Need an External Hard Drive (advice)

[vape4life]

This one is for the techies:

So I purchased a Seagate Thunderbolt 1TB Ultra Portable HDD for my new macbook pro retina 15 because everything I read said that it was twice as fast as USB3. Well, after my own research and testing, I found this to not be true. I tested it against a Western Digital My passport ultra portable USB 3 2TB and found the USB 3 to be waaaay faster for data transfer. Apparently the Thunderbolt will shine when SSD portables get more mainstream, but for now I decided it's not worth the money.

So, I need a USB 3 drive that is GOOD. I looked at the amazon reviews and determined that both the WD and the Seagate Goflex (and maybe all usb powered drives) SUCK! They all eventual stop working after weeks to a few months, and I don't wanna take the chance. I don't need it to store important data, just movies, music, etc. so if it crashes it's not the end of the world, however the poor reviews (there's good reviews too, but the bad ones are scary) are making me want to avoid these 2 products.

Are there ANY good drives? I have no problem spending the $ but I don't know what else to look at. Would an a/c powered "desktop" drive be much more reliable long term? thanks!

 

[treecityrnd]

Would an a/c powered "desktop" drive be much more reliable long term? thanks!

I think that the less you move it, the less likely it will be to fail. I've dropped a portable drive and had to send it to the Clean Room to have the data extracted. Not cheap. A desktop would be more protected?

That said; I hate my desktop drives but use my portable drives all the time.
Love my Iomega eGo Portable 1 TB External hard drive ( portable ) USB 3.0 Black (and works great with apple products). Comes with a shield and great for travel:

But my go to HD is my Iomega Prestige Portable 1 TB External hard drive ( portable ) USB 3.0 Black

Not much performance difference, just style.

 

[vape4life]

Thanks man! I also dropped my new WD Mypassport on to hardwoods DURING a file transfer...it stalled, but just kept on going without any issues, but i'm paranoid now that it wil break faster in the future.

What do you think of this one?

http://www.futureshop.ca/en-CA/prod...sb-3-0-hard-drive-orange-301558/10182920.aspx

 

[nopartofme]

Just want to point out, it looks like you got mixed up with the speed implications of HD vs SSD and thunderbolt vs USB 3. Your first decision should be whether you want an SSD or not, that should have the biggest effect on your read and write speeds. It also has other implications, like durability and price per GB. From there you can decide on the connector…

The amazing thing about thunderbolt is it offers four "lanes" of high-speed traffic to work with, which allows you to daisy chain up to six thunderbolt devices together. So, you could have your macbook plugged into an Apple thunderbolt display. Then, you could plug in your thunderbolt hard drive to the display's second thunderbolt port. Then, you could plug another HD into the first HD… And they will all communicate with your laptop at full speed. Not to mention, Apple's thunderbolt display itself has a 720p camera, a microphone, 3 USB 2.0 ports, an ethernet port, and a firewire 800 port, all coming to your macbook over that single thunderbolt connector. You can even daisy chain monitors! Cool to think about. I think so, at least…

Hope this helps.

 

[vape4life]

Thanks bro, but all I have is my macbook pro retina and just want a fast transfer portable HD solution. The MBP has an SSD, and I can't afford an external SSD for backup. SO, I first bough the Seagate Thunderbolt 1TB because I "assumed" that is was TWICE as fast as USB 3. The daisy chaining, etc. won't benefit me at all, so I want what's faster. Right now, USB 3 is faster than Thunderbolt for an external hard drive that isn't SSD....it's MUCH faster. So now I have to list the Seagate thunderbolt on eBay, and buy a USB 3 drive...just returned the My Passport WD to Costco. Since it's Costco, I can probably buy one and return it anytime if I have problems, but I don't wanna lose all my data. The data isn't "important" but still...it's like a TB of HD movies, tunes, porn, etc

I'll keep reading reviews on Amazon.... but it's easy to get scared with the negative ones. Apparently all these ultra portable drives suck.

 

[nopartofme]

Thanks bro, but all I have is my macbook pro retina and just want a fast transfer portable HD solution. The MBP has an SSD, and I can't afford an external SSD for backup. SO, I first bough the Seagate Thunderbolt 1TB because I "assumed" that is was TWICE as fast as USB 3. The daisy chaining, etc. won't benefit me at all, so I want what's faster. Right now, USB 3 is faster than Thunderbolt for an external hard drive that isn't SSD....it's MUCH faster. So now I have to list the Seagate thunderbolt on eBay, and buy a USB 3 drive...just returned the My Passport WD to Costco. Since it's Costco, I can probably buy one and return it anytime if I have problems, but I don't wanna lose all my data. The data isn't "important" but still...it's like a TB of HD movies, tunes, porn, etc

I'll keep reading reviews on Amazon.... but it's easy to get scared with the negative ones. Apparently all these ultra portable drives suck.

Sounds good, if you want fast storage quickly, no problems going with USB 3! Just wanted to show what the big deal is with thunderbolt and all, nerd alert I feel your pain with the portable HD reviews. They are scary. I've got a Western Digital "Elements" 500GB, USB 2.0 portable drive that is going strong after 26 months… But I still don't trust it all the way. I'd be a lot more comfortable with a portable SSD, but like you alluded to, the prices aren't quite "there" yet. Sorry that I can't help more, I'm not so knowledgable about the hard drive market. Hope you find something that works well for you!

