Quiet and dependable external drive? recommendations?

ra · Post by ra » Mon Jan 30, 2006 5:43 am

I am looking to purchase an external firewire hard drive for audio files. Can anyone speak out strongly for or against any products on the market? Appreciate any and all replies.

My computer is a Mac Powerbook G4 running Tiger.

forge · Post by **forge** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 10:35 am

NOT iomega HD 120 FW/USB2 - totally unreliable

kennerb · Post by **kennerb** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 8:11 pm

I like the Maxtor one touch. I never would have touched their other drives but these are quiet and well designed.

siddhu · Post by **siddhu** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 8:30 pm

My first HD was a LaCie, then I bought a Western Digital and a Maxtor. Not nearly as silent and robust as the LaCie.

Glyph, Lacie and G-Tech make pro drives for audio video use, and after buying the prosumer barands to save money, I really realised that you get what you pay for.

Just my 2 cents.

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 9:13 pm

I have *extremely* bad experience with the newer Lacie drives - they're okay for backups, but on extended runs of high intensity they overheated and turned shite...

spiderprod · Post by **spiderprod** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 9:45 pm

lacie d2 , it works fine for me ,

have a look , at carillon drives , a friend of mine got it , it's aparently very good . http://www.carillonusa.com/clnweb/ad1.jsp?country=US

siddhu · Post by **siddhu** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 10:04 pm

Machinate wrote:I have *extremely* bad experience with the newer Lacie drives - they're okay for backups, but on extended runs of high intensity they overheated and turned shite...

Which ones exactly as I'm going to be buying another LaCie?

drush · Post by **drush** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 10:58 pm

Machinate wrote:I have *extremely* bad experience with the newer Lacie.

you and A LOT of other people

mine are fine so far but i've heard this enough that'll probably never buy another lacie product.

i've had really good luck with Maxtor but strangely i hear a lot of horror stories about them as well.

at this point i would probably shop WD or Seagate if i were you.

håkan bråkan · Post by **håkan bråkan** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 1:15 am

not wd media center, it has an auto idle function that is hardware triggered, so you can't disable it, which in my case resulted in dropouts in the audio stream , if you use it for samples I think it's ok, but if you use singular files, when dj:ing, they are sufficient long to switch the hd off,

, there are wd drives without this function though

forge · Post by **forge** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 1:54 am

actually the most reliable option of all I've found has been to get a normal HD and get a caddy for it

I have a FW caddy with a 7200rpm western digital 120GB HD in it and it's always been totally solid - much more so than the Iomega - only downside is the caddy fan is noisy

it's also useful because I also stick a DVD-writer in it or with a 3.5-2.5" cable and put notebook drives in it - useful for cloning or copying

ra · Post by ra » Tue Jan 31, 2006 5:42 am

Thanks for all the input. Just got back from Fry's Electronics where they had a darn good deal on a WD 160 GB 7200 RPM ext fw/usb (dual option they call it) for $100 after rebates. I'll see how it goes. If anyone's interested, the deal is on until tomorrow, 31 Jan. Check Fry's outpost.