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What is the most reliable external HD?
- Thread starter AndyEllen
- Start date
John Beale
Forum Enthusiast
I have six external HDs:
2x 250 GB Maxtor "one-touch" (USB2, firewire)
1x 300 GB Seagate IDE in external USB2 enclosure
1x 250 GB Hitachi IDE in external USB2/ firewire enclosure
1x 80 GB Toshiba 2.5" drive in external USB2 enclosure
None of the hard drives has failed yet so reliability is a toss-up.
NOTE that there's some problem with Windows XP, some motherboards, and large external firewire drives, such that if you put the computer in sleep or hibernate mode, the drive info isn't properly stored and you may loose ALL the data on the drive. This happened to me TWICE with two different brands of HDD. The drive hardware was perfectly OK before and after, I think it was a WinXP glitch. Since then I've used USB2 only, and that's been fine for all my drives (although USB2-connected drives are slower than firewire, which is annoying).
The Toshiba laptop drive is definitely quietest (it's only 4200 RPM, the rest are 7200 rpm). The Maxtors are pretty quiet. The Seagate slightly more noisy, the Hitachi hits some resonance in the case so it makes a rattle and is the most noisy. Most drive manufacturers have data sheets listing drive noise in dB(a), but the specific external case counts for a great deal.
2x 250 GB Maxtor "one-touch" (USB2, firewire)
1x 300 GB Seagate IDE in external USB2 enclosure
1x 250 GB Hitachi IDE in external USB2/ firewire enclosure
1x 80 GB Toshiba 2.5" drive in external USB2 enclosure
None of the hard drives has failed yet so reliability is a toss-up.
NOTE that there's some problem with Windows XP, some motherboards, and large external firewire drives, such that if you put the computer in sleep or hibernate mode, the drive info isn't properly stored and you may loose ALL the data on the drive. This happened to me TWICE with two different brands of HDD. The drive hardware was perfectly OK before and after, I think it was a WinXP glitch. Since then I've used USB2 only, and that's been fine for all my drives (although USB2-connected drives are slower than firewire, which is annoying).
The Toshiba laptop drive is definitely quietest (it's only 4200 RPM, the rest are 7200 rpm). The Maxtors are pretty quiet. The Seagate slightly more noisy, the Hitachi hits some resonance in the case so it makes a rattle and is the most noisy. Most drive manufacturers have data sheets listing drive noise in dB(a), but the specific external case counts for a great deal.
Excellent information! I was looking at the Maxtor "one touch" (300G). This gives me more confidence.
Another question...do you need to add hardware to take advantage of "Firewire". Is it another PC card?
Another question...do you need to add hardware to take advantage of "Firewire". Is it another PC card?
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Well G-Tech gets my vote. They use Hatachi hard drives and give a 2-year warranty.
http://www.g-techinc.com/Products/G-DRIVE.cfm
If your computer doesn't have a Firewire connection then yes, you would need to add a Firewire PCI card to get Firwire ports. Relatively easy to add- just don't get a cheap no-name card. I know LaCie make's a FW400 card for $30 or FW800 for $70.
Mike
http://www.g-techinc.com/Products/G-DRIVE.cfm
If your computer doesn't have a Firewire connection then yes, you would need to add a Firewire PCI card to get Firwire ports. Relatively easy to add- just don't get a cheap no-name card. I know LaCie make's a FW400 card for $30 or FW800 for $70.
Mike
John Beale
Forum Enthusiast
Sorry, I forgot to mention my 6th drive which is a Ximeta Netdisk 120 GB. Mine uses a Western Digital drive internally. It connects via USB or 100baseT ethernet. This sounded like a convenient idea but in practice it wasn't so useful to me since even "fast ethernet" is much slower than USB2. If it had gigabit ethernet, it would be usable. On the other hand, I'm mostly transferring big files (video) so if you work in small chunks of data, maybe it's ok.