 

[vape4life]

You've helped alot, thanks! Ya i've had two 500gb usb2 seagate go drives and didn't have a single problem with them, but if you read the reviews on the new seagates...yikes. The WD may be an option, even with the bad reviews there are tonnes of positive reviews too....i just hope that they aren't positive because they haven't had the drives long enough lol

I'll put a bit of time into the research and reviews, and then pull the trigger on something. That Rugged orange drive looks pretty bad ass....I mean if you can run it over with a car? lol

 

[treecityrnd]

I'd be a lot more comfortable with a portable SSD, but like you alluded to, the prices aren't quite "there" yet.

Exactly.

The amazing thing about thunderbolt is it offers four "lanes" of high-speed traffic to work with, which allows you to daisy chain up to six thunderbolt devices together.

And the speed and safety of electricity vs. electromagnetics. So many advantages...

orange drive looks pretty bad ass....I mean if you can run it over with a car? lol

Agreed! That LaCie Rugged Mini 1TB looks pretty "rugged". I've never had any personal experience with LaCie products but looks like a solid company and good support. And it looks real nice.

 

[vape4life]

And the speed and safety of electricity vs. electromagnetics. So many advantages...

I would KEEP the Thunderbolt Seagate if it was the SAME speed as the USB 3....but it's slower! WTF? lol

Thanks for confirmation on the LaCie... not many reviews out there, but i'll keep looking. I think a shock proof rugged drive is the way to go....accidents always happen, i've dropped my old iphone4 over a dozen times on various surfaces and it kept on truckin....same with my iphone5....3 times on hardwoods so far....not a problem.

 

[chimpybits]

... So, I need a USB 3 drive that is GOOD. I looked at the amazon reviews and determined that both the WD and the Seagate Goflex (and maybe all usb powered drives) SUCK! They all eventual stop working after weeks to a few months, and I don't wanna take the chance. I don't need it to store important data, just movies, music, etc. so if it crashes it's not the end of the world, however the poor reviews (there's good reviews too, but the bad ones are scary) are making me want to avoid these 2 products.

Are there ANY good drives? I have no problem spending the $ but I don't know what else to look at. Would an a/c powered "desktop" drive be much more reliable long term? thanks!

The best 2 readily-available drives manufacturors are OWC and G-Tech. This OWC portable drive and this portable G-Tech are good choices.

The key advantage of these companies is that they use high-quality "branded" drives inside such as the Seagate Barracuda and the Hitachi Deskstar. Other companies use cheaper generic drives that have not been through the same testing process. The drive manufacturers (Hitachi, WD) produce these generic drives for these cheap externals. In other words, you can't buy these cheap internal drives, but you can buy a Seagate Barracuda. Sort of like how Winners sell cheap Adidas runners made just for this low-end market, but you can't find these runners at the official Adidas store or site.

Sometimes there is even a choice of the internal drive for a given OWC drive, and I've called up and chatted with the OWC reps about the choice and specified the internal drive to use. If you are in doubt if the given drive uses a branded drive instead of a generic drive, call or email.

I'm not sure if the 3.5" drives are more reliable, but one can buy "enterprise class" 3.5" drives which are tested to be more reliable and typically have longer warranties. This OWC and this G-Tech drive I've had for years.

The only way to decidedly improve reliability is via redundancy - either via backup to another drive or via RAID. Any drive can fail at any time without warning (although internal drives do offer SMART warning). Both OWC and G-Tech offer RAID drives in both the 2.5" or the 3.5" size. For improved reliability, be sure to choose RAID1 (mirrored) not RAID0 (striped). I've had 2 OWC Guardian Maximus RAID1 drives running perfectly for years and the redundancy is comforting. These drives do have fans inside so are louder.

 

[ictus]

if you really want to use the full speed of an SSD, USB3 isn't really going to cut it IMO.

I went for a SATA 3.5 bay hotswap adapter. Now I work exclusively off a samsung 840pro SSD and I use DiskCryptor encryption, and I get sequential speeds over 500 MB/s and the randoms are still excellent. Made a big difference for me for random intensive tasks like shader compilation which will be murder on an HDD.

 

[CentiZen]

Well, the OP is banned, but let's be honest, he's reading this, so here goes.

First off, I implore you to not get anything from LaCie. Their support, including driver and technical support is awful and they would rather sell you a new hard drive then help you fix the old one.

If your data is really that important, you don't need an external hard drive - like chimpy said, that's a single point of failure and any machine, especially one like an external hard drive with lots of precision magnets and moving parts, is going to fail over time any you are going to be left in a situation where you need to repair the drive to get your data back. The USB standard has no support for S.M.A.R.T diagnostics, so that feature that gives you a warning before your hard drive fails on your computer does not happen.

But, like you said, you need a fast and portable hard drive solution for when your out and about. But you also seem to be very worried about the longevity of your data, and those two things don't reconcile together very well. So if I was implementing this solution for myself, I would purchase a NetGear Network Attached Storage (NAS) and two or three 1TB drives which I would then either put in RAID 1 or 2 depending on the redundancy I needed (2 for the really important things, 1 to save money) and then store all of the really important data on that machine. You can even set up software to automatically back up your computer overnight and stuff like that. Not to mention that then you have a central hub on your network which any device can share to and from. Great for media centers. The I would just get a small, USB powered SSD (which are nowhere near as expensive as they used to be if you buy the drive and enclosure separate) to transport big files around

But that's all probably a little overboard for what you need.

 

[Tweek]

I've always used externals as scratch disks for video/photo editing, etc. LaCie is pretty bad...they were decent at one time, but no longer reliable.

Regardless of what you choose, redundancy is your friend.