[Macworld]

Post your comments for Macworld Buying Guides: External desktop hard drives here

[dude_uber]

which drive has software encryption?

[mdawson]

OS X has the ability to create encrypted volumes, so it does not matter.

[Droid]

None of those drives have software encryption. You can use tools on Mac OSX to encrypt files and copy them onto the drive.
eg Create an encrypted sparse bundle disk image in Disk Utility, copy files to the disk image.

The key word here is software, the drives are hardware.

[krazyjack0521]

What do you think about LaCie drives? (And how do you pronounce the name?)

[Droid]

Pronounce them however you want, 'La see' or 'Lacy' are the two that get used around these parts.

LaCie drives are pretty nice quality, well designed usually. The metal D2 cases are quite heavy & rugged if you are needing portability. There does seem to be quality issues with the power supplies though, many seem to die or develop faults
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=tTZ7EvSJnng but the 3 year (IIRC) warranty usually covers it.

Western Digital also have a 5 year warranty if you want to be able to recoup any failures.

[AnubisIV]

Of course, external drives are simple enough to put together these days that most users, even non-technical ones, could do it with little trouble and save quite a bit of money (I've had various family members do it over the years after I told them they could do it on their own). $120 can buy you a 1.5TB drive if you know where to shop, and you can slap an enclosure on it for as cheap as $15 or get a decent one with USB2 and FW800 for around $50-60. You could knock $40 off that price if you went for a 1TB drive, since they routinely go on sale at various sites for about $80 currently. dealmac.com and dealhack.com generally have a quite a few internal HDD offers each week.

[dougoftheabaci]

Seagate drives have hardware encryption now so you don't have to even worry about software encryption.
Also, personal experience has lead me to a place where I will never again buy a Western Digital hard drive. I've had three of them, one was a little Passport (what has been satisfactory if a bit slow) and the other was a MyBook II Premium which was their dual-drive 1TB RAID. It's slow and noisy. One of my drives also failed a month after I bought it making me lose a lot of data. And such drives are very, very expensive to recover.

[btc2]

dougoftheabaci said:

...personal experience has lead me to a place where I will never again buy a Western Digital hard drive.

I've made my disdain for WD drives very clear in other postings to this board...the last comment I made on these forums was that four failures in two years was enough to keep me from ever making that mistake again.

So imagine my non-surprise when just last week, another internal drive on an older system failed. This box has four drives, two of which are Maxtor and two WDs (purchased before I vowed "never again"). Guess which one failed? The largest WD.

Seriously, the only Hard Drive failures I've ever had are from Western Digital. I'll give them this, though...their warranty return policies are excellent, which is good, because in my experience, you'll need that.

[macFanDave]

I go with "La See" because LaCie is a French company (and I had a whole year of college French, so I oughta know ;) )

I was hoping to see some love showered on the LaCie d2 quadra (Who is Neil Poulton anyway? Is he like John Galt?) I just bought one to go with my new Mac mini and am using it as my startup drive through the FW800 interface. It has lasted through the weekend fine, but I want to think that it will last significantly longer. I hope my "registration" will be useful if this thing dies an early death.

[dougoftheabaci]

I've had a few LaCie drives in the past. I've found them to be solid as a rock and unbelievably sexy. I mean look at this! I mean that's just sexy. Can you say "Hello, Dave"? LaCie also has great Mac support, unlike what I've seen in Western Digital.

My only wish is that they would sell their cases. I'd love an empty on of those that I could fill with some Seagate 2TB HDDs (they're supposed to come out later this summer).

[f00fighters]

LISTEN TO ME. I've had plenty of experience with external hard drives, and a few of them have died on me. Let me give you the BEST solution. Do not invest in any SEAGATE drives or any Western Digital MY BOOKS. They are unreliable after 2 years. SOLUTION: Go to a place like newegg.com or somewhere else, and purchase an internal Western Digital "ENTERPRISE" class drive, it can be up to 1 TB. They are more of a somewhat industrial type of hard drive that are built to last longer than regular hard drives, for business. Then purchase an external enclosure for it. You'll end up saving more money, as well as have a much more reliable hard drive. If you want an external enclosure that resembles a "Mac Pro", then check this one out.



How do you know if a WD hard drive is enterprise class? Look for "RE2 or RE3" in the model number, or RE anything. It costs $159 for 1 TB off newegg. And the MacAlley enclosure costs $39, so you're looking at $200 bucks. But they have many other less expensive enclosures. I know it's a lot, but I promise you, it is reliable. It all comes down to how much your data is worth. I lost my nephews' & nieces' baby pictures as well as family photos that I will never get back. And I wasn't going to spend over a grand to some company to do forensics on it. Once you hear he hard drive making the clicking sound of death, consider it fair warning.

Also, for speed, I purchased an internal eSATA card for my Mac Pro from OWC, I think. And the enclosures I have, have support eSATA & USB connectors. The speed of eSATA is almost equivalent to having an internal hard drive running from your Mac Pro.

[joekewe]

Can you boot from an external drive connected to a MacBook Pro by eSATA card and cable?

[Droid]

joekewe said:

Can you boot from an external drive connected to a MacBook Pro by eSATA card and cable?

It depends on the card for Mac pros, I'd expect the same is likely with MacBook Pros. The card manufacturer should be able to confirm it for you. USB is another option for Intel Mac boot disks.