[mduell]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

This G-tech only costs 20$ more complete than a self-built seatgate with external enclosure.

Does it have the downside, that, in case of failure (I have heard the enclosures fail more often than the hard drives) it is harder to repair? Or is it just a slower drive for more money?

What Gtech and what self-built Seagate? As I said in my very first reply, for 250GB with FW800, the self-built Seagate is $110 cheaper than the Gtech.

If it fails, you ain't "repairing" crap, you're replacing. But the Gtech only has a one or two year warranty, while the Seagate has a 5 year warranty, so you're more likely to get a replacement drive with the self-built route.

[mduell]

I'm not sure why you seem to be so confused, but I'm going to spell it out for you.

Buy one of these drives: 250GB for $75, 320GB for $90, 400GB for $120, 500GB for $170, or 750GB for $300.
All the drives are UltraATA 100 ("IDE").

Buy one of these enclosures:
$50
$40
$50
$50
$35
$30
$29

All the enclosures have IDE on the inside and Firewire and USB on the outside (which seems to be cheaper than a Firewire-only enclosure). All of the cables and screws you will need are included.

[Veltliner]

Thanks a lot.

The confusion stems from my planning to upgrade to an Intel iMac as soon as the next chipset is out.

I was just wondering about the compatibility. Like: will an ATA drive be too slow for the Intel - will a SATA drive at all work with my "old" g5 iMac.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

The confusion stems from my planning to upgrade to an Intel iMac as soon as the next chipset is out.

I was just wondering about the compatibility. Like: will an ATA drive be too slow for the Intel - will a SATA drive at all work with my "old" g5 iMac.

An Intel iMac doesn't change anything. You've still got the same FW400 and USB2 ports you have now.

ATA and SATA are both much faster than FW400, so it doesn't matter which you pick. The computer doesn't care what type of drive is in the external enclosure.

[wd2762]

Thanks for all the info guys, it has been a tremendous help. I recently dropped my gf's external hard drive and destroyed all her 5 years worth of stuff so have been shopping around...

2 questions.

1) Just wanted to check whether the seagates and the cases would work with a pc AND a mac. Does all hard drives work with both?

2) Im currently living in the US but will be moving in a year. WOuld i still be able to get my hard drive replaced, if it goes falty, and im living outside the country? Perhaps only seagate would be able to answer this one!

thanks

[mduell]

Originally Posted by wd2762 

1) Just wanted to check whether the seagates and the cases would work with a pc AND a mac. Does all hard drives work with both?

2) Im currently living in the US but will be moving in a year. WOuld i still be able to get my hard drive replaced, if it goes falty, and im living outside the country? Perhaps only seagate would be able to answer this one!

1) Yes.

2) Yes, Seagate has warranty support all around the world.

[kamina]

Is it really worth it to get an external case and separate disk? Here Western Digital external drive prices have fallen so much, that I would be hard pressed to get a separate case and disk for the price I just payed for a 500GB WD My Book Pro (which also has FW800).

I'm sure in the States you have a lot more cheap options for enclosures, but the external drives should be cheaper too.

[mduell]

The 500GB USB2 MyBook is so cheap ($145 without rebates) that you can't beat it by building your own.

[MacNslash]

Originally Posted by mduell 

The 500GB USB2 MyBook is so cheap ($145 without rebates) that you can't beat it by building your own.

Where'd you find that price at? I didn't see it that low on WD's own site.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by MacNslash 

Where'd you find that price at? I didn't see it that low on WD's own site.

I misremembered, it wasn't WD.

Buy.com - Cavalry 500GB 3.5'' 7200RPM 16MB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive - CAUE37500

[Aeon]

Anyone have any experience with the Infrant ReadyNAS? Looks really good, I'm considering getting one, but not sure if there's anything better out there?

Infrant ReadyNAS NV+

[imanta]

you know I read all this and really felt the need to weigh in. I have always gone the enclosure/internal drive route to save money until recently. I ended up with a LaCie 250GB external and the big difference was noise. The enclosure combo which I never skimped on, but was always cheaper was always just around 2-3x noisier than a true external drive.