THomasAdams
Senior Member
Pretty much anything but Maxtor. They simply have a bad rep. Western Digital, Seagate, IBM. I have never seen a Maxtor in a web server. There is a reason for that 
Best regards,
Tom
http://www.photosbytom.com/gallery/
ICQ#36762366
Best regards,
Tom
http://www.photosbytom.com/gallery/
ICQ#36762366
John Beale
Forum Enthusiast
minor note: I think IBM does not make PC disk drives anymore since they sold their storage division to Hitachi, forming Hitachi Global Storage Technology. http://www.hitachigst.com/
Maybe they still make high-end hardware for big systems (?)
Maybe they still make high-end hardware for big systems (?)
David-P
Forum Enthusiast
I have a 250GB LaCie/Porsche external drive. It is USB2, but needs an external power supply, which comes with the drive. I have had no problems with this drive on Win 2000 or on Win XP. I turn it off when not in use.
david
david
external drives? I have several Western Digital USB 2.0 drives and I frequently have boot issues. My internal drive hangs up in the boot process until I disconnect my USB external hard drives. Once they are disconnected the pc boots properly. very annoying. I run Windows XP 1st edition on my 3 year old Gateway pc.
Bruce A Smith
Member
From several years of running a network for a university, I can suggest the following.
Avoid Hitachi/IBM Deskstar drives. The failure rate is almost an order of magnitude greater than the rest. And this was soon after installation.
Seagate is currently offering a 5 year replacement warrenty on all new drives. The current series of ATA100 and SATA drives are fast and reliable.
Western Digital are okay. We don't run many of them because of our hardware supplier, but they are reliable if a bit finicky with other drives in the machine. If in an external casing, shouldn't experience that problem.
Maxtor developed a bad reputation a few years back. From my current experience, I would place them third on the list. I'd take a Maxtor over a Hitachi any time, but a Seagate first.
Fujistu and the rest of the second-tier drives should stay there.
Avoid Hitachi/IBM Deskstar drives. The failure rate is almost an order of magnitude greater than the rest. And this was soon after installation.
Seagate is currently offering a 5 year replacement warrenty on all new drives. The current series of ATA100 and SATA drives are fast and reliable.
Western Digital are okay. We don't run many of them because of our hardware supplier, but they are reliable if a bit finicky with other drives in the machine. If in an external casing, shouldn't experience that problem.
Maxtor developed a bad reputation a few years back. From my current experience, I would place them third on the list. I'd take a Maxtor over a Hitachi any time, but a Seagate first.
Fujistu and the rest of the second-tier drives should stay there.
Please see my earlier post regarding pc boot issues when USB hard drives are attached. Is theer a way to place several hard drives in pc case and attach it to my router so that any pc on my network can backup its files to the pc case with multiple hard drives?
Bruce A Smith
Member
There are a number of ways I can think of to do this ranging from building a second PC with the drives in it to using one of the dedicated NAS servers that are becoming available.
Planet, http://www.planet.com.tw , has chassis that can take 2 and 4 drives. Cintre, http://www.cintreusa.com , has single-drive cases that have USB, Firewire and Ethernet connectors. There are probably others coming out as well.
From the PC side, a case with a power supply with enough connectors, a expansion card if you need extra ports and whatever OS you're happy with should be suitable.
Feel free to e-mail me directly if you want to discuss in more detail
Planet, http://www.planet.com.tw , has chassis that can take 2 and 4 drives. Cintre, http://www.cintreusa.com , has single-drive cases that have USB, Firewire and Ethernet connectors. There are probably others coming out as well.
From the PC side, a case with a power supply with enough connectors, a expansion card if you need extra ports and whatever OS you're happy with should be suitable.
Feel free to e-mail me directly if you want to discuss in more detail
Rokcet Scientist
Forum Enthusiast
Harddisks crash! They are NOT reliable backup media. Far too volatile.
Backup on much more stable, thus much more reliable DVD's or CD's.
