MacBook Pro External HD

Home · Register · Search · Software · Hosting · Software · Join Upload & Sell

FM Forum Rules
Nikon SLRs, primes, and zooms lenses reviews

FM Forums \| Nikon-mount SLRs \| Join Upload & Sell
end

mawyatt
Offline
•
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #1 · MacBook Pro External HD

Hello,

Not sure where to post this, so sorry if this isn't the right spot.

Just got the MacBook Pro 15" Retina and looking for an external HD. Anyone using the new Thunderbolt external HDs, like the Buffalo. I understand it has a Samsung drive. I had read somewhere recently that certain WD and Seagate drives have reliability issues and are actually made by the same Chinese source. I have had 3 hard drive failures in Dell laptops the past couple years, so reliability is important.

I like the idea of Thunderbolt drives because you can Daisy Chain drives and devices, which allows multiple displays and drives to coexist on the same interface.

Thanks

Jul 22, 2012 at 02:11 PM

sjms
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #2 · MacBook Pro External HD

buy an empty case and put in the drive you find most reliable. you buy the bare drive and it carries a warranty that is generally longer then that of the ready made boxed units. it takes about 5 minutes to install and plug in. a good source is www.macsales.com

Jul 22, 2012 at 02:23 PM

jmcfadden
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #3 · MacBook Pro External HD

after years of trial and errors, i now buy only Hitachi drives and have had very few issues with them. sjms is right just get a good case with a quiet fan and back it all up regardless

Jul 22, 2012 at 03:29 PM

BrianJarvis
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #4 · MacBook Pro External HD

OWC will be releasing Thunderbolt drives next month according to their sales reps I've talked to. I use their drives exclusively, they use hitachi HD for most of their enclosures. Great customer service, 3year warranty on most drives.

Jul 22, 2012 at 03:38 PM

CGrindahl
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #5 · MacBook Pro External HD

Another happy OWC customer. I recently migrated from a Mac Pro with four internal drive bays to a 27" iMac and bought three bare OWC cases and transferred drives from the Mac Pro. It worked simply and easily. I'm inclined as well toward Hitachi but honestly, have not had a problem with drives from any manufacturer. More often than not it is the case that fails, which is one reason I invest in OWC cases. They use top of the line components which pays off in the long run.

Jul 22, 2012 at 04:12 PM

jamach
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #6 · MacBook Pro External HD

I use LaCie, no problem, and also the BlackX, no problem. One feature of the BlackX is that you can choose your own drive, and this chassis has usb3, not sure if it is compatible with Mac hi speed

http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/Product.aspx?S=1268&ID=2047

Joe

Jul 22, 2012 at 04:14 PM

snapsy
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #7 · MacBook Pro External HD

Every drive vendor has produced absolute turds of drive models, including IBM/Hitachi (remember the "deathstar" drives?), Segate, WD, etc.., so I would advise against marrying any single drive vendor and instead evaluate each drive model on its own merits/reviews.

Jul 22, 2012 at 04:15 PM

NightOwl Cat
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #8 · MacBook Pro External HD

+1

The two drives that were in my Mac Mini were 80gb Samsung drives, first one lasted one year and one day, just enough to be outside Mac warranty, but I had purchased Applecare, replaced with another 80gb Samsung drive that lasted another 18 months or so, then died again. Third drive that went in, I did myself, and it's a 250gb Western Digital drive in there now, so far so good. I have an external case from Vantec with a Seagate drive in there, and just purchased two 3TB Seagate external drives for backup purposes of all my machines so I can start consolidating them all.

And yes, I remember the IBM Deathstart 75GB drives, have one that so far hasn't gone.

snapsy wrote:
Every drive vendor has produced absolute turds of drive models, including IBM/Hitachi (remember the "deathstar" drives?), Segate, WD, etc.., so I would advise against marrying any single drive vendor and instead evaluate each drive model on its own merits/reviews.

Jul 22, 2012 at 04:46 PM

aztwang1
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #9 · MacBook Pro External HD

If your wanting a robust SSD/Thunderbolt drive check out "ElGato".

http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/ThunderboltSSD.html?gclid=CKaLkJ6FrrECFSdgTAodjywAIw

Its pricey but for mobile work you cant get any better.

Jul 22, 2012 at 07:43 PM

pacman642
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #10 · MacBook Pro External HD

I use only LaCie, preferably the rugged minis.

Jul 23, 2012 at 01:37 AM

powderific
Offline
•
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #11 · MacBook Pro External HD

I've been looking at doing the LaCie eSATA Thunderbolt hub. It opens up the ability to use MUCH cheaper eSATA drives and it'd let me use my numerous existing eSATA drives. Spend the money you save on a backing up your drive as, like people mentioned above, every manufacturer puts out bad drives and even some of the most reliable will fail.

