External HD

i have a macbook pro
and i have been using this for a while
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=826

its got 1 TB of space and a firewire 800, which is nice because the macbook has the FW 800 not just the 400

I have two ext HD setups for my Mac with a 1TB WD Black Caviar in the NewerTech Voyager Q and 2TB WD in the ministack v3 with both using FW800.
http://www.newertech.com/products/voyagerq.php

http://www.newertech.com/products/ministackv3.php

My latest 6-core PC build has USB 3.0 ports on the Coolermaster HAF X 942 case and 890GX Gigabyte motherboard so I will be getting the NewerTech Voyager S3 that runs much faster than FW800.




http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer...nology/U2S3HD/

I have found the Lacie's to be much more reliable than the WD hard drives. So I would strongly recommend a Lacie D2 Quadra

They are not as reliable as the WD RE4 HDDs.
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=732

The WD Hard Drives I have (and HAD) are MyBook 2TB. I am still relying on some of those, so I hope no more die. 2 have done so already. I haven't had a D2 Quadra die on me. I have bought a couple of those Seagate 1 and 2TB for customers on a tight budget, and I wouldn't get one of those either.

I've been using external hard drives for about 8 years.

I've had Lacie's and Western Digital mostly and I would not recommend either one unless they have built-in fans. All the ones I had did not and they never lasted more than 2 years if continuously powered on. The Lacie's I had never made it past 18 months.

I now buy Western Digital internal hard drives and put them in Antec enclosures.

It's a little more expensive that way but the enclosure has both USB and eSATA connectors, as well as a built-in fan.

The fan is the key to longevity.

Alan

the very first lacie i bought did not work out of the box. they replaced it and now i have one on my win 7 machine (running for over 2 years, was on my dead win xp prior to my win 7) and i have one backing up my imac for over a year. no problems with either. i think hard drives can be a crap shoot. people report problems with all brands. go check out the review on tom's hardware. there was a review from a company, russian i think, that retrieves lost data and they broke down which drives failed on a percentage basis. seagate did not come out looking in that review.