And REburn even those every 2 years if you're really serious about backups!
RS
I think it's tough to provide a recommendation based on one person's experience even if that experience is based on several years in the storage industry. In the end it's all about statistics and probabilities. Rather than rely on recommendations here, I'd check out http://www.storagereview.com/php/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=LeaderBoard .
In the end, I tend to agree with the poster who said NONE and just plan on the drive failing, that way it doesn't matter whether the drive you bought is a lemon.
Good Luck,
Shad
In the end, I tend to agree with the poster who said NONE and just plan on the drive failing, that way it doesn't matter whether the drive you bought is a lemon.
Good Luck,
Shad
WINGnutsDAD
Senior Member
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JLC
MyWorld Studios - Madison,MS
JLC
MyWorld Studios - Madison,MS
LeeLove
Leading Member
Andy this is a topic I have also wrestled with and my conclusion is its not as much the drive manufacturer as it is how you use the drives.
I think of external drives as archives which means I don't like to keep them online 24/7. To me they should be viewed as offline storage.
In other words if keep a drive spinning all day long every day then it will eventually fail. But if you consider a removed able drive then you can pull the drive off the shelf and gain access only when needed. This will increase the mean time between failures on any drive.
Lee
--
History judges great Photographers by their technique not their technology.
I think of external drives as archives which means I don't like to keep them online 24/7. To me they should be viewed as offline storage.
In other words if keep a drive spinning all day long every day then it will eventually fail. But if you consider a removed able drive then you can pull the drive off the shelf and gain access only when needed. This will increase the mean time between failures on any drive.
Lee
--
History judges great Photographers by their technique not their technology.
Tom Boucher
Senior Member
A long time ago I had a hard drive head described as the engeineering eqiuvalent of taking a boeing 747 18" over water at Mach 3.
You can't do that 'better' than the other guy in a sense that Drive A can do that for 5 years without a failure and Drive B can't.
Your best protection for your data is a multi-teired option. based on how much money/paranoia you have.
1) Backup off your machine onto an external hard drive
2) That external hard drive that is hardware RAID (reduandant array of inexpensive disks) either where one is copied to another, or three or more are used in an alogrithm that would allow you to loose any one drive.
3) Then you backup to removeable media, either optical or magnetic tape.
4) A external backup strategy that has two seperate sets of backups that are done in a 'grandfather father son' arrangement where every two weeks a full backup is done on alternating sets with incrimental backups done every day/week depending on how much your data changes week to week or day to day.
My current method is External Disk to Optical DVD. Two sets, one left in my desk, the other left with my family 1800 miles away.
--
http://public.fotki.com/trekkie
You can't do that 'better' than the other guy in a sense that Drive A can do that for 5 years without a failure and Drive B can't.
Your best protection for your data is a multi-teired option. based on how much money/paranoia you have.
1) Backup off your machine onto an external hard drive
2) That external hard drive that is hardware RAID (reduandant array of inexpensive disks) either where one is copied to another, or three or more are used in an alogrithm that would allow you to loose any one drive.
3) Then you backup to removeable media, either optical or magnetic tape.
4) A external backup strategy that has two seperate sets of backups that are done in a 'grandfather father son' arrangement where every two weeks a full backup is done on alternating sets with incrimental backups done every day/week depending on how much your data changes week to week or day to day.
My current method is External Disk to Optical DVD. Two sets, one left in my desk, the other left with my family 1800 miles away.
--
http://public.fotki.com/trekkie
Rokcet Scientist
Forum Enthusiast
Well presented, Tom.
I use a grandfather, father, son scheme, where the grandfather (off-site) and father are ReWritable DVD sets and my HD's are the son.
RS
Carl Thomas
Forum Enthusiast
What software is everybody using to do their backups? Where can you get the hardware to set up a Raid 5 for the home user? I use Raid 5 here at work but I can't afford that kind of money for a home set up.
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