My wife has a little Seagate 120G 2.5" external which is self powered (USB 2.0) and you can't hear anything from it. Even my LaCie has more audible noise, but still no where near my Seagate/Enclosure based combo. So if you do go this route, be wary that it may not be the best solution if noise is a concern, but it will be the cheapest.

If someone has a great combo for a noiseless internal/enclosure configuration, then I would love to know what it is.

[kamina]

The western digital AAKS series is the most silent 500GB drive, along with some Samsungs. The problem with the Samsungs is that they shake alot which can cause noise. If you plan on hanging the drive with rubber bands the Samsung will be the most silent, otherwise the Western Digital.

I have an external 500GB WD My Book Pro which is very silent. It comes with a KS model drive. Silence is subjective though, this is not absolutely silent, just silent for a 500GB drive (you need to accept some realities). The 2.5" drive is silent because it's a 4200 or 5400RPM drive. You won't get that silent in 3.5" factor.

[kamina]

Originally Posted by Aeon 

Anyone have any experience with the Infrant ReadyNAS? Looks really good, I'm considering getting one, but not sure if there's anything better out there?

Infrant ReadyNAS NV+

I've only heard good things about it, except for the noise level which is supposedly fairly high.

[imanta]

Actually my LaCie is 250GB and 3.5" and it is audible during only incredibly large writes. Other than that it is like a ghost... I know the larger drives are noisier, but most enclosures just don't seem to dampen as well. I would love to find a good one that does.

[kamina]

They won't. If the enclosure dampens well, it will contain some material which does not conduct heat and will require a fan. That will again result in something noisier...

[wd2762]

Hi,

i bought the barracuda 7200.10 hard drive and an enclosure but the hard drive and the enclosure arent compatible as the cables arent right to connect to the slots. Do i need a different enclosure and if so which type?

the hard drive is this one Newegg.com - Buy Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, Digital Cameras and more!

[art_director]

You likely need an IDE drive rather than a SATA drive, which is what you appear to have purchased.

[Ray]

I have a 160gig western digital external and it works great. Its small and comes with a firewire cable. You can get it at costco.com for 130 bucks right now.

[wd2762]

what is the difference between a sata drive and an ide drive? Im sending my sata drive back i think

[mduell]

Originally Posted by imanta 

you know I read all this and really felt the need to weigh in. I have always gone the enclosure/internal drive route to save money until recently. I ended up with a LaCie 250GB external and the big difference was noise. The enclosure combo which I never skimped on, but was always cheaper was always just around 2-3x noisier than a true external drive.

My wife has a little Seagate 120G 2.5" external which is self powered (USB 2.0) and you can't hear anything from it. Even my LaCie has more audible noise, but still no where near my Seagate/Enclosure based combo. So if you do go this route, be wary that it may not be the best solution if noise is a concern, but it will be the cheapest.

If someone has a great combo for a noiseless internal/enclosure configuration, then I would love to know what it is.

Noise has nothing to do with buying preassembled vs self assemebled. If you buy a cheap metal case it's going to rattle and make a lot of noise but if you get a good metal or plastic case it can be nearly silent.
The 2.5" drives tend to be quieter than the 3.5" drives since they're smaller and generally slower.

Originally Posted by wd2762 

Hi,

i bought the barracuda 7200.10 hard drive and an enclosure but the hard drive and the enclosure arent compatible as the cables arent right to connect to the slots. Do i need a different enclosure and if so which type?

the hard drive is this one Newegg.com - Buy Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, Digital Cameras and more!

Which Barracuda 7200.10? It comes as both SATA and ATA/IDE.

Originally Posted by wd2762 

what is the difference between a sata drive and an ide drive? Im sending my sata drive back i think

The relevant difference to you is that they're different connectors. For an external drive there's not much difference in performance. In general IDE is cheaper for enclosures and more expensive for drives while SATA is cheaper for drives and more expensive for enclosures, so the total price is usually pretty close.

[jcrowley]

NIGHTMARE - I only wish I would wake up and find it not to be so!!!!

After reading the virtues of the Seagate external drives on this site, as well as other sites, I purchased a new 300GB external drive on February 26, 2007 and installed it on a new Dell Desktop -Core 2 Duo, XP Pro, 4 GB of DDR2 667 RAM, and a 160 GB SATA Drive.

