External drives

[parisian]

I am looking hard at this; LaCie 1TB Little Big Disk Quadra eSATA
Does anyone have any experience with this manufacturer?

[beejaybee]

LaCie ... the innards are just the same as everyone else's; a random selection of what they could get cheapest at the time. The brand has a reputation for being reasonably reliable but significantly overpriced for the specification. (Think Nikon as opposed to Vivitar or Leica). Styling is personal. Whether the price represents good value for you is your choice not mine.

[jchrisc]

I bought their 500Gb external drive some time ago without realising that it actually held two separate 250Gb drives with software that made it behave like a single disc. Nothing serious ever went wrong with it, but the software was temperamental and I had to be careful about the switching-on routine or it would fail to boot.

[parisian]

Thank you both, caveat emptor indeed
I will continue trawling through other maker's wares.

[AndyTake2]

I recently got a WD 1TB Mybook eSATA, which didn't function at all on eSATA.
USB/Firewire was fine, and the eSATA was sometimes detected in BIOS, but always hung the system.
Checking out some reviews, it seems that it is a common thing with these disks, so I sent it back and am now looking for something else.
eSATA is definitely the way to go - I guess I'll look at Seagate or something similar.

[BigWill]

I've got a Maxtor 500gb external drive Peter. It works a treat with no problems at all and even comes with a three year guarantee...........which is nice!

BigWill

[Fen]

I've got a LaCie 500GB external USB drive. Never had any problems. Had it 2yrs now

[parisian]

Thanks Will and Fen, all information very welcome before lashing out.

[Ian_A]

I generally buy an external housing like this and stick whatever drive I like in it.

[RonM]

Like Ian I have similar boxes with IDE and SATA drives and use MS SyncToy to back-up images and data

[parisian]

IDE - SATA?
Oh Ron, I'm older than you, you know and definitely a lot thicker. Are these different types of drive?

[Meredith]

IDE and SATA are hard disk interfaces. SATA is replacing IDE.

[pachinkofan]

IDE's the old style "ribbon" cable (80 pin), SATA's a new different faster connection which only has 4 wires, but then there's also SATA II which is even faster. You can get a cable etc to change an IDE motherboard to be compatible with SATA, but I don't know how well it'd work.

little bit of clarity

G>

[BigWill]

I generally buy an external housing like this and stick whatever drive I like in it.

I had (still have actually) one of those as well but it always concerned me that you switch them on and off from a simple power switch or that they simply stop when you switch your computer off if you leave the switch in the on position. I mean you wouldn't switch your computer off and on from the power switch as it might damage the HD doing that and so why would you do it with an external drive? My Maxtor has a "power up/down mode" as well as a standby mode which to my mind seems to be much kinder to the drive..................though having said that I never did actually have a problem with my old cheapo external HD enclosure! .............just a thought though. Whaddya reckon Ian?

BigWill

[Ian_A]

I generally buy an external housing like this and stick whatever drive I like in it.

I had (still have actually) one of those as well but it always concerned me that you switch them on and off from a simple power switch or that they simply stop when you switch your computer off if you leave the switch in the on position. I mean you wouldn't switch your computer off and on from the power switch as it might damage the HD doing that and so why would you do it with an external drive? My Maxtor has a "power up/down mode" as well as a standby mode which to my mind seems to be much kinder to the drive..................though having said that I never did actually have a problem with my old cheapo external HD enclosure! .............just a thought though. Whaddya reckon Ian?

wibble.

[digitravel]

Ive had Lacie externals and portables for a few years as well and never had a problem either.

[LargeFormat]

I have one of these LaCie 1TB Little Big Disk Quadra eSATA and it seems to work OK. I have two similar LaCie drives which are getting somewhat old now. As I like the cases does anyone know whether I can just replace the two drives?

An alternative to the packaged hard drives is to use docking stations, see here:

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?menuno=12756

[parisian]

Thank you everyone. A whole new language to learn but it's all fun isn't it?