External hard drive

[Ed62]

Does anyone use one? I've been thinking about the Maxtor one touch, but reviews on Amazon leave something to be desired. If you have one, I'd like to get your opinion on it. Any other external hard drives with USB capabilities are also welcome.

Ed

[RAFlorida]

Sorry Ed, can't help ya with that question.

I use 4gb flash (USB) devices. Prices are great and that's why I use 'em. I'm sure others will answer for you though.

[Uncle Cracker]

I have a One Touch external that I use for back-ups. I've never had an issue, but it does it's thing while I sleep, and I never have had to restore from it.

[Sparky2002]

I have the One Touch Mini (160 GB) and love it. I have used it daily for the last 7 months. I use it to back up my work files and so I can work from home. While their sync software does not work well in some work environments; it is still a nice little unit.

[germdoc]

I have this one:

http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-External...6648112&sr=8-3

LaCie HD's are highly rated, with elegant design and simple interface. I have an iMac and felt that having a firewire connection was the way to go. Mine has worked exactly as advertised for over 1 year.

[KLF]

I have a Seagate Freeagent 750GB. Works very well, although I don't use it hard. It does backups in the background, very configurable.

[gsmittle]

I have this one:

http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-External...6648112&sr=8-3

LaCie HD's are highly rated, with elegant design and simple interface. I have an iMac and felt that having a firewire connection was the way to go. Mine has worked exactly as advertised for over 1 year.

I have the same or similar LaCie HD (it's in a different room and I'm too lazy to go look right now). I've had it for almost four years now and have NO complaints. Since I'm a Mac user, I have the FireWire version. I've no reason to think the USB version would be any different.

I also have a 500 gb LaCie NAS and a 1 TB LaCie drive with FireWire 400, FW 800, USB2, and one other interface I can't think of right now. I've had LaCie drives since the late 80s and have never had a problem with any of them, except that I outgrow them and need more.

I know that LaCie uses mechanisms from other manufacturers, but that doesn't concern me.

g.

[pelligrini]

I've got a few at home and at the office.

The first one I used was a USB WD My book. It still houses my office music collection. We have 5 more of them at the office for a redundant backup media and one other for storage of a few hundred gig of 3D model related files. The ones we got a year and a half ago don't have an off button on the front like my previously purchased version. The
six WDs have had no problems.

I have a simple tech USB drive that's ok. It's a little noisy, and one computer didn't recogonize it.

My favourite is a Seagate eSATA. It is really fast. It came with an eSATA card. I believe that model will also do USB as well.

I don't use any of the included software of any of them for backups.

[shoottx]

I have an old One touch system from Acomdata.

It works well when you use it. The problem I had was with the software update. There was a software update available. I downloaded and installed it, then they casually mentioned I had to purchase the update for $125.00.

I was really PO. Then I could not undo the update and it wouldnot work. So as a matter ofr principle I was looking for a way to use the External drive and not their software.

The matter of principle cost me $1003.00. My computer hard drive crashed, and I did not have it backed up. The complete data recovery was expensive.

So if you are concerned, find the best offering by loking at ratings in some of the computer magazines, other sources. Buy one and use it!

[Ed62]

Thanks for all the info. Sometimes I wish there were only one option. Either buy it or not. But with the different models and brands, I'm forced to make another decision after I decide whether or not to buy one (which I probably will). Thanks again. What a great place for getting feedback!

Ed

[dkerfoot]

I just had a OneTouch III 750 MB die two months out of warranty. But, I'd still recommend them. HDs do die occasionally and you can't judge a brand by one drive. I was actually pleased to find i has a Seagate drive inside (Seagate bought Maxtor and is generally considered a "better" brand of HD)

If you ever buy a new computer, for under $30 you can buy an external hard drive enclosure and put your old HD into it. Easy access to all your old files until you are sure you don't need them anymore, then you can reformat it and use it as a back-up drive.

[Ed62]

That's good to know, Doug. Thanks for the info.

Ed

[cgallery]

If you do go with some sort of automatic backup feature, make sure it is capable of E-Mailing or printing a brief report of what it did in the middle of the night, and get used to reading them.

Data recovery is now about 50% of my work. I can't tell you the # of times people have brought me drives and told me that they don't have a backup because, "the backup stopped working x months ago and I had no idea until this morning."

I did a job for an aluminum die casting company last year. They only have six real customers, one of them being Ford (so you can kinda guess the size of this outfit).

One of the IT guys changed the location of their accounting and CAD files on their IBM server two years ago. He never changed the backup script to back them up. Their RAID system failed, and they sent the drives off to California for recovery. Recovery outfit was eating stupid sandwiches and couldn't decipher the disk structure. Long story somewhat shorter, they were told their data couldn't be recovered.

So the moral of the story: Get to know how long backups should take, how many files are being backed up, and watch the backup like a hawk.

The story had a happy ending (we were able to get their data). But I have lots of stories like these, some of them don't happily.

[leehljp]

I use a LaCie and also have a Maxtor plain and a One Touch which is quirky. In 20 years, I have never had problems with hooking a HD to a Mac environment and then to Windows environment. I don't even have that problems with a thumb drive but I do with the OneTouch. Mine doesn't like "change". I also have a couple of Japanese brands that work fine.

[footprintsinconc]

dumb question, i guess, it would be answered by searching for the hd mentioned above in google, but here is anyways (this is related to the question that i asked too):

can the hd mentioned above be connected to the router and dont need to be connected to the computer itself?