The most reliable external HD?

Tommy B

Tommy B

Tommy B

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Alas, my 600GB internal storage is almost out. My iTunes library is now approaching 200GB, and as I'm shortly moving to a laptop, I've decided to get an external HD.

My question is, which brand has a reputation for being the most reliable. I'd be absolutely horrified If I lost my music collection, as it is about 10 years worth.

Will place an order with OCUK shortly as I literally have no storage left on my PC.

Cheers,
 
It's not one drive, that's the total space. I've got about 4 HDs in the PC.

Are externals designed for backup, or constant read/writing use?
 
The LaCie Design by F.A Porsche 500GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive are aparently very good as they've started using Seagate discs instead of the old Maxtors. Personally I went for the big NAS route, but really depends on what sort of connection you're looking for, USB/firewire/e-sata or Lan connection.
 
custom make the enclosure by buying the drive seperate and the case seperate. go for a drive by western digital or seagate, their nearline rated drives.

WD has the raid edition drives
and seagate has a NL version of drives, nearline storage.

both are probably the most reliable ones your gonna get in large capacity drives.

anything more reliable then your gonna have to fork out for scsi stuff.
 
my vote goes for lacie, ive had maxtor... avoid like the plague, ive used seagate before and had problems with mac ....ive used wd and again had problems with mac and our new freeagent cooked its self within a week

what ever you go for buy two! back up is priceless
 
Personally i wouldn't risk > 200-300gb on one disc either, its just too much data too loose in the event of a failure. Imo raid is almost essential with these new huuuge discs.
 
I agree with Saffyre. Hard drives break, it's what they do. There's always a risk, no matter how small that your 600GB disk could die say, next week. The only way to be sure that you're not going to scream and repeatedly headbutt a wall should this happen is to make sure you've got a backup copy of everything. Somehow.
 
Trippynet said:
I agree with Saffyre. Hard drives break, it's what they do. There's always a risk, no matter how small that your 600GB disk could die say, next week. The only way to be sure that you're not going to scream and repeatedly headbutt a wall should this happen is to make sure you've got a backup copy of everything. Somehow.
Click to expand...

+1

(But that said, RAID in general is more about availability/uptime than about backup/disaster recovery, they are somewhat seperate concerns. RAID by itself is therefore IMO not a satisfactory as a disaster recovery/avoidance strategy.)
 
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If you've got money to burn, I'd seriously look at the drobo. I'd buy one in a heartbeat :)

Just pick up two big drives and you've got a ton of secure storage that you can upgrade on the fly.
 
Anyone found a UK supplier for one of these Drobo's the idea is inspired although why they haven't implemented is like a NAS with Ethernet cable I'll never know.
 
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