[RobOnTheCape]

Hello all,

I have a Macair and was about to buy Carbonite, but just realized that I might as well utilize Time Machine and by a hard drive. Can anyone suggest a few decent drives?

Thanks

[subego]

You should do both. Your house burns down or you get burgled you've lost everything.

I prefer CrashPlan over Carbonite FWIW. More services for cheaper, and a prorated refund if you cancel.

For a hard drive, get an OEM Western Digital Green of whatever size you want, and pop it in an enclosure. Job's done.

I personally wouldn't go larger than 2TB yet, but I'm a paranoid type. I like to buy one level below the widely available maximum.

Think of it like a cassette tape. There's no room in there for you to add tape, so your only option for making it hold more is making the tape thinner. Thinner tape is more susceptible to stretching and tangles.

The 60 minute cassettes were pretty bulletproof, but the 90 minute ones used to die. By the time they released 120 minute cassettes, they had worked most of the bugs out of the 90 minute thickness.

[OreoCookie]

You should actually use both, Time Machine and Crashplan. I use Crashplan's $50/year unlimited plan and so far, it's been working flawlessly. But you should not rely on a single backup.

As for external hard drives, I still suggest you look into Lacie drives, more specifically LaCie's Porsche Design P'9230 USB3 drives. It's clear, FireWire is on its way out and USB3 is fast enough for today's hard drives. I specifically recommend this drive, because it does not have a fan (unlike the plastic Lacie drives and many other third-party drives). Fans drive me crazy

[shifuimam]

Fans also keep high-RPM drives cooler, which extends lifespan and can prevent premature failure.

To the OP: I wouldn't waste the money on LaCie drives. They're nothing special and are overpriced compared to other brands.

External drives these days are priced about the same as internals and come with the same warranty (three years) for the most part, so that's what I'd stick with if I were you.

[P]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

Fans also keep high-RPM drives cooler, which extends lifespan and can prevent premature failure.

Not really. For one thing, that massive Google study did not manage to link temperature to hard drive life time, and for another, the fans blow onto the PSU for the drive rather than the drive itself.

[OreoCookie]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

To the OP: I wouldn't waste the money on LaCie drives. They're nothing special and are overpriced compared to other brands.

They look nice and lack a fan. Of course it'd be cheaper to buy a USB hard drive enclosure for ~10 € for 2.5" drives and a little more for 3.5" drives and the drive, to me, I'm willing to spend a little extra to get a nicer looking enclosure. The nice thing is that almost all external enclosures these days use the same power plug

[CharlesS]

LaCie used to be infamous for having terrible reliability. I don't know if this is still the case, but shifuimam is correct in any case that they are overpriced and not that special, so I'd generally avoid them.

Subego has the best advice in the thread. Get a Western Digital Green drive, which are designed for low power usage and low heat emissions, and thus are less likely to overheat than standard drives. Then, get any enclosure you want on Newegg and put the drive in it. USB 3.0 enclosures are pretty cheap and commonplace these days, so you can pretty much pick out whatever you want.

[Nergol]

Build your own. Look on Dealnews for a drive special, and find an enclosure on Amazon, Newegg, or OWC. It'll be easy, cheaper than buying off the shelf, and you can have exactly what you want.

[jmiddel]

Nergol is right, it's really simple, if you get a laptop drive, there are no screws, you just insert the drive and snap the case shut. OWC has many cases, and drives are often available at sale prices at Newegg. For a regular HD, it's just a few screws, anyone can do it. Read the reviews of each drive you're interested in on Amazon and Newegg.

[cgc]

I second the recommendation to but a WD Green HDD and put it in an external enclosure that has a good bridge chipset. Ideally you'd have a TM backup and an online backup but with one or the other you're way ahead of the game. What percentage of people experience a burglary or fire or some other catastrophe vs. a hard drive failure? (Maybe it's a wash).