Jul 23, 2012 at 09:34 PM

hidden_Markov
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #12 · MacBook Pro External HD

all drives will fail. I have servers that I have walked into the lovely sound of the beeep beeep beep saying oh hai, you lost a raid 5 disk, please replace the drive.....NOW. And that beep is annoying I tell you what, at least on dell servers. Over several years most drive makers have been used. All have tripped my drive faliure alarms at some point.

If you want reliable backup....tape. With a good software solution. My system at work is nice enough to retire old tapes for me when tapes fall out of tolerance. Just wish this wasn't so damn expensive for home use

Jul 23, 2012 at 10:00 PM

powderific
Offline
•
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #13 · MacBook Pro External HD

I like the idea of tapes but they're so cost prohibitive for home users and smaller businesses. For the price of an LTO-3 drive you could put together a NAS for local network backup and have enough left over for external drives to replicate to and move off site.

Jul 23, 2012 at 10:36 PM

hidden_Markov
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #14 · MacBook Pro External HD

powderific wrote:
I like the idea of tapes but they're so cost prohibitive for home users and smaller businesses. For the price of an LTO-3 drive you could put together a NAS for local network backup and have enough left over for external drives to replicate to and move off site.

too true....why I ahve the army of usb drives lol.

my tape system at work comes up for end of life this year I think. Means replacement at some point. As I process this stuff out the door and deal with the section that gets rid of it....the thought has crossed my mind to buy em a coffee and see if can get first crack at her before it hits the usual sale process we have to the public. most stuff they is cheap as hell. laptop buy from them was a very decent laptop for the low price of $75. Served me well for many many years.

the tapes and reliable software to run it kill you though. I could crontab archives off the mbp and task schedule/ntbackup the windows box to the tape drive but....I have gotten spoiled with the software I use ast work. It does all that day to day differential/incremental calculations for me. Only time I have to remember the order for pulling tapes over days mixed full/diff/incr is taking a cert test. Software I use at works says pull tapes 112,154 and 167 for example and done.

Jul 23, 2012 at 11:26 PM

jamach
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #15 · MacBook Pro External HD

time to buy a d4 guys....

Joe

Jul 24, 2012 at 02:21 AM

mobcoa247
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #16 · MacBook Pro External HD

have mac and pc.. both can't comment on thunderbolt don't use it though i have it.. but

seagates- horrible fails
lacie-horrible fails
western digital passports-rock solid
we have over 100 usb drives and no fails on the passports for whats its worth

Jul 24, 2012 at 04:37 AM

Chestnut
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #17 · MacBook Pro External HD

I haven't had a problem with the Seagate GoFlex USB3.0 dirves... I have a few of the 1.5TB drives from Costco for $100. They work great for me, and they're cheap. Haven't had one fail yet. If you want Thunderbolt (for daisy chaining, or speed, or whatever), Seagate makes a thunderbolt connection/adapter for them. Though for simplicity sake, I just use USB, so I can use it on whatever machine I want, PC's included.

OF course SSD's would be nice... I'll be going that direction after the prices come down more. OWC has some nice SSD drives that have somewhat reasonable prices (good prices compared to other SSD's, more pricy than what I want to pay).

I'm seriously considering getting one after I plan my Retina MBP purchase. (since my '08 15" MPB died late last year from logic board failure)

There has to be an engineered timed self-destruct function with all these laptops... there's no way that so any people have their laptops fail in the same way at around the same time. (So then they have to buy new ones)

Jul 24, 2012 at 03:53 PM

Guari
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #18 · MacBook Pro External HD

My seagate died on me. I sent it to Seagate for repair and they sent it back with all the files wiped. I didn't have redundant backups so I lost about 1 year worth of photos.

When I opened the repaired seagate and I was ready to plug it in, the case fell apart in my hands. I tossed it into the bin.

Never again

Jul 24, 2012 at 05:22 PM

powderific
Offline
•
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #19 · MacBook Pro External HD

I don't know of any hard drive manufacturer that will preserve your data on RMA'd drives and they're usually pretty clear about it. Usually they'll just give you a different, refurbished drive from the same series. I have one WD drive that has been back three times over a long enough span to go from FW400 to FW800 (and still doesn't work right. I finally gave up on the thing. The whole series must be borked or something.)

Part of the key is getting drives with good controllers. OWC seems to use very good controllers by default, and aren't really that much more expensive than their peers. They're also the only company that has a FW800, USB, and eSATA on a 2.5" enclosure that I could find.

The biggest thing people should take away from this is to always, always have good backups.

Jul 24, 2012 at 06:47 PM

end
FM Forums \| Nikon-mount SLRs \| Join Upload & Sell end