View Full Version : External Hardrives
Basically ive got about 100gb of music on my laptop and i want to back it up and be able to plug it into the xbox etc.
can i have some reccomendations on external hardrives, really want to spend under £50 if possible :thumbs:
ferretca18
12-01-2010, 15:02
I have a Maxtor portable one that was about £30 in the states, so probably around your price range over here.
Also, we just got a 1.5Tb one for the home pc (lots of HD camera stuff along with photos and music...) That was £80 in PC world:)
Smoothound
12-01-2010, 15:23
NEVER EVER BUY MAXTOR! They are the most unreliable hard drives known to man.
Seagate can no longer be trusted either as they are now made by Maxtor. Meaning the only brand to trust is Western Digital.
Tesco are selling some Western Digital and Iomega (with WD inside) external 3.5" drives for <£50. Or have a look on Scan.co.uk and see what bargains they have on offer.
ferretca18
12-01-2010, 15:49
are maxtor that bad?
Christ, you cant buy anything these days lol. Im gonna back up all my stuff on the big one now then. (its an iomega one)
Smoothound
12-01-2010, 16:07
Yeah, seriously. I've seen maybe 100 Maxtor failures over the years (4 or 5 of those were in servers I inherited and we lost ALOT of critical data). The only 3 brands I used to trust were WD, Seagate and Quantum (not the Bigfoots), but Maxtor have bought out Quantum AND Seagate.
Hitachi and IBM are a bit better nowadays, but I know alot of people have been stung by them in the past. (although personally I've had 6 IBM drives and not one of them failed).
WD are the dogs danglies and although not flawless (no drive is), are probably the most trusted brand out there.
I've had a Maxtor for around 2 years now, its completely full all the time and I've never had any problems with it, it works fast, never fails and seems quite robust! Iv'e dropped it off the side on to a wooden floor a good few hundred times!
My internal is Western Digital which is probably what I'll be getting when I go for another bigger external HD!
Clouder_sx
12-01-2010, 16:28
I've had about 6 Maxtors fail on me :nod: i then moved to Western Digital, was fine for a bit even had one of them die on me :( now trying a 0.5TB Seagate, one year down so far..
Crouchy i can recommend this Seagate, and from the reviews i read at the time, apparently their drives are meant to be decent these days :nod: not sure if they do an external though?
Best piece of advice - watch out for cheap 3rd party units made with dirt cheap hard-drives inside them :thumbs:
Smoothound
12-01-2010, 16:48
Crouchy i can recommend this Seagate, and from the reviews i read at the time, apparently their drives are meant to be decent these days :nod: not sure if they do an external though?
Sorry mate, they're just rebadged Maxtors now (quite literally!) :(
HAH! You know, when Maxtor bought Seagate I said to people "why are they keeping the Maxtor name when the Seagate name is more trusted?"
Well, there you go : http://www.maxtor.com/home-en-us.html "Maxtor is now Seagate"
So they've ditched the filthy name of Maxtor and are now going to drag the name of Seagate through the dirt, damn them! :furious:
Clouder_sx
12-01-2010, 16:52
Sorry mate, they're just rebadged Maxtors now (quite literally!) :(
Really!? I'm sure they werent about a year ago :confused:
NEVER EVER BUY MAXTOR! They are the most unreliable hard drives known to man.
Seagate can no longer be trusted either as they are now made by Maxtor. Meaning the only brand to trust is Western Digital.
Tesco are selling some Western Digital and Iomega (with WD inside) external 3.5" drives for <£50. Or have a look on Scan.co.uk and see what bargains they have on offer.^^^ this x1000
are maxtor that bad? No, worse :D
Christ, you cant buy anything these days lol. Im gonna back up all my stuff on the big one now then. (its an iomega one)Iomega? Good luck :wack: . They don't make the hard disks, just the enclosures and some shitty software to go with it. I've had 2 of them die on me at home and various ones returned from customers over the years - the only common factor was the hard disks used were random brands.
