Help me pick an External Hard Drive please!

terrorist96 · 16 Feb 2010

I have literally been researching for days now.
You'd be surprised at how many hard drive companies there are once you branch out of Seagate and Western Digital. It's so tough picking one when you see positive and negative reviews for pretty much all drives. After having 2 unbelievably crappy 1TB Toshiba external hard drives, I'm not taking anymore chances.

I've looked at so many different drives on so many different sites and the ones I feel the most strongly about are LaCie and Fantom. They seem to have the least negatives. I need a 1TB one with eSATA and preferably 7200rpms. Don't wanna deal with slow "green" drives (though some of the Fantom greens are 7200rpms

). Here are some of the drives I'm leaning towards:

1. Amazon.com: LaCie 301848U USB 2.0 Neil Poulton 1TB Rugged XL eSATA External Hard Drive: Electronics (official site: LaCie - LaCie Rugged XL)

2. Amazon.com: LaCie Hard Disk Quadra 1TB eSATA/FireWire800/FireWire400/USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive 301881U: Electronics (official site: LaCie - LaCie Hard Disk Quadra)

3. FD G-Force Hard Drive - GF1000EU - Buy.com (and here: Fantom GF1000EU G-Force 1TB External Hard Drive - USB 2.0, eSATA at TigerDirect.com)

4. Fantom GreenDrive 1TB USB 2.0 and eSATA External Hard Drive - 2 Year Warranty! - GD1000EU - Buy.com

5. Fantom GreenDrive 1TB External Hard Drive - eSATA, USB 2.0 at TigerDirect.com

6. Fantom GDII1000EU GreenDrive II External Hard Drive - 1TB, eSATA, USB 2.0 at TigerDirect.com

7. Fantom 1TB G-Force Triple Interface at TigerDirect.com

8. Fantom Drives G-Force 1TB eSATA / USB 2.0 Hard Drive 16MB cache GF1000EU16

9. Fantom Drives G-Force 1TB Triple Interface Hard Drive

Please, this will only take a moment of your time for those of you who have more experience with this type of stuff. I just want to get an external hard drive that I can back up my internal one on every night so I can feel secure. Thank you very much!

Phase · 17 Feb 2010

I would personally stick with Western Digital - 1TB.

Western Digital WDBAAH0010CH My Book Elite External Hard Drive - 1TB, USB 2.0 at TigerDirect.com

whs · 17 Feb 2010

I own 6 external harddrives from 5 different makes. Never had any trouble with any of them (knock on wood). There is so much cross supplying these days that you never know anyhow from where your particular drive comes. I guess it is a matter of luck.

terrorist96 · 17 Feb 2010

Phase said:

I would personally stick with Western Digital - 1TB.

Western Digital WDBAAH0010CH My Book Elite External Hard Drive - 1TB, USB 2.0 at TigerDirect.com

No eSATA.

noyb · 17 Feb 2010

There's an advantage of building your own ....
by getting an enclosure then installing a drive of your choice.
This way, you can to get to the HDD and maybe swap it.

I have an Emergency Bootable backup in an enclosure ... where I can keep the data updated.
If connected via eSATA .. I can boot to it and keep the system updated.

Something like ... Enclosure .. HDD

pparks1 · 17 Feb 2010

terrorist96 said:

Don't wanna deal with slow "green" drives (though some of the Fantom greens are 7200rpms

). Here are some of the drives I'm leaning towards:

Actually though, even the slower 5,400RPM green drives can just about saturate the eSATA bus and can go 2-3x faster than USB 2.0. I wouldn't be all that concerned with the rotational speed of an external drive

As far as backups go, I use robocopy to replicate my data and synchronize my internal hard drives in my server and my external drive. With robocopy, this only copies the files that have changed or been removed...thus my backup jobs complete in less than 60 seconds. So, I don't really worry about the speeds of my drive for backups.

Edit: Almost all of my external hard drives have been Western Digital and I still have all of them to this date. I've also got 1 320GB Simpletech drive...and it's done it's job just fine.

Phase · 17 Feb 2010

terrorist96 said:

Phase said:

I would personally stick with Western Digital - 1TB.

Western Digital WDBAAH0010CH My Book Elite External Hard Drive - 1TB, USB 2.0 at TigerDirect.com

No eSATA.

WD makes some with eSata, just depends on your budget.

terrorist96 · 17 Feb 2010

noyb said:

There's an advantage of building your own ....
by getting an enclosure then installing a drive of your choice.
This way, you can to get to the HDD and maybe swap it.

I have an Emergency Bootable backup in an enclosure ... where I can keep the data updated.
If connected via eSATA .. I can boot to it and keep the system updated.

Something like ... Enclosure .. HDD

I actually looked at those exact enclosures and HDDs. It would be like $140 at the best for both of them. Would the benefit of building your own external outweigh the cost of just buying one of the ones I linked to above? One was like $90. (This one: http://www.buy.com/retail/product.as...101&pastRev=99) and the reviews seem pretty positive too. I guess for the extra $50, I'd have 4 more years to the warranty.

whs · 17 Feb 2010

Looks OK except I would never get anything from Buy.com. They are miserable. Here is an alternative (first on the list) from a decent company (Dell). Iomega has a good reputation.

terrorist96 · 17 Feb 2010

whs said:

Looks OK except I would never get anything from Buy.com. They are miserable. Here is an alternative (first on the list) from a decent company (Dell). Iomega has a good reputation.

I've heard the exact opposite about Iomega, actually.

I'm starting to consider the WD and the Rosewill enclosure again. Seems like the most important thing when buying hard drives should always be the warranty, since so many die.