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the_riotgirl · Oct 12, 2009, 03:59 PM

dont we all know that: we buy a new one after the last one made a too quick sudden exitus and are still amazed how quick the new external drive is dead too.

so as a buying help / comparision tool / fun fact thing, i am asking you:
what drives did/do you have and how long did they last (data retrievable after break down yes/no)?

samsung 250GB 1 year no
la cie 500gb 2 weeks(!!) no
WD mypassport elite 250 gb 1year yes (and warranty -eligible!)

Brien · Oct 12, 2009, 04:20 PM

I had a LaCie Rugged that died within 5 months. Had it replaced by LaCie. That one died in about 2 months. Got it replaced again, died in 3 days.

reader50 · Oct 12, 2009, 04:39 PM

Good thing you bought the rugged version.

angelmb · Oct 12, 2009, 04:50 PM

LaCie d2 Firewire 400
_still working great after six years.

LaCie brick USB 2
_still working great after two years.

imitchellg5 · Oct 12, 2009, 05:27 PM

I've only had OWC Mercury Elite Al and it's going on three years I believe.

ibook_steve · Oct 12, 2009, 07:47 PM

I've had a rash of dying hard drives (bare drives put in cases) over the last couple of years that I didn't have before. WD, Maxtor, and Seagate drives have all died on me. Tivo drives have been a big problem. The WD 500 GB Blue drive I just put in my Series 2 Tivo a few months ago just started exhibiting problems. I just replaced it with a Hitachi drive, which I've never tried, so we'll see how that goes.

But as you've discovered, the problem with external cases (USB, FW) is that you don't know if the drive is dying because the drive is bad or the case is bad. And it costs you an extra drive to try to figure out if the case itself is bad.

Steve

the_riotgirl · Oct 18, 2009, 12:08 PM

question addition:

i carry my external drive around in my girlie purse on a daily basis. use it between 3-5 different computers (all macs). Drive around on my bicycle over cobblestone, etc (with the drive in the purse on the bicycle rack).

Could be interesting how you treated yours:

so please state also:
upright/normal/heavy use

upright: disk stands in the same position on the same spot 90% of the time
normal: disk is normally in the same spot but gets carried around a bit too (about 60-40)
heavy: disk gets carried/tossed around a lot, almost an on a daily basis

cgc · Oct 18, 2009, 01:18 PM

I have a CoolDrives enclosure I installed a WD drive into...been working perfectly for 3+ years even with me swapping the drive in and out to use the enclosure to backup my wife's laptop (and I travel with it as well).

olePigeon · Oct 19, 2009, 03:46 PM

How much space do you need? If you're worried about drive integrity, you could look into a 128GB SSD drive.

driven · Oct 25, 2009, 11:11 PM

How funny you mention this today.

I had a 250 GB Fantom drive die today. It was 3.5 years old. I also had a LaCie Porche 320GB drive die two weeks ago (power supply, I can replace that.)

I bought a new Seagate 1.5 TB drive today as well as a Seagate 640GB USB powered portable drive today for my notebook. I hope they last longer. I lost some data on the Fantom.

I have a 1TB external eSata drive (same company as Phantom) that's still going strong.

Doc HM · Oct 29, 2009, 05:38 AM

I think it's pretty clear from most peoples day to day experiences that todays large capacity drives are far less rugged than the old 40/80GB drives of five or so years ago. Given the vast increase in data density, spin speed and the tolerances needed for such devices plus the fact that they are now realistically cheap as chips I'm not at all surprised.

I have a mountain of perfectly good older IDE drives that are in the seven to ten years old range and will probably go on for effectively ever. I would expect a new 1.5TB drive to be good for two years max. Plan for this and you should be fine. Expect drives not to fail and you are setting out fro trouble.

driven · Oct 29, 2009, 09:17 AM

I've always said that you shouldn't plan for "if" a hard disk fails, but rather plan for "when" a hard disk fails.

Atheist · Oct 29, 2009, 09:45 AM

1 x 150 GB LaCie Porsche: 4+ yrs old still working fine
3 x 500 GB LaCie Porsche: 2+ yrs old still working fine
80 GB Seagate Barracuda: died after 2 yrs

The only bad drives are the ones that fail.... and they all will at some point.

Simon · Oct 29, 2009, 10:02 AM

Hard drives eventually all fail. That's what backups are for. Quality enclosures OTOH should basically last forever (that is, until their interface becomes obsolete).

I have a few LaCie drives that are still fine after 5+ years of use. Nevertheless, I have stopped buying external drives. It's not cost-efficient and it narrows down choices unnecessarily. Instead I buy the drive I want and stick it into the enclosure I want, or better yet a SATA dock. If an issue pops up it's easy to determine if it's the drive or the enclosure. SATA docks are very inexpensive and thanks to eSATA the fastest option available. I have yet to have problems with any of mine.

driven · Oct 29, 2009, 10:23 AM

SATA docks are great. They just aren't the best option when you travel. But for desktop use, yes, the are terrific.

Doc HM · Oct 29, 2009, 11:33 AM

I can highly recommend the Weibetech removable drive enclosure. It has FW400/800 USB and eSATA so it connects to everything and it's built like a tank. It makes it the easiest thing in the world just to shove a bare hard drive in and clone off a backup.

WiebeTech Micro Storage Solutions - RTX™ 100 Series - External FireWire and USB SATA hard drive Enclosure

I have several photographer clients who use them to make archival storage.

shifuimam · Oct 29, 2009, 12:34 PM

I've never bought an external hard drive; I've only bought enclosures for bare hard drives.

That being said, I've never had a drive in an external case fail. Thus far, in the 8+ years of computing experience I have (which isn't much when it comes to hard drive longevity, I suppose), I've only had two hard drives fail - a laptop drive (I dropped it from some distance by accident prior to installation) and the drive I pulled from my 80GB TiVo (a specific Maxtor model that is notorious for failing). I've also had one iPod drive fail in a fourth generation 20GB model.

CharlesS · Oct 29, 2009, 12:53 PM

Seagate 500 GB drive in an OWC Mercury Elite-AL enclosure — still working fine after 2.5 years.

ibook_steve · Oct 30, 2009, 11:21 AM

Unbelievably lucky!

shifuimam, what drives and cases do you use? If more expensive OWC cases are the way to go, maybe I need to start laying off the Newegg crap.

Steve

CharlesS · Oct 30, 2009, 11:25 AM

The ones on Newegg should be fine as long as you make sure you get one that has adequate ventilation so that the drives don’t overheat (if the enclosure is made of aluminum, that helps), and as long as you avoid non-Oxford chipsets if you’re going for FireWire (I don’t think chipset matters as much for USB).