Very rarely get a Western Digital drive fail these days (reliability around the 4.3GB era was a bit iffy, but no better or worse than other brands at the time)
EDIT : Personally, I thought Seagate bought Maxtor. But that's not relevant compared to the shocking reliability of their drives up to 18 months ago when I stopped selling them. I wouldn't have a Seagate drive in my PC even if they paid me to put it in there :indiff:
Smoothound
12-01-2010, 17:15
Iomega? Good luck :wack: . They don't make the hard disks, just the enclosures and some shitty software to go with it. I've had 2 of them die on me at home and various ones returned from customers over the years - the only common factor was the hard disks used were random brands.
Maybe I was lucky then, mine has a WD in it. :)
Personally, I thought Seagate bought Maxtor.
Crazy isn't it. But it seems that making cheap crap made more money than making more expensive quality proucts. Hence why they've absorbed Quantum AND Seagate :(
reliability around the 4.3GB era was a bit iffy
Yes, it was a bit wasn't it! The most reliable drive back then was the Deskstar, which later got an even worse rep :( Did you ever see those Seagates in the kinky rubber suits? :wack:
mandelbug
12-01-2010, 17:19
We used to use Maxtor at work but almost every machine has now been replaced with Samsung or WD drives as the failure rate is so high on them, you do get the odd good one though lol. I have used Seagate SATA drives and had them fail on me and begin clicking and all sorts. My IOMEGA MightyMax drive for the MacMini has died good style as well although I am not sure what drive is inside.
Go with WD drives but don't solely rely on a single external drive as backup, make two copies
Crazy isn't it. But it seems that making cheap crap made more money than making more expensive quality proucts. Hence why they've absorbed Quantum AND Seagate :(Seagate definitely bought Maxtor :nod:
What I can't tell you is whether the hard disks are made in Maxtor's factory or Seagate's but I do know that the basic Seagate drives looked identical to Maxtor's units not long before the buyout. My suspicions are that the drives were manufactured to the lower quality levels as it was not long after the buy out that the reliability fell through the floor :nod:
Did you ever see those Seagates in the kinky rubber suits? :wack:Yep. We found that they were invariably the cheap drives and failed more often, despite the funky rubber surround.
As for Deskstar drives, we had to stop selling them after every single one failed within months of selling them. It cost a bloody fortune in time and cost even more in loss of reputation. I have a very long memory when it comes to brand failures and so it will be a long time before I touch IBM, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Seagate or Maxtor drives ;)
ferretca18
12-01-2010, 17:26
so out of all the myriad of different brands its only worth getting WD?
Although my maxtor has lasted 2 years without fault, though saying that, it'll blow up very shortly. :(
How do these companies even exist these days by making crap? Surely they would be out of business on word of mouth alone?
Smoothound
12-01-2010, 17:27
Seagate definitely bought Maxtor :nod:
Yeah, that's what Wikipedia is saying. Bizzare, I can remember the outrage at the time as it meant there was only 1 decide supplier left.
On thing is for sure, we had a replacement "Seagate" drive here in a Dell Vostro, and it was clearly a Maxtor shell, no mistaking those design cues.
so out of all the myriad of different brands its only worth getting WD?
Yes. Whatever has happened on the Maxtor/Seagate buyout, there's a chance your Seagate will just be a rebadged Maxtor. Hitachi have come a long way in the last year or so, after their very bad spell. Otherwise WD are the only constant. Defo go for WD.
I put 4 WD drives in my new PC....in RAID 1,0....just to be sure :wack:
Yeah, that's what Wikipedia is saying. Bizzare, I can remember the outrage at the time as it meant there was only 1 decide supplier left.
On thing is for sure, we had a replacement "Seagate" drive here in a Dell Vostro, and it was clearly a Maxtor shell, no mistaking those design cues.Pffft, I don't need no Wiki to tell me what I know ;)
As I said in my previous post, the design of the drives were almost identical before the buyout, but generally only with the cheaper Seagate drives :)
so out of all the myriad of different brands its only worth getting WD?
