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  • From: "Scott G. Hall" <ScottGHall AT BellSouth.Net>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] External Hard Drive Recommendations
  • Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:37:40 -0500

On 1/26/2009 6:22 PM Steven Champeon wrote:
on Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 06:03:51PM -0500, Colleen McCarthy wrote:
Do any of you have any recommendations for (or warnings against) specific
manufacturer's external hard drives?

I've had good luck with Seagate's FreeAgents, 500GB anyway, I had a bad
experience with a Seagate 500GB (ST3500601XS-RK). I've had decent
experience with Western Digital drives in general, and the MyBook in
sub-500GB sizes has served me reasonably well.

I have numerous ones, and have had my best luck with Seagate FreeAgents as well -- several different sizes in fact (160G, 250G, 500G), but the older style with the big vertical cylon eye. I have a Maxtor that was marketed as a rugged traveler's external drive, and it too has taken some severe beatings and keeps on going. I have not had the same luck with Western Digital drives, off-brand drives, or the newer slim-style Seagate FreeAgents. And watch for refurbished versus new drives -- the refurbs are not that much cheaper but tend to fail faster in a 24-hours on scenario. I have numerous drives that are simply disks bought to fill external enclosures, and like Maxtor mostly for these as well. If you consider using an enclosure and putting your drive into it, careful as different brands have different quality interfaces and power regulation, and also are going to be a little more expensive unless you find a good deal.

So I would say, Maxtor, but not a refurb, and older-style Seagate FreeAgents. Note if you are into Linux, I have a harder time getting the FreeAgents to format to anything other than NTFS, all the others take ext3 and ufs filesystems just fine. With the right driver, even WinXP/Vista boxes like the ext3 drives. Just don't generally use more than two external drives per machine.

--
Scott G. Hall
Raleigh, NC, USA
ScottGHall AT BellSouth.Net





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