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Topic: External hard drives(sugestions) - Page: 1

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Any suggestions for a portable external hard drive????? Ie speed, capacity, 2.0 3.0and so on......
 
Inviato Wed 19 Jan 11 @ 7:22 pm
7200 1tb usb 2.0 (minimum)

you could go with a 500gb but you will find it fills up pretty fast.
 
For a cheap solution I recommend Seagate Free Agent-Go Drives.

5400 rpm
USB 2.0

500gb is plenty - my entire library is all high quality 320 bitrate, 10,000 songs only taking up 200gb.

USB 3.0 is coming, so don't spend alot of cash right now.
 
Whatever you get - buy multiple. I run a two drive setup. One for audio and one for video/karaoke. But I have 4 drives in total - all identical.

The two spare drives are duplicates of the main drives, just in case I get in to difficulties. I thought one drive had failed recently, but then discovered through testing it was the power supply. Having a spare meant I could carry on while I got the other replaced.

And when I upgrade next time, it will again be to 4 identical drives.

Cheers,

Roy
 
i would have to disagree with spaceman on the hdd speed. personally i try to keep awy from the 5400sas the data transfer rate is slower. just my own personal choice. but if your going to be using video i would deffo go with a 7200 or higher.
 
If you have a ridiculous amount of money to throw down on one of these things, look into SSD ;-)

As for standard, I have had Western Digital and Seagate fail on me... The only one that hasn't so far is iomega (which uses a Samsung drive).
 
i lost my entire collection only last year due to a seagate dying on me. it was a 7200 baracuda 1tb. "supposedly one of the best at the time" how wrong was that? the drive lasted me about 3 months of heavy usage and eventhough it failed so soon seagate refused to recover my data.

320 gig WD also failed loosing me a hell of a lot of family photos.

i now have a couple of hitachi drives.

the mechanical parts in seagate and western digital drives in my opinion seem to fail pretty easy. i may have just had a bad few drives. mind you the WD one was about 3 years old, maybe 4 so it had a good run.
 
oh hold on it wasnt a WD it was a Maxtor. ive just dug it out or the freezer lol.
 
Blulite wrote :
i lost my entire collection only last year due to a seagate dying on me. it was a 7200 baracuda 1tb. "supposedly one of the best at the time" how wrong was that? the drive lasted me about 3 months of heavy usage and eventhough it failed so soon seagate refused to recover my data.


Same happened to me! Seagate died on me (no real major use, I was 15 and had put all my discs on to the drive), and it went pop...

Started over again with the WD and although it lasted longer, it was only by a month or so.

Neither company offered any sort of recovery for their "lacking" quality (that's my opinion and in no way related to fact :-P).

Now I have the manufacturer replaced WD, a backup on a server, my imac, and another 2 ext HDD just to make sure!

I think the best one I've had is a "Freecom" one from Argos, I've had that for years and it's taken a beating but still works.

Si
 
 
If drives are less than 1 year old, most manufacturers now have a RMA form you can complete on their web sites for getting it replaced.

Did the recently with a WD internal drive. I chose the option to send me the new drive first by giving my credit card details. The only deuct if you don'tr return the faulty drive within 30 days. This way I was able to use the packaging they sent me to return the defective drive.

Based on the above to examples, that's why I always double up on my drives as stated previously. I also rotate the drives to try and give them even wear. Finally my music is stored on a server which means all hard drives are just copies of my master library. I've even considered a further drive to keep in a safe - but then thought that might be a step too far ... lol

I'd steer clear of SSD, yes the access times are amazing, but they have a more limited shelf life than a regular HDD due to the limit on read/writes, and due to that known limitation, I'm not sure the warranty process would be as forgiving...

Also, I would seriously invest in Spinrite. Click the URL and watch the video. Hard drives thse days are designed to fail and have extra sectors to use when old ones die. I have recovered a few drives with this software and regularly run diagnostics on my gig laptop HDD to keep it in condition.

Cheers,

Roy
 
the RMA wasnt much use when i had already lost all my data.

i did RMA the drive though and made sure i got a brand new drive and not one of those refurbished ones. im positive they actually sent me out the new one before i sent the old one back. but i never had to use my credit card.
 
Blulite wrote :
the RMA wasnt much use when i had already lost all my data.

i did RMA the drive though and made sure i got a brand new drive and not one of those refurbished ones. im positive they actually sent me out the new one before i sent the old one back. but i never had to use my credit card.


That would be because they hit the big red remote "KILL" button for your harddrive so they knew it would be fried ;-). I swear it sometimes seems like these companies have a button that wrecks your gear (in which it burns out a day after warranty)
 
i'll agree with that. lol
 
You should always have at least one up-to-date backup of your music collection, VirtualDJ database and any other files that are important to you.

If you need to take your backup with you to gigs, make a 3rd copy on your home computer just in case both your main and backup get damaged or stolen.
 
With out any hesitation, I would recommend La Cie products, found online at reasonable cost. I have a 1 and a half T, nice aluminum body that keeps very cool when working, used just for backing up/storing my music. And for djing I have the 500 gig, (soon to upgrade to their bigger one) it's a La Cie 500 gig with rugged case (can order extra rubber bumpers), it is very small, about 51/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches,I love it!. Goggle it on youtube, and check out the video where they throw it up in the air, lands on cement floor and still works with no ill effect! I've had western digital hard drives and had nothing but bad luck with them... good luck in your decision... party on! dj dawn.
 
Forgot to mention, the 1 and 1/2 T have usb and eSata (much quicker than usb),speed and I believe the smaller portable one (with bumper) does as well or can be ordered that way if desired, this eSata, makes backups/transfers much quicker.
 
I have had excellent luck with Seagate Free Agent Xtreme drives. I have 2-1.5TB drives that I keep mirrored. It has all my club and mobile music as well as videos. I have had the drives for almost 2 years if not longer. I also have some portable passports for the club and mobile music. I also have the club and mobile music backed up on my raided desktop.

Today I ordered 2 Seagate 2TB Expansion drives since my 1.5's are filling up. I will continue to use the 1.5's until it is full or they fail. Hopefully the new drives will be stable. You can never have enough backups.
 
I have a couple of WD My Book 1.5tb 7200's & a Maxtor. I definetly believe in backing up the backup drive. I have had good luck so far, no failures. I did have a Fantom external fail on me in the past & a few internal Seagates. Backup, backup, backup.
 
I had a Maxtor fail on me back in 2006, I'm fairly sure I have replaced most of the tracks on it, though I had ripped my entire CD collection back then and haven't really felt like doing it again since. I did manage to back it up a couple of times to some CD-ROM's. The 160gb drive that's in this laptop is 135gb of music. I still have another 20-30gbs on my Maxtor 320GB USB 2.0 I picked up for $60 about a year ago.

Most of my music is on my Media Center PC and that (all 3TB of it) is backed up to Mozy...
 
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