pre-installed. However, most of these do not have a fan, relying instead on the heat-sink capabilities of the aluminum enclosure. Because of this I went for a common, no-name plastic ( with internal metal shielding) enclosure which does have a ventilation fan and which you assemble and install the drive yourself.

They're not as compact and sleek looking as some of the others I've seen, but IMO, the fan is necessary for the well being of your drive. ( I could be wrong about this) The enclosures are very easy to assemble and you have the option of putting in any hard drive you'd like. By shopping around for the best price on drives, I found the final combined product to be less expensive than all the other pre-packaged external hard drives I saw. With Windows XP I did not require any driver installation (for USB2). I think my enclosures are an older version of THESE

 

[LobsterSan]

I've been using the same enclosure as you, Mbriant. It's a Bytecc 3.5" drive, which looks quite similar to the one in the picture you linked to.

I also went the WD internal installed into an external drive route. I found an amazing deal on a 200gb WD 3-year warranty caviar for $150 after rebate. The enclosure cost me about $35 after shipping. That comes to about $200 for an external 200GB 3-year warranty 7200 RPM 8mb cache, 10 months ago. I don't think you can do much better than that, price and performance-wise.

I've also had bad experiences with Maxtor, having two drives failed on me. The first happened after about 3 years of ownership, which was fair enough. The second one failed after 1 week of ownership, which was unacceptable. I've never bought Maxtor again.

Western Digital has been much more reliable for me thus far. I've gone through about 4 of their drives with no complaints.

I haven't tried the other brands you mentioned, so I can't comment on them.

I will note that i am currenlty having a few problems with my Bytec firewire enclosure/WD drive combo. I'm not sure what the problem is exactly, but I think it has to do with my drive being too full. It has some read problems intermittently, but there's no actual damage to the drive. Everything is accessible, but I occasionally have to reconnect it.

 

[wallijonn]

Part of the problem with usb2 external hds is that it powers the hd from the usb cable. you are then usually left with 2.5" hds which consume less power, are slower and more expensive.

If you must go with a 3.5" usb2 enclosure make sure that it has an external power supply, a fan and is shock resistant.

Her's some ideas, although they are not perfect choices:
http://www.imagestore.us/product.asp...%2D3520USB%2DC
http://www.dealsonic.com/plidetousb20.html
http://www.dealsonic.com/arhdal3usb201.html (since it is a vertical unit, if you have an old HD which you used in the horizontal position it may give you reliablity problems).
http://www.htcnetstore.com/al3usbexenrb.html
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/Produc...tCode=101206-8

They are okay if you have a few HDs kicking around. The last link is for the WD external drive with a separate power supply.

besides USB & 1394 there are drives which you can connect to a network. Unfortunately they work at about 12.5MB/s (NIC100 speed).

Good luck in your choice.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
All HD manufacturers have returns. What you are looking for is support and warranty service. I thought I had a bad 20GB/udma66 WD HD. It is over 3 years old, so it is no longer covered by a replacement warranty. Linux messed it up and I had a dickens of a time getting it back up. But it is now doing yeoman duty. Most new HDs come with 1 year warranties.

What I usually suggest is that if you have an Intel mobo you stick to ATA100 drives while most AMD mobos come with ATA133. SATA150 is slightly faster (depending on the benchmark) but is usually more expensive and some mobos have crappy SATA connectors. Add crappy power connectors and they could become unreliable. What you want to stay away from are the IBM drives which run hot & noisey.

My WD1200JBB for some reason "clunks" when it is powered off. This is what I expect from Maxtors. My Seagate 120GB is supposedly slower than my WD, but it is quieter. For best reliablity you need clean power and proper air circulation. The unknown is usually the HD chip, which is why I stick with Intel. I no longer like Promise and you couldn't give me a SIIG chipset. VIA has probably gotten their act together. Do they still come out with IDE chip updates? In the old days they were called 4-in-1 drivers. nVidia probably makes good HD controller chips. My SIS chipset has problems under Linux, although it runs fine. On my W98SE HD I had to re-install the IDE chipset drivers because Halo was temporarily locking up (which W2K did not do). For some reason DMA could not be set.

I tried one Maxtor 133 on my Intel sys and it would not run at ATA100. There was no utility to knock it down. It would not install the OS. Back it went. It also had interaction problems with my WDs. Heck, even some WDs have interaction problems. Usually one then ends up putting the drives on separate channels to do image copies. Since I use caddies this was not acceptable. Seagate has better utility software than WD even though they look the same. The Seagate allowed me to do a low level format on the WD20GB, whereas the WD utility did not. The Maxtor utility also allowed me to do a low level format on the 20GB.

I try not to buy HDs over the mail because of handling. I would rather go to Fry's and get one from a skid - prefably from the very middle of the skid.

Not the bottom, not the top, not the sides; the middle.

 

[PodMan]

I just sold my western digital 80gb usb2 external drive with its own power adapter. it was pretty reliable but also pretty loud at idle. the annoying hum it made at idle eventually drove me to sell it. it may just be me though as ever since moving to a laptop i have found fan noise and other humming noise from the power supply intolerable. however i have had good experience with western digital drives, probably every (except one maxtor that came with a computer) drive i have bought in the past have been western digital and they were all reliable.

 

[wallijonn]

PodMan,

I find that Toshiba laptops whine up and down depending on temperature. Now desktops have fan controls built in - they will be nice and quiet until teh temp goes up - then the CPU and the Power Supply fans kick into high gear.

Did you have the WD external on a rubber mouse pad?

 

[Dan the audioman]

OK, I have settled on the MAXTOR 120gig with the ONE TOUCH back-up program.

I found a few very informative reviews that pushed me over the edge!

Unless you guys have any horrible experiences (and if you do PLEASE tell me), I will order it within the next few days.

Thanks for your help!

Best Regards,
Dan

 

[bootman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dan the audioman OK, I have settled on the MAXTOR 120gig with the ONE TOUCH back-up program. I found a few very informative reviews that pushed me over the edge! Unless you guys have any horrible experiences (and if you do PLEASE tell me), I will order it within the next few days. Thanks for your help! Best Regards, Dan

It will be fine.
I've used Maxtor drives for years (along with WD, IBM and seagate) and they are fine drives.
Please realize that you will not have a 2nd C: drive but an additional drive with a letter after your current cd/dvd drive. (most likely e: )
Just keep in mind the actual letter assigned by windows so that you can point your programs to save to the new drive instead of the default c:
You should be able to do this within the program's settings.

 

[tyrion]

I've been using my Maxtor 120gb one touch for about a week and it is great. I download a lot of live shows in .shn or flac. I have my download manager send them directly to the external drive. When I rip I send the files straight to the exernal drive.