recommendation for stable external hard drive

[tarves57]

Having read through as much as possible on a search for external storage, I've not come across anything labelled as "stable".

Does anyone know of any new claims of stable external hard disk drive storage from the manufacturers?

I'd be looking for between 100 and 200 GB, relatively inexpensive. One that would never, ever, ever go bust.....8-)

Or which ones to avoid?

Thanks

[Sharon P Johnson]

I have a Western Digital, 160 GB external hard drive. It is USB 2.0 and is working well. Only had it for a few months, but Western Digital has been around a long time. In addition, I tend to categorize my images into date and subject files and put them on CD as well for archiving. I would not use just one backup system. It is best to use a dual process. That way you have a copy no matter what.

I am a web developer/designer for a university, and have found it very useful to keep backups of old designs and images. That way if something is lost or needed in the future, I still have the original. It is incredible how many business people have only one copy of their logo, and then they are in real trouble when they loan out their only copy on CD and it gets lost.

Hope this helps.

[tommykjensen]

I'd be looking for between 100 and 200 GB, relatively inexpensive. One that would never, ever, ever go bust.....8-)


Keep looking ;) If You ever find one let me know....

Count on the fact that the drive will fail at some point in time.

I keep my photos on 2 pc's. One pc has 2 disks in a mirror. I just use that for storage, On the other pc I don't have a mirror and I use this to edit my photos. From time to time a burn CD's or DVD's with the photos becuase I know the disks will fail some day.

[Jyoti]

Have a look here:

http://www.glyphtech.com/site/products_gtseries.html

I have an old Glyph FW 120gig that I use to backup my Powerbook onto (complete with all my pics). Glyph have a good reputation in the music industry as being pretty bulletproof. BUT...everything can fail, of course.

Hope that helps!

[PacAce]

Having read through as much as possible on a search for external storage, I've not come across anything labelled as "stable".

Does anyone know of any new claims of stable external hard disk drive storage from the manufacturers?

I'd be looking for between 100 and 200 GB, relatively inexpensive. One that would never, ever, ever go bust.....8-)

Or which ones to avoid?

Thanks

Well, if you're not complaining about the internal drives in your computer, then those must meet your reliability requirements. If so, why not take a look inside and see what they are. Then you can go out and buy the exact same harddrive and put it in an external case.

But, I should warn you. As Tommy said, there's nothing out there that'll meet the requirements you're looking for. All mechanical drives will fail eventually. Some will fail sooner than others. The ones that last longer will usually be the more expensive ones.

[aam1234]

As everybody is saying, HD's will fail at some point. The interesting question then is what are things to do/avoid that you recommend to prolong the HD life.

Thanks

[S230]

Does anyone know of any new claims of stable external hard disk drive storage from the manufacturers?

Or which ones to avoid?
To know which hard drives are better or passes through better quality control, on most hard-drive labels, there are small letters. ie, Western Digital (BB, JB, or BB-SE). This will indicate whether the drive is a Bare Bone or Bulk Manufacture, Special Edition, etc.
I used to love Seagate but until they purchased Connor, the quality went downhill.
For reliability, you cannot get away with cheap (Price). There is a cost to premium equipment. Anything with moving mechanical parts are prone to fail at some point so I keep telling everyone... Backup backup backup. Speed is also a factor because the faster the more heat.
Another area you should look into is the lifespan on the drive. Most will indicate read time before failure (or something like that). It's like a light bulb's rating for hours of operation before failure.
The bottom line is luck. You can purchase the best but can end up with a lemon or you can be lucky that runs forever.

[tarves57]

Thanks to all who replied. Your very interesting responses back up (no pun intended) the conclusion I have come to....sigh.... it looks like there's no way around it. Double back up is inevitable.

I have totally ruined my eyesight today, reading numerous reviews, complaints and problem pages and am really none the wiser. However, what I have decided on is a new Seagate 200 GB USB + firewire external drive. It's quite new and may not be the absolute fastest, but Seagate have been touted as more stable than others.

This is going to cost me £134 with P&P, so that's not bad, comparatively speaking.