I transferred data from three machines, totalling 88 Gig - all of which were digital photographs. Since the new machine and drive was doing fine I wiped the hard drive of two of the machines over the weekend, so as to allow my college-aged kids to use the idle machines.

I had backed up onto the Seagate, and it was doing wonderfully UNTIL SUNDAY NIGHT. I experienced a file corruption that has rendered the Seagate useless - according to their service "hotline" that took two hours on hold to reach a human.

After a very cursory ten minute troubleshooting exercise, the Seagate Service Rep suggested that I go to their website and purchase a $120.00 data recovery software package, run a scan myself, and try to recover any data I could. After a $120.00 purchase, and a four and one half hour scan, I recovered no data - not one photograph. So this afternoon I hired a local computer service to come to the house - three hours and another $150.00 later, I still have no data, Seagate has offered to replace my external drive as soon as I send mine in, with proof of purchase and me paying for shipping BOTH WAYS.

Just for the record, the external drive was mounted away from all vibration, nowhere near any other device, and had not been moved, disconnected or turned off since installation.

It was powered on a discrete, line-conditioned circuit with APC battery back-up. The A/C line conditioner also has a read-out that shows no evidence of spike or power shift.

I do not have 20 years of computer experience, but I have lost close to ten years of memories for putting all of my trust in a Seagate drive. $700.00 dollars and countless hours later the warranty that everyone speaks so highly of has given me little comfort.

I, personally, would not purchase another Seagate product if the warranty were printed on $100 dollar bills.

jcrowley

[shifuimam]

That is extremely unfortunate. You should have been able to request an advance RMA (every hard drive warranty I've dealt with has this option), where you give them your credit card info and they send you a replacement drive FIRST, including return shipping labels. Once they get the busted drive back, your credit card is refunded and you pay nothing in the end.

I couldn't even begin to imagine what happened to your drive. I have only seen one catastrophic drive failure in 6+ years of on-the-side computer work and technical support, and it was a four-year-old Western Digital Caviar out of a Dell Dimension desktop. Something had become misaligned, and there were huge radial scratch marks on one side of the platter (I opened the drive out of curiosity). The people who owned that computer lost their data, but there fortunately wasn't much there to begin with.

I'm sorry to hear this happened to you. I've never had any problems with Seagate drives, ever. Either you got a lemon or somehow there was magnetic interference affecting the drive.

I would contact Seagate customer care by email and detail what you went through. You shouldn't have had to pay for their data recovery software (you shouldn't have had to purchase and use it to justify needing a return - there are free disk utilities available that will tell you if a hard drive is bad or not) or the to/from shipping on a replacement drive.

The only other advice I can offer is that there is always a chance of something like this happening, even if it were an enterprise-server-grade hard drive with a ten-year warranty. Hard drives are mechanical, magnetic media, and there's always a possibility that something terrible can happen. I would definitely recommend using two hard drives and mirroring them (or keeping an external drive backup or something) to prevent this kind of loss again.

I'm sorry this happened to you.

[art_director]

jcrowley:

So sorry to hear about your experience. Have you attempted to retrieve the data from the internal drive in the Dell? Perhaps an option...your only one by the sound of it.

Your story serves as a reminder to the rest of us that we should keep multiple backups of important data. I understand that doesn't help you in this case but it may help others.

Best o' luck.

[kamina]

You can probably get the data back from the dell using getdataback or getdatabackntsf (depending if it's fat or ntsf filesystem).

It's unfortunate, but could have happened on any external drive. I've seen a lot die during the last year, and the manufacturer seems to make little difference. You should always have all your important data on at least two drives, I burn my pictures on DVD's and take them to work too, just in case my apartment burns / get's robbed.

edit:

I believe you can test if the files are found using getdataback and only pay if you want to restore them.

[jcrowley]

Thank you all for the kind words of sympathy.

