[EmmanuelB]

You're SSOOO funny Dave!

LaCie should better be pronounced LA COMPAGNY as in French "Cie" is a shortcut for Compagnie, a now seldom used word for the English "firm" (or compagny). Don't ask me for my level in French...I am French...

But La See can be a good pronounciation for English speaking folks, so you'd better stick to it instead of trying to invent new translation ("au lieu de vouloir te faire mousser" as we say it).



Let's come back to the post : I am the happy owner of an external IOMEGA drive (500GO) that ships pre-formatted for Mac OS, that is fully compatible with TimeMachine and that comes with both USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 ports. Is Iomega another French compagny? :x

[mretondo]

I like the NewerTech miniStack v3 drives. They have one eSATA, two FireWire 800, one FireWire 400, one USB 2.0 up-link port and three USB 2.0 ports PLUS FW800/FW400/USB 2.0 connection cables included. With the iMacs having too few USB ports this drive really comes in handy. I have three iPod cables hanging off mine.
Other pluses I like.
Smart interactive cooling system with thermal probe automatically regulating fan speed
Massive passive heat sink to radiate heat away from hard drive
Smart power switch - will power up and down in tandem with your computer
Kensington Security Slot designed to allow the to be anchored to a desk (great for college dorms)

[ChrisLJ]

Other World Computing has Hitachi DeskStars and their 'enterprise' drives at reasonable prices. I believe some of these are the same that Apple uses in the Time Capsule.

http://eshop.macsale.../search/HitachiSATA3.5HardDrive

They have different housings to build your own. What I want is a Drobo. They are on sale too.

[chase]

Where can I buy a 1.5TB hdd for $120 ???

[ChrisLJ]

You can get an OEM internal 1.5TB hard drive for $130 here:

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16822148337

[AnubisIV]

chase said:

Where can I buy a 1.5TB hdd for $120 ???

As I said in my post, dealmac.com and dealhack.com occasionally have deals. dealmac had deals for as low as $108, $110, and $120 within the last week, and the $108 and $120 came with enclosures as well. That said, these are all low-end drives with low-end enclosures, but if all you want is raw storage at a cheap price, I suppose it's hard to beat.

[PhillyCheeze]

Does anyone know if WD uses other manufacturers HDDs in the Passports? I ask because I took apart a Maxtor "passport" style external enclosure and discovered a Fujitsu HDD in it. Also, OWC mini stacks are great. I've been using one for almost three years with no problems.

[Biallystock]

One of the real problems is telling your hard drives apart and remembering what is on what when they aren't all plugged in.
My solution has been to have a mirrored 1.5Tb WD My Book Studio as my "safe" storage and 3 (Yellow, Red and Blue) WD Passbook 320Gb USB drives as alternate backups which I rotate.
Then give them all names that obviously describe their appearance so there is no doubt.
There is a problem though with OSX and Spotlight finding the contents on drives that are not always attached. Also OSX can stall and take forever to mount some of these drives. Daisy chaining more than 3 units is dicey and even 2 in a row can be less reliable.
It is a shame that Apple keeps giving mixed messages on FireWire and offering poor or no support of eSATA. The windows users must laughing at us behind our backs.
Seems we have not left all the problems of SCSI behind us.

[macFanDave]

EmmanuelB said:

You're SSOOO funny Dave!


LaCie should better be pronounced LA COMPAGNY as in French "Cie" is a shortcut for Compagnie, a now seldom used word for the English "firm" (or compagny). Don't ask me for my level in French...I am French...

Merci. Y'know in America "The Company" is slang for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency, spies!) Did I just buy a hard drive from French spies? Thanks for the insight that LaCie means "The C", but do you know who Neil Poulton is?

[Droid]

macFanDave said:

Thanks for the insight that LaCie means "The C", but do you know who Neil Poulton is?

Try http://www.neilpoulton.com/

[pstys]

What I would really like to see in an in-depth review, more than "sexy enclosure", "multiple ports", "huge capacity", is reliability data. All of the above is moot if your sexy high-capacity drive suddenly dies on you without warning.
After 4 WD drive failures in 2 years (and since my last post on this topic just last week, a sudden LaCie network drive failure), none of the above specs impress me if I can't trust my drive to suddenly disappear from my desktop one morning never to be seen again. Did I also mention 3 Hitachi drive failures in 3 years in my Xserve RAID which is supposed to have server-grade mechanisms for which I paid a hefty premium? Where the industry gets MTBF numbers in the 200,000 hr range (that's >20 years! yeah right) I'll never know. Certainly not my experience.
I think reliability has become a very serious issue in this industry. Believe it or not, I still have a number of Mac Quadras running, with their original drives (in the 200-300 MB range) running constantly since 1992 with ONE failure in 15 years! I understand that the higher capacities today means tinier parts that are more fragile and prone to wear, but IMHO the industry may have put too much emphasis on capacity and not enough on reliability.
What good is a huge drive when you never know from day to day whether it will disappear and take all your precious data with it? Today, it seems that a hard drive is a disposable commodity that you will almost certainly have to replace in 1-2 years, much like the air filter on your furnace needs periodic replacement.
Just my 2 cents worth,
P.

[Droid]

pstys said:

What I would really like to see in an in-depth review, more than "sexy enclosure", "multiple ports", "huge capacity", is reliability data. All of the above is moot if your sexy high-capacity drive suddenly dies on you without warning.

Have you seen Drobo? redundancy is really the only way to ensure drive failures don't leave you high and dry.

[dougoftheabaci]

I've heard the new Drobos with FireWire are problematic and have been failing for some people. I was considering getting one before I heard that.

[pstys]

We actually have a Drobo with 4 x 1.5TB Seagates and are keeping our fingers crossed.

p.