Reliable external hard drive for MBP

Hello everybody,
Here I am shopping again . This time I'd like to know what would you recommend as a good and reliable external hard drive that I could use with Time Machine.

What do you think of this:
Iomega eGo Portable 500 GB External hard drive - 800Mbps(FireWire800)/400Mbps(FireWire)/480Mbps(Hi-Sp.USB)

Also, from friends I know I've heard only complains about external hard drives - problems with reliability etc. Has anything changed in this regard in recently?

Lastly, what is your experience with Time Machine? How much can I trust it?

Thank you.

 

I use a Western Digital My Book Studio.
It has USB, Firewire 400+800, or eSata connections - I use Firewire 800 since its pretty damn fast!

It has 2 hard drives, which you set up in RAID - so it mirrors one drive onto the other for the ultimate in fault tolerance.

Although I dont use Time Machine just yet - I use this drive for all my storage needs - photos/videos etc, as I know they will be safe.

I have the 4TB version (2x2TB HDDs), although there is a 2TB version also available, which I am currently selling! I'll PM you some details if you want?

 

I've had 3 WD die on me, I wouldn't recommend WDs, EVER!

Nowadays I use this G-Drive mini (500GB Firewire 800) and it's great, it has the same Hitachi HDD used with Macs.

Here's their website: G-TECHNOLOGY, Product Line - External, Portable and Desktop Hard Drives Designed for the Mac!

 

I've seen every brand of hard drive die...

backups are a must... and your best bet is an external drive that has 2 drives that do raid 1 mirroring... you have a backup, and even if one of the drives in the backup dies, you still have your info.... you only lose things if your main drive fails, and both of the drives in the backup... all at the same time. very unlikely.

 

Lacie hard drives are also very reliable.

 

they brand the housing, the physical drive can be from any manufacturer, normally Hitachi consumer grade or WD


if you want good and reliable a NAS in RAID 1 mirroring or RAID 1-0 mirroring/striping configuration.

the unit will have 2 or 4 PHYSICAL hard drives in it so if one cooks off your data is safe on the other, then you just change the bad drive.

 

Not sure why she would want a RAID 1-0 config if it's just backup. RAID 1 will suffice.

 

True enough but its amazing how having the ability to toss in a few more terabytes extra should you need them is.

I normally get a 4 bay, and load bays 0 and 1, and next thing you know the customer has backups and alot of other data on them so you wind up filling bays 2 and 3 in a couple years or less

 

OCW, "other world computing"

Is really good check them out!

Also called Mac Sales.

 

this.

there are no brands more trustworthy than others. get one rated highly and make sure you backup that backup.

 

Sometimes remember its not the hardware that lets us down, its the manufacturer. Today I had a RAID5 1 drive went bad (3 drives total) Dell say that they don't have one in stock! Its a 1TB SAS drive and we have 4 hour critical support.... Hopefully the server is fine apart from the drive, if not bye bye data; backups ahoy (of which we use Windows Server Backup and a separate file copy to another site server) We're pretty much covered anyhow.

Make sure you back up. Even something as simple as dropbox can be effective.

 

always a good idea to have a critical raid5 also have a mirror... expensive, but safe.

 

Yeah I'm working something out with that at the mo. Also, at home my WD elements 1TB power supply just went 'poof' today so not getting another one, but will get this one rma'd as its still in warranty.

 

Hello guys, thank you for all your replies...but honestly from what you've been saying here it seems that a back-up hard-drive needs another back-up...it's like buying an insurance and than buying another insurance to make sure that the first insurance works. That's wicked...if I was a marketing major I'd say, what a wonderful business.
I also don't like the fact that too many of you mention how external hard-drives have died on you. This is all anecdotal evidence..but what would you say that the attrition rate is....is 30%? If so, then really backing up your back-up is a necessity. In this case I can go with DVDs--cost me 1 buck a piece (if I go for an expensive one) and I have never had one DVD die on me .

I don't want to invest tons of money into this..the most important documents that I have I always back-up on a flash drive--simple and effective...so going with a 80-120USD option is enough for me. Is there any good external drive in this range that one could recommend?

 

pretty much ANY external drive will do you fine as long as you keep a second set of backups of vital documents. Hard drives can always fail and that is why many of us use a RAID especially for business use.

my favorite is to buy a cheap $20 2.5" drive enclosure and then add ANY laptop 2.5" SATA drive to it.

 

btw. I have read somewhere on the web that Mac users should buy an external hard drive that is at least twice as size of the internal one (i.e. in my case 640GB if I have a 320GB hard drive). Would anyone know why this person said that? i.e. did he mean that you need to make an imagine of your disk first (i.e. 320GB) and only then you can have some extra storage? I don't know how Time Machines works.

 

I think that I have narrowed the options down to two products:

1)Iomega 500GB, 5400rpm
costs 109$, comes with FireWire 800 + 400! Is recommended on Apple website. 3year warranty.