Thanks again!

[iwatkins]

I've got a pair of Maxtor 250GB OneTouch drives. They can run Firewire or USB 2.0 (or 1.1 at a push). I've had these for close to a year and they run 24/7 with no problems.

Internally, they are just normal hard disks which can be swapped out if they fail. Five minute job. But I rely on these as much as I would my internal disks, hence the whole lot is backed up.

Also take a look at the Lacie drives. Some rather large ones available, e.g. the 1.6Tb "Bigger Drive". :D

Cheers

Ian

[elwood58]

I have gone the route of buying internal hard drives and putting them in external cases. A USB 2.0 case will run you $30. With internal hard drives running $.50 per GB these days, how can you go wrong.

Burning CDs from time to time gives you three levels of the same data. Single layer DVDs are down to $.75 each now, and can hold seven (7) times the data of a CD.

[tim]

I decided to get an laptop drive and put that in an internal case, as those drives are built to take knocks more than desktop drives. It was pretty economical, and I basically mirror the important parts of my main hard drive and keep it somewhere seperate.

[thomascanty]

My external is an Iomega 160Gb USB 2.0 drive. If I remember correctly it also supports firewire, but I don't have a firewire port at this time. The drive itself is a Western Digital with an Iomega box around it. I picked it up about six months ago for $120 (no rebate). I've been kicking myself ever since then for not buying two. I haven't seen another similar no-rebate price yet.

[CyberDyneSystems]

The only way to get something more reliable than a simple external drive like the Maxtor One Touch or others mentioned in this thead would be much more costly,. ie: and external Firewire RAID enclosure... again MUCH more costly.

The Idea with using hard drives is the concept that that two (or more) is better than one. Knowing that a Hard drive will fail,. we gamble on the idea that they both won't fail at the same time.

Using an external drive adds to the confidence of this gamble as unlike a 2nd internal drive it is not "online" all the time,.. but only when we want it to be (presumably only on for backups)

Thus in the case of a catastrophic system failure, we gamble that the external drive is NOT affected.

[CyberDyneSystems]

P.S.

For synching external or internal drives to important data. I HIGHLY recomend a program called "Mirror Folder"

It's got a downloadable demo and is well worht the modest (approx $45.00 ) cost.

But it is also very flexible and scalable... including support for netwrk drives and folders. We now in fact use it at work with licensed copies on all workstations which use Mirror folder to maintain active "Raidlike" real time redundantcy with a server, as well as incremental archive.

[tim]

I use a free unix syncing tool, on windows. It copies all your files over to another drive, then each time you run it it makes sure all the new files are copied to the drive, and files that have been removed are deleted from the 2nd drive. I run cygwin, and use the rsync utility. If anyone's interested
- download the installer here (http://www.cygwin.com/)
- do a standard install, but make sure you choose to install rsync - it can take some time to find in the huge list.
- download the attachment, unzip, save to your hard drive
- edit the file to specify the directories you want backed up, and the place it gets sent too
- get a command prompt, then type bash
- type "./backup2" to run it
- wait

[gmitchel]

I use a Maxtor external hard drive. It has both Firewire and USB 2.0 connections.

Cheers,

Mitch

[samdring]

P.S.

For synching external or internal drives to important data. I HIGHLY recomend a program called "Mirror Folder"

It's got a downloadable demo and is well worht the modest (approx $45.00 ) cost.

But it is also very flexible and scalable... including support for netwrk drives and folders. We now in fact use it at work with licensed copies on all workstations which use Mirror folder to maintain active "Raidlike" real time redundantcy with a server, as well as incremental archive.Just tried it - spot on!
Ta

[tommykjensen]

The Idea with using hard drives is the concept that that two (or more) is better than one. Knowing that a Hard drive will fail,. we gamble on the idea that they both won't fail at the same time.


