i'm getting an external hard drive for my laptop (Dell Inspiron 8200). probably a 200 GB. on dell's web site they have several listed between $150-$200. brands include: BUSSLINK, LaCie and SEAGATE. i will be hooking it up to a docking station so USB seems to be the only port option. anyone have experience with these or possibly another brand? thanks!
I purchased a LaCie Porsche 200G drive from Dell in January. I wish that i could recommend this drive but i cannot. I loaded approx. 65G of data onto the drive and was using it with success for about a month, then the drive would not mount correctly anymore. It would show up on my PC as a flash drive and innaccessible. I have tried hooking it up to several different PCs to the same end. Now all that shows up are 10,000 file fragments when i can actually get the drive to show up at all.
I have since followed up with reviews online and found that many people are having similar problems with their lacie drives. i would stay away. if i cannot get this one running again i plan on building one myself with a reliable Seagate or Maxtor internal drive and an external case with quality components. its cheaper that way anyway and what i would recommend that you do. CNET is a good place for quality product reviews. good luck.
I have no personal experience myself, but I've done a bit of research and I've only heard good things about LaCie's externals and if I were to get one, it'd be one of those. Most likely the d2 HD Extreme. Though the Big Disk or Big Disk Extreme sure do look nice. As do the ones designed by Porche. I'm working with a Mac, though, and LaCie's the brand that got all the awards at last years Mac World.
i have used several external hard drives in the past...from iomega, maxtor, seagate and la cie...
id say that seagate is the best among the lot.
But what i do now, is buy a hard disk (internal), and buy a hard drive enclosure that makes the hard drive into a firewire/usb external hard drive/.
I have built 3-4 of them this way and have to say that this is the best way to go..and if the hard drive gets full after a good 6-8 months, just remove it, store it away and shove in a new hard drive in there !
Another good thing is that most of the external cases have built in fans and i have found these to be very effective.
Just one thing: before you buy an external case, be sure that it supports more thatn 150gb of hard drive...some of them do not, and i think its wise to go buy a 200 GB hdd for storage than buy a 80 gb 2-3 times over again
I have always gone with the philosophy that you shouldn't put too many eggs in one basket. If you loose a 200 gig hard drive to a power surge or water that is alot of data down the drain. I bought the Sony double layer DVD writer instead of a external hardrive. DVD's are ridiculously cheap now and store enough info for anything from videos to large psd. files. I didn't have a DVD burner though... so it was a incentive for me to kill two birds with one stone.
thanks guys. good info here. especiall the internal drive/external case suggestion -
doc, did you finally settle on seagate for your internal drive/ external case combo? i do have a couple of old desktops i might be able to retro-fit for an external case - saves me a couple of bucks.. that way when i want to upgrade my cdr drive to a lovely dvdr drive i can just pop it in and usb it to my dock station.
the internal hard drive i used was a seagate barracuda 300GB, but the extenal case was from a company called coolmax. They make lovely external cases.
i bought mine from www.newegg.com
how are you planning to use the desktops? i dont understand....and if the desktops are too old, they might not even support hard drives over 138 gb
yeah. after i wrote the above post i realized that the desktop case would probably not support the new hard drive.. just trying to think of a way i can use these old desktops.. i guess they will probably get thown out when we move in august - they are old pentium 3's from gateway i think....
I have a LaCie d2 HD Extreme w/ triple interface. The firewire 800 is BLAZING fast! That is of course, if you have firewire 800, which I do, so it is . . .
It also has USB and FW400 interfaces. I've formatted it to FAT sos I can read/write to it from a PC or a MAC. I am just using it as external storage. I am not doing anything video or audio with it, so I cannot comment on those capabilities. As a drive to store your stuff and have it be reliable, yes, this one kicks ass!