Iomega | 500GB eGo Portable Mac Edition Hard Drive | 34629 | B&H

2)FreeAgent 500 GB External hard drive - 480 Mbps - 5400 rpm
Only USB: 98$
Receives good reviews, no one complains, design-wise goes well with MBP and has 5 year warranty.

FreeAgent 500 GB External hard drive - 480 Mbps - 5400 rpm

NOw I am a bit undecided as to which one is better: with the Iomega I have reviewers complaining about its quality (apparently products sold in 2009 had some serious design flaws) but there've been also a lot of positive reviews. It's generally a drive that sells a lot. And for for 109$ it comes with FireWire which means great speed.

I'd like the Seagate better (not so many people bought it but those who did seem to be satisfied) - doesn't have FireWire though I am not sure that this is important to me - I will really use it only to back up my hard drive once and than have little day-to-day back-up updates when I save a few pictures, word documents etc. So in a way I feel that the FireWire is not as important. I want realiability and durability!

also, is it correct to assume that I can use these hard drives with both OS X and Windows? Say if I need to migrate data from my Lenovo X300 to Mac?

Which of this would you choose?

 

i would go with the iomega because it has firewire. both should work on a mac and windows. they are designed to be plug and play.

 

but is Iomega more reliable? If it's just the speed I could easily give it up for more reliability.

 

If by reliability you mean chance it will fail offhandedly, then I will assure you now ... Most HDDs for the most part have the same reliability. One brand is not more likely to fail than the other.

As has been suggested, get an external HDD that is configurable in RAID 1 (Also known as mirroring) if you're worried about data loss.

 

I do this. The reason is that my drives survive longer than my laptops / netbooks (surprise!), so I've got a bunch of them lying around already. I recently bought this Thermaltake enclosure (which is a misnomer because it doesn't actually enclose the drive, just allows the latter to be plugged in). I didn't go for RAID because I don't need that level of backups, and it has both USB2 and eSATA connectivity. My Z then uses an expresscard to support eSATA.

 

Never ever buy iOmega eGo Mac Edition. Why? Here's my summary:

Pros:
- Speed. FW800 delivers 75Mb/s read and 65Mb/s write on large files.

Cons:
- Overheats easily after 15mins of heavy usage. I mean it gets really hot.
- Plastic (not aluminum) enclosure is of very poor quality and drive feels like POS
- Absolutely no mechanical HDD protection - it's very close to top panel. I accidentally pushed that panel (very slightly) and HDD produced whining noise because spinning platter began to scratch its case. Weird? Now I have expensive paperweight.


I ordered G-Drive mini 500Gb. According to reviews it's designed for heavy load and therefore has good cooling capabilities and enclosure is rock solid. Oxford 934 chipset is a big plus as well.

 

G-Drive mini 500Gb has just arrived. That is hell of a difference between these two drives! G-Tech looks and feels like a true military-grade device and its cooling capabilities are exceptional. It stays only slightly warm after OS installation and other stuff. HDD is easily upgradeable though it doesn't take 12.5mm drives. Transfer rates with FW800 are 59 MB/s for seq. writes and 78 MB/s for seq. reads with stock Hitachi 5400 rpm.

 

wow, you guys are making it WAY more difficult than it needs to be. RAID?

for backups just toss a 3.5" bare drive into a toaster and then run your CCC or whatever. Rotate through your bare drives. I circulate through three 2TB drives (WD cavier black). I run a backup image... then next time I do the same but with 2nd drive... next time I use the 3rd drive and then rotate back to the first. I keep the drives in a fire proof safe until they are needed. And their transfer rate is awesome with these particular drives using esata (oh, you have an express port right? ). I have mutiple laptops and for each I have multiple drives. I make an image of each individual drive.

this way if any drive fails I can go to one of the other two. Raid? sheesh

 

Another option is a lacie semi-rugged drive, if you plan to be on the move a lot. You're mostly paying for the enclosure, but I feel much better tossing that in my backpack than drives with lesser enclosures.

 

I have two Western Digital MyBook drives on my desk right now and they are my preferred supplier of hard drives. I prefer the 3.5 inch drives for capacity and performance.

 

Does anyone have the Seagate FreeAgent Go 1 TB external drive? I'm thinking of picking that up for my MBP, to run VM's off of it. I know it's a 5400 RPM drive, but the fact that it's bus powered makes it ideal for on-the-go usage.

 

Yes, mine as well. WD is all I've used for years. I have 3 of them.

 

As I said here - WD My Book Studio II.
I work in the IT industry and have NEVER had an external WD drive fail on me yet.
Which this WD unit, the RAID is all handles by the unit itself, so you wont have to do anything at all - just use it like any normal external drive.

 

Is it possible to setup RAID with an external HD on a Mac? If so, then that would be awesome.

 

why would you want to? I guess if it was esata maybe? Firewire 3200? no way youd want to on USB... maybe USB3 if it ever really shows up in numbers. There are some external enclosures which handles raid on their own with multiple drives in them, then the OS still sees it as a single drive, but running a software raid on multiple external slow drives wouldn't be very fast.