Although my maxtor has lasted 2 years without fault, though saying that, it'll blow up very shortly. :(
How do these companies even exist these days by making crap? Surely they would be out of business on word of mouth alone?People can only comment based on their personal findings. How many hard disks does the average person buy? Now go to somebody who sells them, maintains them, supports them, replaces them and ask them their opinion. I've been selling hard disks - in PCs and 'over the counter' - and dealing with the aftermath of failed units for over 16 years now and, like many others on here, have a much better overall picture of parts reliability and quality :nod:
ferretca18
12-01-2010, 18:47
i know what you mean mate, its just a pain in the ass that companies can stiff people over and get a way with it:( Like the Customer service from acer and so many others.
If someone other than a huge corporation was to start a business and treat people like that they wouldnt last 10 minutes:(
Wish i did a bit of research before buying hard drives now...
(more importantly the 1.5tb of storage that i advised my mum to get as it seemed like a very good deal, may not have been so great:()
i know what you mean mate, its just a pain in the ass that companies can stiff people over and get a way with it:( Like the Customer service from acer and so many others.
If someone other than a huge corporation was to start a business and treat people like that they wouldnt last 10 minutes:(
Wish i did a bit of research before buying hard drives now...
(more importantly the 1.5tb of storage that i advised my mum to get as it seemed like a very good deal, may not have been so great:()None of these companies started out this bad and that's probably the only reason why they are still around.
I remember the days when I could phone Dell tech support and find that if I wasn't speaking to the person I wanted to, they would simply pass the phone across the desk :D . The call was usually answered within 2-3 rings and there was no "press 1" crap either. But that obviously costs a company like Dell a lot of money so it's just another one of the things to get sacrificed in the name of profit :nod:
/stating the bleeding obvious blog off :wack:
I'll see if I can get this baby back on track!
http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/9752949/Seagate-Expansion-500GB-External-USB-Desktop-Hard-Drive/Product.html
Smoothound
13-01-2010, 10:08
Seagate?? Could be great ..... could be a Maxtor :(
Scan have Digis on back order, but Amazon have some in stock :
1TB for £71.60 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Essential-External-Drive/dp/B002KPW5JM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1263377172&sr=8-1)
500MB for £55.70 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Essential-500GB-External/dp/B002KQ1X3A/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1263377172&sr=8-8)
I'm liking the look of the price of that seagate on play, so what is the best to use as from this thread they all seem to be somehow the same brand which should be avoided :wack:?
Smoothound
13-01-2010, 15:06
Don't buy Maxtor as they are shite. :(
Don't but a Seagate as it might be a rebadged Maxtor :(
Don't buy a Lacie as it will have a Maxtor drive in it. :(
Western Digital is guaranteed to have a nice Western Digital drive in it. :)
All others : could be anything inside the case. :|
Get a WD :thumbs:
Samsung drives also seem well rated - I've got 4 and haven't had a problem yet, touch wood.
Smoothound
13-01-2010, 16:32
At one of my previous companies they used Samsungs desktop drives they were cheap, they failed often :( (still, not as bad as the Fujitsu dives)
At another gaff they used Samsung 3.5" drives, they were better, I think when we left we had a box of 20-30 failed ones which we couldn't send back. We typically had at least one fail per week, that said, we sold alot of them! The 3.5" Fuji drived seems much more reliable.
I have a Samsung drive in my laptop, it hasn't failed yet. But the one in my USB caddy did refuse to spin up last week.
I guess it depends how big a sample you take.
I still swear by WD.
I have a Samsung drive in my desktop at the moment. Tempted to get a WD external for backups though.
Sideways14a
13-01-2010, 18:49
WD drives = good
Samsung and hitachi = ok
Seagate = a possible iffy, might be a rebadged maxtor, if not then ok, if so them :hurl:
Maxtor = Failbus
If it has the words Deskstar on it, then remove from pc and introduce to the nearest bin. As lets face it, the bloody thing would still be shite as a paper weight.
Smoothound
14-01-2010, 09:35
I had 3 x 60GB Deathstars in my last PC, and 4x 30GB Deathstars in the one before that. They all worked till the day the PC retired. AT work we did however have loads (and I mean LOADS) of failures of 40GB model. Was it only a particular run which was bad?
EDIT : This was 2001-2003 ish.
I think alot of time has passed and they're actually OK now.
Whatever you get, get one with a decent warranty as chances are, it'll need sending back at some point in it's life :(
Smoothound
14-01-2010, 11:46
Seagate are still offering 5 years on their drives.
