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One rather important factor isn't mentioned in the article: due to a flood in Thailand, hard disk production has decreased significantly and consequently prices went up by a factor of 3. Therefore right now is not the best time to buy an external hard disk. The situation should settle in a couple of months, however.

mojo66, on 01 December 2011 - 07:34 AM, said:

Very astute observation. I just purchased a pair of 1TB drives and watched the price rise almost 20% in a matter of ten days. That's what I get for napping.

I've been considering the Iomega Mac Companion since it has FW 800 and a fast drive, but it is overpriced. I object to the GoFlex coming with a USB adapter and requiring the purchase of a Firewire dock that adds about $50 to the cost. Why does Seagate not sell the unit cheaper without adapter and allow people to buy the preferred one? What the world needs is a quality inexpensive enclosure with only Firewire 800 (which can be adapted by cable to FW 400).

Another consideration for some is that some drives, in particular those with "virtual partitions" or "virtual disks" built into the firmware, (usually to offer cheesy backup apps etc) cannot be used to create bootable backups. This is a deal breaker for me as I keep a bootable backup of my macbook on a partition on my external. I have seen this on Toshiba and Western Digital brand drives and I'm sure there are others. Fortunately this can be avoided by careful shopping and/or assembling your own enclosure/drive combo (most external storage makers are just enclosure makers; they buy the actual drives from Hitachi, Seagate, WD etc.)

Funny the article mentions how easy it is to find sub-$100 1TB hard drives (in fact, 1TB should cost closer to $50 and 2TB around $100), yet goes on to recommend hard drives costing $200-$270.

I also find it odd that they recommend USB 3.0 drives that only work at USB 2.0 speeds on Macs -- especially for desktop drives that will rarely or never be used on other computers that might have USB 3.0 ports. On most Macs, you want USB 2.0 or FW800 (which are more expensive, but still possible to find for around $100 if you look hard).

brobdingnagian, on 01 December 2011 - 08:00 AM, said:

Seagate does sell the bare GoFlex desk drive directly. Scroll down some on the page linked to in the article. I haven't seen it from a third party (I don't look far for third parties, but stick with those I trust).

Having said that, the Seagate direct price for the bare drive is more than the Amazon price for the same size drive with the USB interface. (You can thank the FTC for that.)

--John Baxter

i am having a problem with a buffalo mini station,hard drive. All i wanted it for was to watch movies on the t.v. I have formated it to fat32 and the other devices are compatable, but one is not even stating that has a device input, and the other t.v says format not compatable! can anyone help??

I was told by Seagate in a tech chat session that the whole GoFlex product line is being discontinued (or replaced). Ever wonder why you can get a 1TB model now at Walmart for $89? That's why. However the FW800 adapter still costs $79 from Amazon! Fry's is taking orders for the adapter @ $39 but they're out of stock.Paying that much for the adapter is just wrong. I cancelled my order from Walmart and I'm going to by an iOmega drive. Lots of overheating complaints from consumers about the GoFlexes. I see what mojo66 published about drive scarcity. That seems to be having a market affect now. Unfortunaley I need a drive now because I have no back up and I'm just getting 'that feeling' if you know what I mean. I'd rather bes afe than sorry.