What external drives do you guys use?

[AURORA4DTH]

So I have about 5 EZ Quest Cobra Drives and Im always out of space so i am going to be buying another drive soon. The Ez quests, other than 2 that failed over the last 6 years have been pretty good, a little noisy but still good. My clients bring a ton of drives in but I dont get to abuse them every day like I do mine so I am wondering what drives you guys use and how well they have held up.

[crizdee]

Originally Posted by AURORA4DTH

So I have about 5 EZ Quest Cobra Drives and Im always out of space so i am going to be buying another drive soon. The Ez quests, other than 2 that failed over the last 6 years have been pretty good, a little noisy but still good. My clients bring a ton of drives in but I dont get to abuse them every day like I do mine so I am wondering what drives you guys use and how well they have held up.

Lacie big disk extreme firewire 800.

I have 3 of them and they are sited behind a small glass panel behind speaker wall so i see them but not hear them! they have a 5 mitre firewire cable from the mac then they are daisy-chained together.

Only ever had one firewire 400 drive fail about 5 years ago

Chris

[Studio Studio]

I've been using Lacie for quiet a while now, and have had 4 faulty drives
in the past half year. I'm considering other brands now.

[crizdee]

Originally Posted by Studio Studio

I've been using Lacie for quiet a while now, and have had 4 faulty drives
in the past half year. I'm considering other brands now.

Which models?
Lacie don't make drives only enclosures so i assume their hi-end models would have better drives in?

The Seagate Freeagent might be good purchase now! they do a firewire 800 model!! their drives are fantastic just don't know much about their enclosures

Chris

[Bentley Ferrari]

I've been using 4 external SATA drives four about four years now without a problem. The drives themselves are Seagate Barracudas, which I bought separately. The enclosures and the SATA PCI card that makes it all work are from Firmtek. They've been around for awhile now and have a good rep--started by some people that worked for Apple.

The drives go into chassis (chassises? chassi? chassae?) that allow you to hot swap them in and out of the enclosure. Once you push the chassis in and hear a "click" you know you've got a SATA connection. No clumsy fumbling with your fingers in narrow openings. That's what she said. (Sorry. I rented Season Two of "The Office" last weekend.)

So let's say you order a 4-bay SATA drive kit from Firmtek. You'll get a 4-bay enclosure, 4 hot-swappable chassis for the SATA drives of your choice,
4 external SATA cables, and a PCI or PCIe card with 4 SATA connection sockets that will face out the back of your Mac. Anyway, once you install the PCI or PCIe card, replace the cover panel of your Mac, and install the drive or drives of your choice into the enclosure all you do next is plug the external SATA cables into the back of your Mac (there are four SATA sockets right there at the outside face of the PCI card you just installed), and plug the other end of the external SATA cables into the back of the SATA drive enclosure. Very clean and easy. I have never had connection problems.

And it's faster than Firewire if you need that.

So to summarize what IMO makes this (or external SATA in general) the way to go:

(1) Speed. SATA is faster than FW 800 or USB 2.0
(2) Ease of Use. If you can plug a cable into a socket you can handle this.
(3) Reliability. Not a hiccup in four years.
(4) Hot swappable.
(5) User Freedom. You choose the drive.
(6) Price. Check it out for yourself, but I found a 4-bay very competitive, especially considering how cheap drives are these days.

[max howarth]

i had a nightmare year (2 actually) with lacie drives. we had something like 20 or 30 through the doors (250, 500 & 750gb fw800 big disk extremes) and every one failed on us. we were going through them daily at one point – the firewire bridge burnt out every single time.

we ended up sending the entire lot back for a full refund. we moved to glyph gt050q drives and apart from an issue where they wouldn't boot a g5 with three displays attached and one noisy fan (replaced overnight) they've been faultless. the support is beyond compare.

best wishes
max

[hummerZ]

Mercury Elite Pro drives from Other World Computing. Great product, great company.

And while we're on the subject, beware the faulty 7200rpm Seagate drives from last year! I had one go down on me yesterday. If you have one, don't mess around, just replace it.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/...&intsrc=kc_top

[drenkrom]

Since we consume an insane amount of hard drives at our studio, I've had the chance to try out most manufacturers and, in my experience, Western Digital are the most trustworthy. The LaCie enclosure very rarely die, but the disks inside them do so at an alarming rate. Their drives run way too hot. The track record is pretty good with Maxtor and Seagate, but, with over 30 drives in active use, the WD MyBook series has had one failure and that was one of the earlier 1TB RAID models. I've read of people with slightly less favorable experiences, but those are the one's I'd have to recommend.

I haven't had a Glyph drive in ages. The last one was a SCSI beast. I'd look them up as well.

[drenkrom]

Since we consume an insane amount of hard drives at our studio, I've had the chance to try out most manufacturers and, in my experience, Western Digital are the most trustworthy. The LaCie enclosure very rarely die, but the disks inside them do so at an alarming rate. Their drives run way too hot. The track record is pretty good with Maxtor and Seagate, but, with over 50 drives in active use, the WD MyBook series has had one failure and that was one of the earlier 1TB RAID models. I've read of people with slightly less favorable experiences, but those are the one's I'd have to recommend.

I haven't had a Glyph drive in ages. The last one was a SCSI beast. I'd look them up as well.

[Matts]

they have a 5 mitre firewire cable from the mac

A 5 meter firewire cable??!!?! Really?