I, against my better judgement, allowed myself to be lulled into a false sense of security - new computer - new external storage device - well-protected discrete A/C power circuit - I told myself that I would back it all up to DVD "when I had time". It sure would be nice to go to the fire safe right now and get out the backup DVDs for restoration purposes!!!! And that is definitely not Seagate's fault - lack of redundant back-up culpability lies at my own two feet.

If anything, I hope this prompts one person to back up their files RIGHT NOW, no matter how reliable their equipment. After all they are only machines, and machines do sometimes break. My analytical/engineering mind would really love to find a cause, though. Just for the peace of mind.

I had not put any of the digital photo archives into the Dell, so my loss there was quite minimal, but does not allow me the benefit of recapturing some of the archival data.

I will be going back with two external hard drives replacing the single unit, and mirroring them for both back-up and archival purposes. What are the chances that I could lose two external hard drives at once?

But then again, I was pretty happy with my odds on the single drive until last Sunday.

jcrowley

[shifuimam]

I would recommend backing up either between two internal drives, or, my personal preference, between one internal and one external. A drive inside a desktop computer is less likely to get bumped or jostled, and less likely to be exposed to magnetic interference, compared to an external drive. Not only that, but you can then access your files on-the-fly without needing to plug in the external drive (an irritation for me, since I have to plug in the power adapter and whatnot).

Then you can use a program like SyncBackSE to keep the internal and external drives (or even just specific folders) backed up. I've started using that specific program, and so far I really like it. A few of my images got corrupted when they were copied over to my brand-new 200GB Maxtor internal SATA drive (and yes, I got a Maxtor - one of the last models to have a three-year warranty), so I can just delete them and re-sync to get the good ones back.

Good luck!

[jcrowley]

Back in March, I posted my first issue with an external hard drive crashing after only thirty days of use.

I susequently purchaesd a new Maxtor One Touch III, Turbo Edition external hard drive of 1 TB in size. I installed and set up to RAID 1 on June 23, 2007. It crashed on October 31, 2007(Happy Halloween!!).


Just for the record, the external drive was mounted away from all vibration, nowhere near any other device, and had not been moved, disconnected or turned off since installation. After the first crash, I built a separate shelf, on an external, structurally sound wall. Nothing else is on the shelf. I KNOW that the drive was subjected to NO vibration, movement, or power cycling.

It was powered on a discrete, line-conditioned circuit with APC battery back-up. The A/C line conditioner also has a read-out that shows no evidence of spike or power shift.

I defer to the vast knowledge base of this forum for suggestions. I MUST have high capacity storage capabilities for storage of high-resolution images, photos, and A-Cad drawings.

Is my next alternative to add two 500GB internal hard drives to my tower, array them RAID1, and take my chances there?

[CharlesS]

Did the actual hard drive mechanism fail, or was it an error that you could recover from by reformatting?

[jcrowley]

CharlesS

All three have been mechanical failures that the manufacturers have found to be not recoverable.Hence my continuing frustration.

The Maxtor started with a high-pitched squeal, followed by a sound reminiscent of putting marbles into a blender. I now am the unhappy owner of a Seagate, Buffalo, and a Maxtor paperweight - as they are worthless for anything else.

John

[CharlesS]

Eesh. I suppose you could have strong magnetic fields around your workspace, a faulty surge protector, kids knocking over the drives and then putting them back up on the shelf without telling you in order to avoid punishment, or something like that, or perhaps you just have exceptionally bad luck. Did you get any money back from the respective warranties?

You could try doing what I did - get a high-quality external enclosure and putting an internal Seagate drive inside it instead of buying those pre-built drives, which would probably get you the best-quality external drive you could get, but if there's something in your workspace that's doing that to the drives, it could meet the same fate. The enclosures that you can buy separately are better quality than the pre-built ones IMO, but I have my doubts that the pre-built could be the cause of such a consistent set of failures.

[mduell]

If it was a mechanical failure then the other drive in the mirror should be fine...

[jcrowley]

CharlesS

No kids, no pets, wife does not even come into my office as she is afraid I would ask her to work.

The dedicated drive shelf is located 72" off of the ground, on a load bearing wall that has no wiring in the wall. My battery back-up, A/C line conditioner, cable modem and wireless router are all at ground level, some 70" away from the external drive. The only stereo equipment in the 16' x 28' room is across the 16' dimension, about 20' total away from the drive shelf.

