Topic: Who makes the best external drive( most reliable )?

[THE NIZ BIAAAAACH!]

ssia

[RebelRebel]

smartdisk/crossfire

[THE NIZ BIAAAAACH!]

any one own a LaCie?

[RebelRebel]

I dont own them, but they were selling them at the PX for about a month and not a one of them sold, even though they were cheaper than anything else there.

[momule]

any one own a LaCie?

laCie has always Been about three steps ahead in the external drive market.
I believe they are also one of the only companies making a External drive that has the speed of Firewire 800 . (hell Im pretty happy with the firewire 400., I could only Imagine 800) 

but honestly For speed, price and warranty I would have to suggest picking up a Seagate drive and buying your own enclosure .
Gonna be hard to find another drive that carries a 5 year warranty, And Seagates are almost twice as quiet as most other drives.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

Don't settle for anything less than a 3 year warranty.  Most retail drives only have 1 year warranties.  OEM are 3.  You may have to assemble your own drive and enclosure.

I only buy external enclosures with fans.  Drive temp is very important to reliability.

[mhibbs]

any one own a LaCie?

I have the LaCie Porsche designed silver one...250gb.  Haven't had any problem w/ it so far.

[dnsacks]

any one own a LaCie?

I have the LaCie Porsche designed silver one...250gb.  Haven't had any problem w/ it so far.

I have one of these too -- winxp reports that the hard drive inside is a Maxtor. 

Thus far I've had equal luck with maxtor, seagate and westernd digital hard drives. 

Personally, I agree with the recommendation to pick up an internal drive (look for cheapest b&m prices via www.salescircular.com) and an external enclosure and build your own.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

FWIW, I will no longer buy segate.  They didn't have an advance replacement warranty a few years back and more than a couple early drive failures. Not sure if they've since caught up. I've had good luck with WD and their warranty replacements have always gone smooth. I have over 2TB of WD drives and won't buy anything else right now.

[THE NIZ BIAAAAACH!]

Thanks for all the input guys. +T for everyone

[nic]

LaCie and Glyph are probably the best overall external HD setups...Glyph is specially made for external audio capture

[mfisch]

external RAID drives have long been conspiciously lacking in the consumer market ... until now

http://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/data_sheets/onetouch_iii_turbo_datasheet.pdf

That'd be the one Id get, if you have the cash. No availability for another two weeks though, this is a new product!

[poorlyconditioned]

any one own a LaCie?

laCie has always Been about three steps ahead in the external drive market.
I believe they are also one of the only companies making a External drive that has the speed of Firewire 800 . (hell Im pretty happy with the firewire 400., I could only Imagine 800) 

but honestly For speed, price and warranty I would have to suggest picking up a Seagate drive and buying your own enclosure .
Gonna be hard to find another drive that carries a 5 year warranty, And Seagates are almost twice as quiet as most other drives.

If you have the cash I recommend buying the retail product, either WD or Maxtor.  Look for closeout sales on older models.  I've used several of the Maxtor drives and found their enclosures to be better (quieter, better cooling, and better looking) than the after market ones.  If I were doing a huge number of drives I might standardize on one enclosure, but tracking down good quality ones is a challenge, especially if you want specific things, like both Firewire and USB.

   Richard

[Brian Skalinder]

external RAID drives have long been conspiciously lacking in the consumer market ... until now

http://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/data_sheets/onetouch_iii_turbo_datasheet.pdf

That'd be the one Id get, if you have the cash. No availability for another two weeks though, this is a new product!

I didn't check out the Maxtor above, but IME many of the firewire/USB external RAID setups are s/w controlled RAID v. h/w controlled RAID.  You're better off with h/w controlled RAID.  Most of the h/w controlled external RAID options are SATA at the moment.  A quick PC Guide write-up on h/w v. s/w RAID.

[heath]

like i've said before, we use nothing but Quantegy drives for our archival audio work.  Thus far, I've filled about 2-300 200gig firewire drives with no failures.  They are fantastic.

h