Western Digital is 3 years.
voodoo_melon
14-01-2010, 11:51
I have a dead WD here on my desk :wack: Spindle motor is dead and it takes aaaaages to spin up. That said we don't get many failures, and those we do get are usually from ships where they're subject to a lot of vibration.
I use WD at home :nod: 6 or so drives, not had a failure :)
Seagate are still offering 5 years on their drives.
Western Digital is 3 years.
That's for internal HDD's though..
Just had a quick look - WD and Seagate offer 2 years on their USB desktop HDD's.
Well my two peneth worth, I maintain around 1500 on vehicle CCTV systems which all have 2.5" drives fitted, these drives are subjected to the worst possible enviroment for any sort of electonics heat cold damp vibration etc.
Originally they were all fitted with Hitachi drives which have proven to be reliable, on average each vehicle is recording for approx 18hrs a day 7 days a week the hitachi's were lasting around 5 years before developing faults, we then switched to seagate drives which have been reliable but then due to cost and availiability we have now gone western digital and we are getting quite a few failures I would say approx 1 in 20, out of the 1500 vehicles I would say 700 still have the original hitachi's 400 have seagates and the remainder have western of which the failure rates are on a par with the 5 year old hitachi's :eek:
So make of it what you will, I would personally buy a Samsung drive :D
Smoothound
14-01-2010, 14:18
Are those 2.5 drives SAS? Coz that's a different kettle of fish!
I have one of these and it seems to work very well :)
http://www.dabs.com/products/freecom-toughdrive-2-5--250gb-usb2-4KNY.html?refs=50683
Are those 2.5 drives SAS? Coz that's a different kettle of fish!
No, all IDE and SATA 2.5", Sata all tend to be Seagate and WD though
Smoothound
17-01-2010, 18:46
Well, there you go!! My current backup drive : a Lacie Big Disk has just died a death.
Not a big surprise really, we had three of these at work and every single on of them died. Would anyone like to guess what brand of disk is inside the case?
I'm ordering on of the WD drives off Amazon, it's a billy bargain!
Well, there you go!! My current backup drive : a Lacie Big Disk has just died a death.
Not a big surprise really, we had three of these at work and every single on of them died. Would anyone like to guess what brand of disk is inside the case?
I'm ordering on of the WD drives off Amazon, it's a billy bargain!I'm going to take a wild stab at Maxtor :D
I'm ordering on of the WD drives off Amazon, it's a billy bargain!
Which one?
The newer Samsung drives are supposed to be good. I have a pair in my desktop PC at the moment. I've also had good experience with Western Digital.
Thing to bear in mind is that all drives will eventually fail. All manufacturers will occasionally ship a drive that fails early or is DOA. The only way to keep your data safe is to keep multiple copies of it.
With that in mind, my setup is a pair of 500GB drives in RAID1 (mirrored) configuration, meaning that if one drive explodes then the PC will just carry on running like nothing ever happened.
I also have a Western Digital MyBook World external drive which attaches to my network rather than to a PC and contains two 500GB drives in RAID1 again. I can't recommend this device for day to day use as it is /slow/ however I have Windows7 set to back up my important data to it every Sunday afternoon which it dutifully does without bothering me.
I don't back up everything to it. No need to backup the OS or my installed games as these can come from CD, just my documents, photographs etc. etc.
Smoothound
20-01-2010, 14:02
I'm going to take a wild stab at Maxtor :D
Which one?
