External Hard drive

squarerigger · 04-22-2007, 06:21 PM

have a Imac and using aperture. going to purchase a external hard drive and looking at the iomega black series or the G-tech units. Anyone have experience with these? Any other suggestions based on experience. I have a 250GB HD on my imac and thinking of another 250 to 320 GB external drive to use as a vault. Thoughts??

thanks - Gary

Zubati Kit · 04-23-2007, 04:13 AM

I just bought a Western Digital 320GB "black box" external HDD... this is on a PC though, via USB2 (not sure if Mac uses the same interface, I know you used to be firewire only in the past)

quiet, fast, I have put about 80+ gig of pictures on it, and it works a treat... no slowdowns when sorting the pictures using Picasa, and I am happy. The drive was very inexpensive as well.

bdavis · 04-23-2007, 08:17 AM

The only external drive I've seen actually die was an Iomega. I know nothing of G-tech.

I've also got a 320GB Western Digital "My Book". They come in several flavors, some with USB connections only, some with Firewall as well, some with FAST Firewall in addition to the USB. It's marked on the packaging, but generally, if you see a sale, the very cheapest are the "Essential" editions with only the USB.

The essential edition will run on a MAC with an available USB port, and OS X 10.2.8 or later.

Asad_Masede · 04-23-2007, 12:16 PM

I got a Western Digital MyBook as well, the 1TB Pro II version with USB2 and Firewire-800/400, running in mirror mode which makes it 500GB. I use the drive on a mac, works great, if you get one just make sure you update the firmware, especially if you have an Intel Mac.

Otherwise, you could also build one yourself, get a Vantec Nextar enclosure, for example, stick a Seagate 320GB drive in there and you're set, much cheapter than pre-made solution, although I don't know how reliability compares. I got the WD drive only because I needed the RAID features it offered. On the other hand I know a working pro-photographer who uses only the Vantec Nextar enclosures, has 4, none has failed in the last two years...

Cheers,
-Asad

jfdavis58 · 04-23-2007, 01:38 PM

500GB My Book, USB--very nice. Saw it for $180.00US @ Costco. Actually paid $195US for mine at Best Buy-there is a special person there, that I'm quite fond of.

dhodgeh · 04-23-2007, 02:53 PM

Call me a geek, but I am what I am.

I've got four external drives that I use in various ways. All of the enclosures are the Ads Tech Basic drive kit.

Two are used for backup devices; a 120GB for my wife's notebook, and 400GB for my desktop.

The other two are in a network attached storage (NAS) configuration. I've got the two enclosures (with 300GB drives) attached to a Linksys Network Storage Link (NSLU2), better known as 'The Slug'.

This device has two USB ports and sets on your network and is just basically a file server using the storage on the external usb drives. It's about the size of a transistor radio.

Now, if you want to get geeky, it does run a version of Linux, and there are alternative images available for it, along with a couple of hardware hacks that speed it up.

I've got mine setup to replicate one disk to the other. Not quite a RAID setup, (although I hear that is possible with the thing), but it does provide some backup to the files we put on the network.

And when I need more space on the network, I'll just replace the drives in the enclosures with something larger.

I probably have about $300 in the setup, and it's a pretty good solution to storing that stuff that you may need from time to time, but don't want cluttering your hard drive.

joele · 04-23-2007, 03:30 PM

I prefer the NAS solutions, as my laptop and desktop can both access it without me having to unplug it and move it around ;-)

The actual model I use to backup my photos and videos is the Maxtor Shared Storage 300GB..

FLASH · 05-20-2007, 04:38 PM

How do you like that 600mm mirror lens?

FLASH

mediaslinky · 05-20-2007, 07:31 PM

Have used Lacie products with no failures for years. Used varous versions in various sizes. Latest two pruchases were a 160GB and a 1TB, both with firewire 800. Very reliable with my Macs.

*calicojack* · 05-20-2007, 09:48 PM

I have faith in the Iomega brand. I've had one of there external HDDs for several years with no problems. USB connected through a 4 way hub to my laptop.
Brian