Reliable 1T external HDD's

tinana · Post by **tinana** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 2:05 am

I was wondering what kind of large capacity back-up HDD's other MM users are using. I've got my library spread out across 3 external Seagate's (300 and 400 giggers) which have been fine for a couple of years until one finally failed on me in the last couple of months (all files were recovered easily).
Still...

I'd like to get a good 1T HDD for back-up but don't know which brand might be more reliable. Maxtors and "Western Digital My Book"s seem to be getting fairly negative customer reviews on Amazon and NewEgg. Fantom G-Force seems to be rated well by those who use them, tho I'm unfamiliar with the brand.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 10:19 am

I recently bought a new hitachi external 1 TB drive (single disc, no raid) and unfortunately had nothing but problems.

The first one I returned to the store (best buy), the 2nd I had the same problems with and worked with a nice tech support lady and got it swapped out for another new one from the factory.

Unfortunately again, the same problems occurred and I ended up just taking it back for a full refund.

The problems I had was trying to copy my music and files (a full 750 gig drive worth) to the 1tb drive it would constantly lockup/lose its drive letter/make horrible screeching noises.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 10:26 am

Holy cow, tha's exactly what I'm afraid of, and at a terabyte of music, that's a lot of music and hours of tagging and over-all library maintenance at risk of being lost.

snacks · Post by **snacks** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 5:25 pm

I'm on my 2nd one.... and have had the same problem with both. The hard drive just disconnects itself from the computer. And with the 2nd one I have to turn it off and turn it on before my computer will read it again. Everyone's been helpful, but they've no solution, and I've never had this problem with other drives. I've got all my data backed up twice, so I'm not concerned about losing data, but it's a real pain in the ass transferring 700 gigs of info!!! I'm returning this one, but i don't know what to do - I want another brand but I love the size and speed of this Hitachi. Ugh!

emalvick · Post by **emalvick** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 5:40 pm

I've never heard anything good about Hitachi, so I probably would never have taken the change. I've had decent experience with Western Digital, but never have they excelled at longevity.

What I wonder is if you couldn't buy a case and put a decent internal drive in it? I'm not sure how that would work at 1 Tb.

Erik

nynaevelan · Post by **nynaevelan** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 6:34 pm

I have the Western Digital MY Book 1T and although I have not lost any data on it yet it is not very reliable. It will sometimes lose its connection when rebooting the computer or at the most inconvienent times give me that overheating warning and turn off. It's been so unpredictable I'm afraid to put it to any kind of extensive use. Which of course has pissed me off because I have the 500gb My Book which has been great with my weekly backups. But because of my experience with computers, I have a backup of my music collection on two external drives as well as several dvd's. I know that's a little excessive but it took me months to rebuild my collection once. I say all this to say, DON'T get the WD My Book.

Nyn

snacks · Post by **snacks** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 6:47 pm

Totally understand. I have 400 gigs of music and I've got it backed up on 2 hard drives and have some (soon to be all) on DVDs. Sounds pretty anal but I would hate to lose any of it. So I'm going to return the Hitachi and get a new 1 tb, but I agree - I hate Western Digital, that's the only brand that I've ever had major problems with. I've always used Maxtor and have had good success but their 1 tb's are expensive and bulky. I just don't know which direction I'll go now.

Post by **Lowlander** » Wed Sep 12, 2007 8:42 pm

I believe that Seagate and Samsung soon will or already have started selling 1TB harddrives, without that you would need 2 500GB harddrives.

LaCie is one of the best available. I would use sites like Newegg and PriceGrabber to define which products fit your need and read the reviews. You can then make a better decision on which product is best for your needs.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 1:39 pm

snacks wrote:I'm on my 2nd one.... and have had the same problem with both. The hard drive just disconnects itself from the computer. And with the 2nd one I have to turn it off and turn it on before my computer will read it again.!

If I was moving that much data, I'd look at buying a HD enclosure that supports eSATA; purchasing the drive and enclosure separately if necessary. I've found that USB can be finicky when moving massive amount of data, while eSATA is *much* better. If the motherboard doesn't support eSATA, an add-on card is bundled with some enclosures. It may require a reboot to recognize the drive each time, but I happily put up with that in order to get the faster transfer rates. These enclosures usually support either USB or firewire for use with non-eSATA systems.

Teknojnky · Post by **Teknojnky** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 3:36 pm

On a whim, I ended up getting one of the WD 1TB drives (2x500) and so far its been very stable, no errors or problems.

Before I had stated that using raid 0 on external drive is silly, and well I still think that.. I just make sure I have it all backed up.

I think going forward (assuming I don't start getting lots of problems) is that I will have 2 of the WD drives and just alternate them with upgraded drives as they come out..

So right now I have a 1TB (2x500), next I'll buy a 1.5 or 2 TB drive, transfer the data over, then eventually I will replace the 2x500 drives with 2x2tb drives (or whatever is available in the future).

Since the WD drives use Sata, from what I can tell, all I have to do is remove the old drives and replace them with 2 newer bigger drives (of the same size).

Al_G · Post by **Al_G** » Sun Sep 16, 2007 2:03 am

Update. I backed up 106GB of data to an eSATA drive this evening. It took just over 35 min. That would have take about 4 hours with a USB external drive.

tinana should consider getting a Hitachi ITB drive and an enclosure that supports eSATA, like the VANTEC NexStar 3 (NST-360SU-BK). Much better than a "one touch" solution.

tinana · Post by **tinana** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 7:43 pm

I actually wound up getting a 1T NAS just for kicks. I wasn't looking for network attached storage but rather simply a good, dependable place to back-up my library as I mentioned in my original post, but the difference between the 1T HDD and 1T NAS was only ~40$. So far I'm happy, and relieved to finally have a safeguard in place for if/when one of my drives goes bad.

Al_G · Post by **Al_G** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 9:09 pm

tinana wrote:I actually wound up getting a 1T NAS just for kicks.

What model did you get? Do you have a way to check its transfer rate?

I'm wondering how it performs relative to USB speeds. I used a Vantec NAS device (NexStar LX) and the NAS performance was completely underwhelming. Transfer speed was somewhere around 12-15 Mbit/s. The device also had a USB port, which would transfer files at about 350-400 Mbit/s. This is on a 100 Mbit local network (only one computer and the NAS, connected to a router). Computer to computer data transfer runs about 80 mbit/s.

edit: corrected USB transfer speed.

Post by **Peke** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 10:27 pm

@Al_G
Have you tried to connect NAS directly over Crossover cable (or normal one if MB can do the switch), also What type of Cable you use for LAN as there is soem cable types that are problematic.

Al_G · Post by **Al_G** » Sat Oct 06, 2007 1:28 am

Peke wrote:@Al_G
Have you tried to connect NAS directly over Crossover cable (or normal one if MB can do the switch), also What type of Cable you use for LAN as there is soem cable types that are problematic.

Haven't tried a crossover cable, but I was using standard store bought cat5e patch cables, which were giving me good transfer rates over the network. I tried the Vantec NAS unit on three different computers, on both a switch and on a router. It's performance was consistent and disappointing.

I've looked at all the major vendor's information and only one gave a sustained transfer speed rating. I don't remember which manufacturer, but the rating was about 25mbit/s. It's fine for streaming media, but for doing a large transfer or synchronization job, it is far quicker to use the USB port.

I'm curious as to how tinana's unit performs.