How full can my hard drive get...

FreakyFerret wrote:
"I used to work retail repair and we sold drive by all manufacturers: Western Digital, Seagate, Hitatchi, Maxtor, Toshiba branded, and several off-name brands. We almost never saw a broken WD. I think twice in the years I worked there. Don't recall ever seeing a Hitatchi one. Not one. We'd see a broken Seagate about once a week though. Maxtor about once a month. I'd never buy one of those personally. But, I've heard from other people they have nothing but good experiences with them. I can only go on the thousands of systems I've repaired. "

Well, that's pretty impressive. I have been pretty p.o.'d since my 9 month old W.D. Passport died the other day with no warning and no reason. And I found their tech support awful.

But your testimonial above makes me willing to give W.D. ONE more chance. I'll buy one more W.D. and if it also suffers an early death, that will be it, absolutely forever, for W.D.. If, on the other hand, it lasts a couple years, then I'll buy another one.

However, based on the above, also, and based on how my Hitachi that I just bought holds up, I may try to buy Hitachi whenever possible, instead. But I know that right now W.D. has a lot of stuff on sale.

Maybe you can tell me what the main differences are between the various W.D. drives available? Is one model more reliable than another or does it matter? I think they have one called Elite, one called Essential, etc...

The different models vary by access speed and software included. On the MyBook line (and Passport) the only difference between models in the same line is usually software included. I find their included software isn't really all that great. If you want good backup software, get Acronis' TrueImage. It is the best backup software I've ever seen.

On Passports, be extra careful with them. Though they're portable drives, they're still harddrives with moving parts and all that intails. You should handle them gentler than a new born baby.

FreakyFerret wrote:
"The different models vary by access speed and software included. On the MyBook line (and Passport) the only difference between models in the same line is usually software included. I find their included software isn't really all that great. If you want good backup software, get Acronis' TrueImage. It is the best backup software I've ever seen.

On Passports, be extra careful with them. Though they're portable drives, they're still harddrives with moving parts and all that intails. You should handle them gentler than a new born baby."
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So, are the MyBook lines a little less fragile?
Also, earlier I said I had just bought a Hitachi drive. What I meant to say was that I had just bought a Toshiba drive. How are Toshibas in your opinion?

As to True Image, no offense, but I hated it. I hate Disc Director, too. To each his own.

Macrium Reflect is freeware system imaging program... it's nice for those folks that hate the pay for backup solutions for one reason or another, and IMO it is pay-for quality.

Toshiba harddrives I would rate as "normal". We saw some break, but not too often. The rest of the machine I would rate is pretty high though. Most of the time a Toshiba came in it was for software issues (equal across all hardware platforms) and not hardware.

I love that you can boot with Acronis from their CD. The program installed into the OS isn't that impressive, granted. I actually don't load it in any of my systems and just manually boot from the CD when I need it. Since I have a lot of machines at home and at work, its ability to work over the network when booted from CD is the most important feature to me. I find it's really fast too.

Jaqie, I'll check that out right now. Do you know if it supports Windows Servers too? We're looking to change our backup system at work at the moment actually.

it's freeware for home use only, sorry.

Yeah, just saw that. I may give it a try though to see how well it plays with our server.

FreakyFerret said:

Toshiba harddrives I would rate as "normal". We saw some break, but not too often. The rest of the machine I would rate is pretty high though. Most of the time a Toshiba came in it was for software issues (equal across all hardware platforms) and not hardware.

I love that you can boot with Acronis from their CD. The program installed into the OS isn't that impressive, granted. I actually don't load it in any of my systems and just manually boot from the CD when I need it. Since I have a lot of machines at home and at work, its ability to work over the network when booted from CD is the most important feature to me. I find it's really fast too.

Jaqie, I'll check that out right now. Do you know if it supports Windows Servers too? We're looking to change our backup system at work at the moment actually.

A lot of reports say Acronis DD and TI do not work with Vista 64 (that it can really screw it up!). I tried a partition change on XP and although it DID work it was very buggy (changed my drive letters, made my drives disappear until restart, etc.) Not a fan.

Thanks for the info on Toshiba. I almost think when it comes to External Hard drives it's just a crap shoot. I've had 1 Seagate die out of 2 and 1 WD die out of 2. Now I just bought 2 Toshibas, one 500gig for $100 and one 250gig for $79. Hopefully they will last a couple years at least. The big one I am JUST Going to use for major backups of my mp3's, so I'll only connect it like once every few months to add new stuff.

Thanks to __ for the link to that free partioner. I'll check it out. Know anyone who's used it for Vista 64bit?

Were the Acronis problems in Vista64 while loaded into the OS? Or just as booting from CD? Cause booting from CD shouldn't it have touch the files at all actually.

Btw, my 2 external WD harddrives I leave plugged in and turned on all the time. 24x7. One is about a year old the other 2 years. The one that failed on me was an internal in my gaming machine. Guessing it got damaged in the recent house move or something.

Actually, my problems with Acronis were in XP SP2. I did not boot from CD when partitioning.
Part of the problem I have with Acronis is that things like "Boot from the cd" when you partition etc. are NOT in the Help file or manual that comes with it.
I did not actually use "True Image" but I read a number of problems people are having with it, on amazon.com and on their own support forum.
With both programs Acronis says it can do this, that and the other, but then you go to their support forum and everyone says "Oh, but you should never do THAT! That is dangerous! That doesn't work", etc..
These 2 programs seem to be especially fraught with problems on Vista 64bit.

One question Freaky:
You think the W.D. book hd's are better than the passports? I did have one book that died just out of its one year warranty. But in generaly, you think the stand up models of hard drives with the fan in them are better than the plastic encased "passport" varieties? Or no? The 2 Toshibas I just bought are the passport style of drives.