Which external hard drive

[creag]

I want to get an external drive (200-300Gb) to hold a back up of important stuff on my two internal drives. Read a lot of magazine reviews on different sites and searched through here for advice.

My shortlist are drives from LaCie, Maxtor, Seagate and Western Digital. It seems that the backup software that comes with Maxtor and and WD isn't very good (plenty blue screens) and that the Western Digital has trouble connecting thru' Firewire. LaCie gets good reviews but doesn't offer the software.

Has anyone got practical experience of using these drives? Any recommendations?

Should I be bothered about backup software? If I got the LaCie drive, is there decent automated software out there to make backups (I've found Microsoft's not particularly user friendly).

[Bobby]

I'm looking for an external drive of this size as well. The Maxtor ones are looking the best bet at the moment. I take it you want to use USB?

(Currently have 300Gb drive I'm using with a Wiebetech combodock, which I intended as a backup ... now I need something similar to back this up to!)

[Mike Fishcake]

I'm a fan of the LaCie ones. The ones I've come across actually use WD brand HDDs inside anyway.

As for the backup SW, there's plenty of decent freeware backup software around. My stepdad uses some for his business. I'll track it down for you and find out what it's called.

[nvening]

I have an IOmega one and its very good. It comes with symantec image thing and a backup tool which backs up every file you save instantly

[Marcos]

Whats the best alternative to an icybox? I need an enclosure as i already have the drives. Also i have multiple drives that i need to change over occasionally

[GFiSH]

I have an IcyBox with an old 250GB Maxtor drive and although I don't use it very often it comes in very handy when I do, especially at LANs and for backing up data. Can be cheaper this way too, the enclosure will cost anything from £15 and then choose a drive to put in. They come in many different versions, IDE and SATA, and also can be connected via USB2, Firewire or SATA.

[Ady168uk]

I got 3 lacies and 2 maxtor, both not given me any probs.

the maxtors have a sleep mode and spin up when accessed but the lacies are on all the time. I think the lacies are running 250gb seagate drives and usb2 only, the maxtor can use both firewire and usb2.

prices have dropped a lot since I bought my first external, just get one they only £100 now for 250gb.

[Bobster]

home build it.. Maxtor 200GB with a USB2/Firewire housing

£58 for the Maxtor
£23 for black icybox

£81 for the lot..

[philyau]

i have a WD One touch 120gb its done wonders at uni for me, been in my bag, taken a few knocks and its still going strong.

phil

[Fat`Albert]

i use an old maxtor and a vantec nextstar 2 enclosure (usb 2.0)... its working great for me

[Xaneden]

I use the 300gb Maxtor One Touch II. Other people have had a lot of problems with it, and I can say that it can be noisy, sometimes unresponsive and frankly annoying at times. It is pretty well priced, and if you don't get any problems with it then its a good bet.

However, Maxtor's support dept apparently reaches to them sending u a replacement unit and giving u a list of recovery specialists which you can use that won't affect your warranty. And those specialists happen to be incredibley expensive


#EDIT#

Personally I'd wait a bit and try to get one of the external SATA drives (i.e. HDDs which connect using the external SATA port.)

[peterb]

I like the Hitachi/IBM Deskstar 3.5" and Travelstar 2.5" drives. You can get housings from Scan, I've just ordered a Stardom i201 case from Scan for a 2.5" drive I happen to have lieing around, and I have two 60Gb drives in the same case that came ready built from Novatech. Scan have a large range of disks and enclosures (and you now get free P&P as a Hexus community member!)

[bbq]

the maxtors have a sleep mode and spin up when accessed but the lacies are on all the time. .

Is this a capability of the HD itself? or via the OS power mgmt?

When you set the spin down option in MS OS does this work per disk or only when ALL disks have had no activity does it then spin down all disks? (I only have one fitted at the moment - but looking for extras, so I can't test it )

I am interested in trying to get the soon to be fitted extra HDs to spin down when not in use... as they go in a media center noise is something I want to avoid... unless I am GAMING

[nichomach]

Frankly, after my experiences with a Lacie here at work, I couldn't recommend them in good conscience. The drive was nothing but trouble and as for support, forget it.

[Xaneden]

The Maxtors seem to automatically power down after about 15 minutes of no use. However, sometimes you can still open it in Windows and after going into a non cached file the drive revs up again. I said sometimes, because a number of times I have been forced to turn the drive off and on for it to come out of sleep mode.

[0iD]

I got a load of these for work recently, they really are axcellent. http://www.thetechnologyfactory.co.u.../products/1479
Hotswappable, stackable hard drive enclosures. Well smart.