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["Scott G. Hall" <ScottGHall AT BellSouth.Net>]

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