best external 1 TB drive (firewire) for mac

[daddyray]

opinions please

[rspencer]

Not on a Mac, but I use a Western Digital My Book. I have a couple different WD externals, no problems.

[U2Lynne]

Hubby just bought me a Hitachi. But, I also have one of those dock thingies where you just pull out the drive and insert another one.

[daddyray]

I have a mish mash of external drives and I just never asked around here

[direwolf-pgh]

this one time, I bought a hard drive..

and it was awesome.

in fact, it was the best hard drive in the world. I loved it so so very much.


then it died on me. fucker.

[daddyray]

wait they can fail?!? oh no!



I have been there, back when I was photoshop boy on my 6110 performa series with my hot 28.8 modem.

[AAR.oner]

G-Technologies are supposedly one of the better...i've used a lot of Lacie's, most of which have had no problems...heard WD's are good too

[COLOGNESHARK]

Iomega UltraMax
Firewire 800 - Fast, good Design ... .
I have 7 of them in use

[jhm]

Honestly the "best" one would likely be one you made yourself. I recently made an external drive by buying a 1TB Samsung F3 Spinpoint and a Rosewill external enclosure with a fan and both USB and eSata connections (I realize you need Firewire). The whole thing cost me $100. My research on external drives has generally shown two things:

1. The drives used, while good, are not top of the line spec wise (i.e. you could buy a better drive on your own)
2. The enclosures are often flimsy (as with Lacie's I've owned in the past) and lack a fan and proper venting.

1TB drives can run pretty hot if you have them on for long periods of time. The reason I got the Rosewill enclosure is that it's aluminum (dissipates heat), has a aluminum mesh front to allow for better airflow and a large fan on top to also help with heat dissipation.

My advice would be to go to Newegg.com or a similar site, research a quality 1TB drive and enclosure, and assemble your own. I took me about 5 minutes to assemble my last external drive and if I can do it, anyone can.

P.S. I don't know if Apple supports it (I have a PC), but eSata outperforms both Firewire 400 (by almost 2x) and Firewire 800 in terms of data transfer speeds. Something to consider if that's an option for you. Almost all of the drives that come in external enclosures these days are SATA drives and it seems a waste to not be able to take advantage of the higher data transfer rates if you use a USB or Firewire port to connect to the hard drive.

[AAR.oner]

eSATA is sorta supported on macs, but tons of issues [just search eSATA over at the apple forums]

also, i don't think any come w/ an eSATA connection jack...i'm pretty sure you've got to install an eSATA PCI card at this point


as for speed yes eSATA is faster than any of the others in theory...however you've got a lot of factors that play in, and in most peoples situation yer not gonna be getting the full 3M/s that eSATA touts...FW800 should be more than sufficient...just a fwiw

[daddyray]

I don't have the mad skillz to build anything. I appreciate the suggestions here though.

[jhm]

Believe me, you don't need mad skills. If you can drop a drive into a slot an attach about eight screws, you're done. That being said, if you are going to get a pre-made external drive, do some online searches and find out which drives "live" inside. The Lacie I bought had a Seagate drive, which was fine. The Western Digital drives would have WD "guts", etc.

[daddyray]

I have some lacies and a few maxtors and they have all been fine. the have all been gifts though. never bought myself one so I am asking around.

[willndmb]

i ahve had nothing but problems with WD drives
i had 4 die between 4 days and 8 months
WD was great about exchanging them but after the 4th died i didn't even call for a replacement

i have had no issues with my maxtors or some no named ones

[walrus024]

G-Drives are probably the best I have used but they are spendy.