Time to byte the bullet

[SteveZ]

Went shopping today for another external drive, I'm looking for either a 1 tb or 2 tb desk top drive for hi res photo file storage, but there are so many to choose from. Are they all the same? Prices have really come down lately but I want one that is both PC/Mac compatible. Was looking at the LaCie brand. Any other suggestions?

[Songman45]

Don't know the brand you are talking about. Western Digital has a reputation for short lives and unexpected failures. We've got banks of Maxtor external drives. These range in capacity from a couple of hundred gig to 750 gig. These units stack nicely and the outer covering is rubberized and non skid. I wish all brands would think of this handy little idea. We got a My Book by WD at the beginning of this season in hopes the 1TB capacity would hold a whole years' worth of work. Its going to be a tight fit with only 3 or 4 shows left. I don't like the case on this thing. Its cheap feeling plastic, its shaped like a book but no ones going to put in in a book shelf. Gimicky if you want my opinion (and you do). One plus the "My Books" (why all the narcisism in computer stuff, My Documents, My Computer, My Pictures, My Book and a program called My Power Desk?) is it has both USB 2 and firewire ports.

[tharper]

Originally Posted by Songman45

Don't know the brand you are talking about. Western Digital has a reputation for short lives and unexpected failures. We've got banks of Maxtor external drives. These range in capacity from a couple of hundred gig to 750 gig. These units stack nicely and the outer covering is rubberized and non skid. I wish all brands would think of this handy little idea. We got a My Book by WD at the beginning of this season in hopes the 1TB capacity would hold a whole years' worth of work. Its going to be a tight fit with only 3 or 4 shows left. I don't like the case on this thing. Its cheap feeling plastic, its shaped like a book but no ones going to put in in a book shelf. Gimicky if you want my opinion (and you do). One plus the "My Books" (why all the narcisism in computer stuff, My Documents, My Computer, My Pictures, My Book and a program called My Power Desk?) is it has both USB 2 and firewire ports.

Decent advice, but WD has a rep for short lives and you're bragging about Maxtor? LOL! I have a 40gb WD I've had for 7 years and its still my quietest drive, and I have an older Maxtor that works great, but when I wa sworking as a PC Tech I replaced more Maxtor and IBM drives than WD, Seagate, any of them.

[SteveZ]

How important is firewire versus USB? I've been told that firewire is better but the "commissioned" salesperson at the store recommended Lacie which was only USB. "It doesn't matter" he told me.

[tharper]

Firewire will transfer back and forth faster, but USB will do just fine honestly. USB 2.0 is pretty fast. I'm going to get an external SATA hard drive next for backups. Friend of mine has a Lacie external and it's been great.

[JDArt]

Originally Posted by SteveZ

Went shopping today for another external drive, I'm looking for either a 1 tb or 2 tb desk top drive for hi res photo file storage, but there are so many to choose from. Are they all the same? Prices have really come down lately but I want one that is both PC/Mac compatible. Was looking at the LaCie brand. Any other suggestions?

There are no 2 TB drives at the moment. Largest I could find is this 1.5 TB model, but users are reporting high failure rates:

Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive (bare drive) - Internal Hard Drives