Hi guys, as the title says - I am looking recommendations for an external hard drive. portable 1tb is preferred , thanks!

 

Get any drive BUT the Verbatim consoles. They suck ALOT!! A whole lot dude. They are the cheapest on the market and you def get what you pay for. I made the mistake of getting a 500gig Verbatim and it crashed a couple weeks later. Googled it to try and trouble shoot the fail and found out that Verbatim HDs have a long history of crashing. Idk about the best drive but i damn sure know what the shittiest one is.

 

Mac or PC?

Best quality Drives are from G-Technology.

http://www.g-technology.com/products

 

on mac but will be using for both pac n mac. the g-tech ones look good but a bit too pricy for me

 

Yo dude, check this link

Good price/quality: WD

 

Build a drive with your choice of 2.5" sata and a usb enclosure (also of your choosing)?

Personally, I like Seagate drives. I have about 6 or 7 between a few various devices and they are all kicking. Even the 120gb usb drive I've had for 6 years lol. No problems of any kind.

 

Actually, i'm thinking about getting an external drive for PC myself.Whats the biggest terabyte for an external hard drive? Anybody know?

 

You don't necessarily want the biggest drive. The larger the drive the more platters inside, the more platters inside the greater the likelihood of issues if one of them fails.

 

+ 1 on the G-Techs. I've been using them for years and never ever had 1 problem

 

seagate/samsung hdd + oyen digital enclosure = best of both worlds
http://oyendigital.com/hard-drives/store/CB3-BK.html

 

I'd go for Seagate, LaCie, or Toshiba drives, and I strongly suggest you buy no bigger than 500Gb. Drives fail. It is a fact. It's not a matter of if but when. It's a bigger pain in the ass to recover 1Tb of lost information. I happened to me twice, one from drive malfunction and another from dropping it while spinning. All my drives are now 500Gb tops.

Cheers.

 

useful tips lads. i should have mentioned that i'm in europe you guys in the states dont realise how good you have it when it comes to electronics (prices).
how would i go about building one? what do I need to buy? It has to be usb powered though.
thanks

 

Just get yourself something like this http://www.ebuyer.com/165982-startech-sata-usb-external-hard-drive-dock-black-satdocku2gb and you can use any hard drive you want with it. I've been using an older version for pata drives for years. Now i have a hotswap bay in my new computer for my WD black drives. If you can afford them, they are great, really fast and a 5 year warranty.

 

Yeah, an external "enclosure" like that is really practical, Willum. Couple that with a 1TB Western Digital black or Seagate and that's it. I'm thinking of the similar solution since I have lots of hard drives and I bought IcyBox external enclosure which is alright, but not really practical if you need to swap many hard disks like I do, so I find myself using it without an enclosure and it's OK but it does look a bit messy. ;) I wouldn't buy a hard disk with more than 2 platters at the most, too, for the reasons Cataly5t pointed out, so you've got a choice of 500GB or 1TB for now. I'm not sure, but there might be 2TB HDs with 2 platters already. It's always good to check the documentation for the particular hard disk on the WD or Seagate website.

I'd never buy an external drive with an enclosure, because it costs more and it's usually less reliable unless you buy a really expensive one like LeCie. I have a really bad experience with a WD mybook that used to get so hot and just died after a year or so of usage. This solution that is not an enclosure but just a plug is the best there is IMO. No hard disk could get hot his way which extends their lifespan and you can swap them easily like cassettes... LOL

 

I've a WD 320GB Mybook ext. HD that has been working for 6+ years now. My only gripe with it was the complex design in how it is mounted inside... plus they used JIS screw heads in it that look like tiny Phillips heads, but are JIS instead, so a standard Phillips will begin to strip the head out!

That drive is now the OS for my DAW PC and my data drive is a separate 1TB drive internally mounted.

I do have a separate SATA 3.5" ext. enclosure I bought from MicroCenter for ~$20USD.
The simpler the design., the easier it is to swap drives in/out.

I tend to trust WD & Seagate drives for best value per reliability.

 

I've had various 2.5" & 3.5" drives from Toshiba, WD, Hitachi, Seagate, Buffalo.
Combinations of bought off-the-shelf, reclaimed from laptops, and ready-made external portable (USB powered) and desktop (mains powered).

One point to check for in the specs of any USB interface/enclosure is a "power save" or "spin down" feature.
A standard USB protocol message is sent from a host out to bus devices upon sleep or power off.
Some will also do this on idle or no acces for 5~10 minutes. This is Ok for office documents usage but maybe not for on-demand samples access!
A Lacie I have claims to have this but I could not get it to work. Had me digging around the USB power settings in Windows & BIOS configs. Got too messy so now I have to manually pull the power plug on it every time

Another point is the heat characteristice of an enclosure.
Good heat dissipation = long hard drive life.
...

 

ATM 4TB are quite affordable, but they are developing larger drives (6TB) which are soon available using helium.

I have a rule I normally follow when upgrading my drives: I buy when there is a drive available which has twice the size my largest drive has. So I'll wait for a 6TB (my largest drive has 3).

Same I do with CPU - I just buy when the new CPU would double the speed of my current one (normally does not take that long). *yes*

 

Uhhhmmmmm .... Why not just go for 'Swap-Bays' ??
In fact , use 'em for ALL your drives !!

Until you've used them , you wont relealize , how you lived , without 'em !!!

......... 0on3 / 0:1

 

I wouldnt go near WD again. Its the only external I ever had, but I want to smash it. Basically its driver is doing something really stupid, goes into sleep mode if idle for, I dont know, more than 15 minutes. Its basically designed to preserve power for laptops, but you dont get the option to disable this crap. Imagine when you re in creative flow and you go to your daws browser and it freezes for like 30 seconds. Trust me, you would wanna smash it too.
And ok I know you could say its only one disatisfied customer, but let me tell you this. When I searched for answers to my problem I came across as lot of people complaining that WD practically never updates their drivers. Even if such a fault occurs, they are not bothered to fix it. Oh and yes, their custumer service is horrible too.

 

had a WD for about 4 years never failed me except the connect is a lil funky but thats my fault for not being so careful with it.