1TB for £71.60 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Essential-External-Drive/dp/B002KPW5JM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1263377172&sr=8-1) <-- This one
500MB for £55.70 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Essential-500GB-External/dp/B002KQ1X3A/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1263377172&sr=8-8)
I was in a hurry though, so I ended up getting it off EBuyer who did next day delivery :sxoc:
I'm seriously contemplating getting a NAS/uPNP one with RAID too. The World Edition II. Expensive, but ultimately quite useful considering I have a PS3 and Mrs Smoothound has a uPNP Hi-Fi :cool:
1TB for £71.60 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Essential-External-Drive/dp/B002KPW5JM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1263377172&sr=8-1) <-- This one
500MB for £55.70 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Essential-500GB-External/dp/B002KQ1X3A/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1263377172&sr=8-8)
I was in a hurry though, so I ended up getting it off EBuyer who did next day delivery :sxoc:
I'm seriously contemplating getting a NAS/uPNP one with RAID too. The World Edition II. Expensive, but ultimately quite useful considering I have a PS3 and Mrs Smoothound has a uPNP Hi-Fi :cool::confused: Was I right then ;)
Smoothound
20-01-2010, 16:59
Sorry, I meant to put this :
:nod: :smash:
Sorry, I meant to put this :
:nod: :smash:Yay, what do I win :confused: :D
I'm seriously contemplating getting a NAS/uPNP one with RAID too. The World Edition II. Expensive, but ultimately quite useful considering I have a PS3 and Mrs Smoothound has a uPNP Hi-Fi :cool:
Just be aware that that NAS is slow
I mean, yeah it's quick enough, you can play video files off it or whatever, but when transferring large files back and forth it does get annoying.
AshT_200
20-01-2010, 19:12
Just be aware that that NAS is slow
I mean, yeah it's quick enough, you can play video files off it or whatever, but when transferring large files back and forth it does get annoying.
That purely depends on the NAS and how it is connected. I've seen NAS outperform internal SAS drives, running off SATA disk, albeit a big NAS.
I've been running a 7200rpm Seagate Momentus in my PS3 for the last 2 years and it has been fine :)
I was talking specifically about the WD one. I said "be aware that that NAS is slow" not "be aware that NAS is slow"
The WD one runs off an ARM chip similar to a mobile phone, and runs Linux, Samba, and a web server for management. The bottleneck when serving files is not the network interface or the hard drives, it is the CPU that maxes out first, limiting transfers to about 30 megabits/second, which is to say it can't even max out a 100mbps home network, let alone gigabit, which is what it is fitted with.
Edit: You can get the WD one up to about 45 megabits with a bit of hacking. It's pretty trivial to get SSH running on it, then you can get in and enable a few additional services such as FTP and NFS (not much use if you're a windows user though) and more usefully disable all the mionet shite which is written in Java.
AshT_200
20-01-2010, 20:00
I was talking specifically about the WD one. I said "be aware that that NAS is slow" not "be aware that NAS is slow"
Sorry must have misread your post. Missed one of the "that"s
The WD one runs off an ARM chip similar to a mobile phone, and runs Linux, Samba, and a web server for management. The bottleneck when serving files is not the network interface or the hard drives, it is the CPU that maxes out first, limiting transfers to about 30 megabits/second, which is to say it can't even max out a 100mbps home network, let alone gigabit, which is what it is fitted with.
Edit: You can get the WD one up to about 45 megabits with a bit of hacking. It's pretty trivial to get SSH running on it, then you can get in and enable a few additional services such as FTP and NFS (not much use if you're a windows user though) and more usefully disable all the mionet shite which is written in Java.
That is slow. I'd like to see that performance in Bytes, not bits.
The WD one runs off an ARM chip similar to a mobile phone, and runs Linux, Samba, and a web server for management.
Nearly all of the cheap 'consumer grade' NAS devices are around that kind of speed - I've got a Linksys NSLU2 and an Asus Wireless Router both of which are hackable and have NAS functionality and they are around as slow :(
Smoothound
21-01-2010, 14:54
Yay, what do I win :confused: :D
A Maxtor Hard Drive of course! :sxoc:
Just be aware that that NAS is slow
I mean, yeah it's quick enough, you can play video files off it or whatever, but when transferring large files back and forth it does get annoying.
What would you recommend? (that doesn't require me to be financially bum raped by ebuyer)
AshmanS13
21-01-2010, 20:56
didnt read properly sorry
mandelbug
21-01-2010, 21:46
That's what I use in work :D WD drives all the way :D
What would you recommend? (that doesn't require me to be financially bum raped by ebuyer)
As someone else stated, most consumer grade NASs are just as bad. I don't know as I've only owned the WD one
Instead we went for an old PC with some extra drives in it
http://www.lum.co.uk/SA/bagpuss.jpg
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