Yeah, so I was talking with a friend of a friend tonight, and sameolddoctor's tactic is the way to go. The guy I talked to is doing massive amounts of data archiving and transfering for video storage and post production and says that it's almost ridiculous to do it any other way. And I guess with XP you essentially just plug it in and go, no hassle.
external hard drive
i'm getting an external hard drive for my laptop (Dell Inspiron 8200). probably a 200 GB. on dell's web site they have several listed between $150-$200. brands include: BUSSLINK, LaCie and SEAGATE. i will be hooking it up to a docking station so USB seems to be the only port option. anyone have experience with these or possibly another brand? thanks!
ether,
I purchased a LaCie Porsche 200G drive from Dell in January. I wish that i could recommend this drive but i cannot. I loaded approx. 65G of data onto the drive and was using it with success for about a month, then the drive would not mount correctly anymore. It would show up on my PC as a flash drive and innaccessible. I have tried hooking it up to several different PCs to the same end. Now all that shows up are 10,000 file fragments when i can actually get the drive to show up at all.
I have since followed up with reviews online and found that many people are having similar problems with their lacie drives. i would stay away. if i cannot get this one running again i plan on building one myself with a reliable Seagate or Maxtor internal drive and an external case with quality components. its cheaper that way anyway and what i would recommend that you do. CNET is a good place for quality product reviews. good luck.
I have no personal experience myself, but I've done a bit of research and I've only heard good things about LaCie's externals and if I were to get one, it'd be one of those. Most likely the d2 HD Extreme. Though the Big Disk or Big Disk Extreme sure do look nice. As do the ones designed by Porche. I'm working with a Mac, though, and LaCie's the brand that got all the awards at last years Mac World.
i have used several external hard drives in the past...from iomega, maxtor, seagate and la cie...
id say that seagate is the best among the lot.
But what i do now, is buy a hard disk (internal), and buy a hard drive enclosure that makes the hard drive into a firewire/usb external hard drive/.
I have built 3-4 of them this way and have to say that this is the best way to go..and if the hard drive gets full after a good 6-8 months, just remove it, store it away and shove in a new hard drive in there !
Another good thing is that most of the external cases have built in fans and i have found these to be very effective.
Just one thing: before you buy an external case, be sure that it supports more thatn 150gb of hard drive...some of them do not, and i think its wise to go buy a 200 GB hdd for storage than buy a 80 gb 2-3 times over again
my .02
I have always gone with the philosophy that you shouldn't put too many eggs in one basket. If you loose a 200 gig hard drive to a power surge or water that is alot of data down the drain. I bought the Sony double layer DVD writer instead of a external hardrive. DVD's are ridiculously cheap now and store enough info for anything from videos to large psd. files. I didn't have a DVD burner though... so it was a incentive for me to kill two birds with one stone.
thanks guys. good info here. especiall the internal drive/external case suggestion -
doc, did you finally settle on seagate for your internal drive/ external case combo? i do have a couple of old desktops i might be able to retro-fit for an external case - saves me a couple of bucks.. that way when i want to upgrade my cdr drive to a lovely dvdr drive i can just pop it in and usb it to my dock station.
the internal hard drive i used was a seagate barracuda 300GB, but the extenal case was from a company called coolmax. They make lovely external cases.
i bought mine from www.newegg.com
how are you planning to use the desktops? i dont understand....and if the desktops are too old, they might not even support hard drives over 138 gb
yeah. after i wrote the above post i realized that the desktop case would probably not support the new hard drive.. just trying to think of a way i can use these old desktops.. i guess they will probably get thown out when we move in august - they are old pentium 3's from gateway i think....
I have a LaCie d2 HD Extreme w/ triple interface. The firewire 800 is BLAZING fast! That is of course, if you have firewire 800, which I do, so it is . . .
It also has USB and FW400 interfaces. I've formatted it to FAT sos I can read/write to it from a PC or a MAC. I am just using it as external storage. I am not doing anything video or audio with it, so I cannot comment on those capabilities. As a drive to store your stuff and have it be reliable, yes, this one kicks ass!
Please don't throw them out.
Donate them, turn them into paper weights, recycle them, sell them for scrap, anything. Just don't throw them out...
Maxtor 300gig drive
Check out some of the LAN storage devices they have now, too. Loads of fast storage at reasonable fees (relatively).
Yeah, so I was talking with a friend of a friend tonight, and sameolddoctor's tactic is the way to go. The guy I talked to is doing massive amounts of data archiving and transfering for video storage and post production and says that it's almost ridiculous to do it any other way. And I guess with XP you essentially just plug it in and go, no hassle.
With LaCie, I've heard from a computer tech guy they are quite good but the D2 and Big Disc are more robust/reliable than the Porsche ones...
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