John

[jcrowley]

mduell

The manufacturers have replaced the drives at their cost, although I only have just received the replacement from Seagate last week. I sent it in for evaluation in April. The Maxtor was not able to be recovered, according to manufacturer, and they suggested they could forward to their recovery department, at an estimated $500 charge, but they would not be able to assure me how much, if any, data would actually be recovered. In other words, I could pay the $500 and hope.

I too, was certain that I should have been protected by the second hard drive in the mirrored array, but once again it seems that my confidence/trust was misplaced.

John

[Ruddigger]

Frys.com is having a sale this weekend, a 300GB Maxtor One Touch III USB 2.0/Firewire 400 external drive for $79.00. I picked one up at a brick and mortar store last night.

[NewOldbie]

Sorry to hear of your troubles John. I doubt there are any surefire way to avoid what happened to you. That said here is what I have done, after noticing I have had at least four drive failures over the last 6 years, three of them have been LaCie so they are no longer on my list.

Do a burn in on new drives. We used to do a 72 hour burn ins before sending computers out the door.

Buy from different production lots.

Go to RAID 1 or RAID 5.

BACK UP your data.

I just purchased some new drives for our Macs two weeks ago. I bought 12 drives, 6 500GB Seagates and 6 750GB Seagate drives. These drives were purchased from three different vendors across the country.

They will be going into WiebeTech's RTX-600H-UR enclosures, running as RAID 5 or RAID 6.

I've just finished burning in three drives. Basically keep them running 24/7 for the last three days, filling them to capacity and then some.

Once we receive the enclosures from WiebeTech, I'll put everything together. My problem now is to find an easy way to back up the drives.

I have owned the 500GB OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro ($209.99) for several years now with no problems. Fast, efficient, reliable, and it comes with a 2 year warranty. Pretty hard to beat, no?

Mason

[mduell]

Originally Posted by ncmason 

I have owned the 500GB OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro ($209.99) for several years now with no problems. Fast, efficient, reliable, and it comes with a lifetime warranty. Pretty hard to beat, no?

Page says 2 years and makes no mention of lifetime. Hard drive should have a 5 year warranty from Seagate unless they're buying some cheaper version with no Seagate warranty.

mduell, I'm very sorry about the mix-up, I got their RAM warranty mixed up with external hard-drive one. I still would recommend the drive, it's a very good external drive.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by ncmason 

I have owned the 500GB OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro ($209.99) for several years now with no problems. Fast, efficient, reliable, and it comes with a 2 year warranty. Pretty hard to beat, no?

It's pretty easy to beat, actually. Just get the same enclosure that your hard drive uses and a Seagate hard drive, and now you've got a 5 year warranty.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

It's pretty easy to beat, actually. Just get the same enclosure that your hard drive uses and a Seagate hard drive, and now you've got a 5 year warranty.

Oh but please don't pay OWC's inflated hard drive prices.

[JoshuaZ]

I'm in the market for a nice 1TB solution to replace my two 250 externals. Something not too expensive, as I'll have to frickin import it from the US because Japan has crap for external drives. Everything is USB 2 and a decent amount more expensive. Plus the cases are damned ugly.

I've had two HDs fail on my powerbooks, and luckily I lost only small amounts of data thanks to backing up. I would CRY if I lost my photos. I occasionally send DVDs back to the US full of my photos. Only problem is I've got so much now that it takes a whole lot of DVDs...

Anyone have any experience with this one?

GMG RAID 1TB FW800 / USB2 - dealmac.com

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Oh but please don't pay OWC's inflated hard drive prices.

Every once in a while, Frys.com puts up a one-week sale on Seagates, making them even cheaper than Newegg. Unfortunately, it's not going on right now, but it does every so often. That's what I did when I got mine.

The one thing that bothers me about Newegg is that the drives are OEM. Do you know if you can still get Seagate's 5-year warranty if you buy through them?

[mduell]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

The one thing that bothers me about Newegg is that the drives are OEM. Do you know if you can still get Seagate's 5-year warranty if you buy through them?

Yes, they do.