Which is not unlikely to happen as this story illustrates

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=52676

[PhotosGuy]

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/replicator.html
This is a great free tool! "Karens Replicator is an easy to use backup tool for basic file replications. You can choose to backup an entire folder (optional with subfolders) and copy it to a different location. You have the options to only copy files that have changed and also keep an exact copy, thereby deleting all the files in the target folder that have been deleted in the source. The program comes with a built in time, that allows you to schedule it to run at user defined times. You can create multiple jobs, however, each job is limited to the content of one folder (subfolders), you cannot exclude/include individual files. If all you need is to automatically backup the content of a few folders, than this tool is perfect for you."

[tarves57]

[QUOTE=tarves57] However, what I have decided on is a new Seagate 200 GB USB + firewire external drive. It's quite new and may not be the absolute fastest, but Seagate have been touted as more stable than others.

This is going to cost me £134 with P&P, so that's not bad, comparatively speaking.

QUOTE]

Update: My partner decided he would like some extra storage too, so I changed the order for the Seagate 200 for network attached storage in the form of a Buffalo LinkStation 160GB network drive. This was simply plugged in to the router and could be accessed from both computers (one Windows 98SE and the other Windows 2000). So far so good. Very easy to install. With VAT and P&P, this cost £180 here:
http://www.transparentcommunications.com/cgi-bin/rs000001.pl?SOURCE=GoogleBuffaloLinkstation&DESTINATION=NetworkStorage%2ehtml&PATH=%2e%2e%2facatalog&BASEURL=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2etransparentcommunicatio ns%2ecom%2facatalog%2f
(I found it a lot more expensive elsewhere, in fact I think they may have made a mistake with the price!). A bit more than I wanted to pay, but my partner is paying for half.

[CyberDyneSystems]

Funny you should mention...

The buffalo Linkstatiaon seems to tbe the first of a new breed of VERY affordable NAS type stograge alternatives. (they actually call it something toehr than NAS whcih still runs a hefty $400.00 or so for 80GB of storage.. but for the life of me I can't see the practical diffeence)

The Buffalo simply plugs into your netwrk and becomes a Network drive.

Better yet... you are not limited to the 160GB (or whatever) drive that is installed,. as the Buffalo unit also has a USB2 port.. into which you can plug Another USB external drive .. (any USB2 Hard drive) and the Buffalo will make that drive accesible over the network as well!

Very cool and for only about $240.00 for the 160GB model.

Since Buffalo introduced this.. others are quick to follow,. Linksys actually has a unit that is simply the bridge.. ie: Plugs into the Network.. but no hard drive.. it has the USB posrts so you can tun any USB drive into a netwrok drive. (can't recall if it does firewire as well)

[JATPhotos]

I have 2 maxtor one touch firewire external drives, a month ago one of them started making a weird noise like a low battery on a cell phone and would not open. I panicked even thou I have the photos backed up on CDs also. I called Maxtor and the tech was very nice but the bottom line was that he suspected a stuck drive arm, whatever that is. He said probably I would loose the info on the drive. I was mad and hit the drive hard with my fist, lord and behold it started working and has been working fine since then. I guess all I needed was a bigger hammer.

[Bodryn]

Someone above mentioned Iomega. The Iomega external HDD may be fine but I was very disillusioned with Iomega when I learned that my Zip drive backups would not restore to my new computer drive. I learned from the Iomega web site that for some $300 per zip disk, Iomega would be happy to restore the information to regular data. I had some 7 backup disks of mainly unimportant personal data, so I decided it wasn't worth paying out $2100 to get the data back. They also advised readers that for really important data, users should drag and drop noncompressed copies of important folders to the zip disks using Windows Explorer in order to avoid problems like these.

[ksporry]

I was planning to buy a LaCie d2 extreme harddrive 250GB, triple interface. Anyone got any experience with those? How reliable they are? In the Uk they seem to be more expensive than in teh states. A lot(!!!!) more (370 GBP versus 270 US$). ALternative is a Freecom FHD-3 250GB, or the Western digital Media Centre 160GB. Any ideas on those? I do like some software for backing up with it, like the maxtors seem to have.
There is also the option of an ICY Box, anyone experiences with that? Are they any good or do I better get a real external drive like the LaCie?

By the way, I will be using it on an iMac G5