External HardDrives

i would check the gaurantee (cant spell for siht)

if seagate is 3 years and maxtor is one year go with segate
 
Only buy seagate they make the best drives by far and have a 3 year gaurantee (also cant spell for siht ;))
 
that sounds way cheaper, seeing as the enclosures are pretty cheap (R300?). Also, if you get tired of your HDD you can pop in a dvd rom or summing later. Just get an enclosure with a fan, since HDD's tend to generate some heat.
 
Not quite your solution, but I myself uses a LG laptop harddisk enclosure, just a wee bit bigger than the disk itself. 40GB, cost me less than R1000.

Nice thing is, its runs from USB-power, and is A LOT faster than a flash-disk. Windows (and Linux) picks it up as a harddisk, not a removable device. Has completely replaced my flashdisk.
 
Oh, also want to add - since its a Laptop harddisk, its designed to be moved about as well - therefore should hopefully take more of a knock.

Bit slower than normal disk, though...
 
I bought a Maxtor 160Gb HDD less than a year ago, and it has already gone belly up. Not good, especially since I am unlikely to get my data back. The drive is still under warranty, but it shouldn't fail in less than a year. It SUCKS!!!! :mad:
 
Maxtor r/w GMR heads are not good.
Maxtor media is not good.
These result in firmware corruption very easily
and then heads damage media after first faults appear.

Seagate - don't like voltage variations - pcb can damage easily.
Seagate media suspect with older drives, but they fixed that problem.

Suggestion : never buy biggest drive available.
Seagate 250GB are good now

Seagate 250GB+ will be good in about 3 months.

Seagate 3.5" only real choice

2.5" drives - all bad but seems like WD fail the least.
 
I currently have a maxtor and a seagate running, no problems so far...
 
I have 2 x VANTEC NexStar External 2.5" HDD Enclosure USB 2.0 (and 1.0 backward compatabile) and Seagate 60Gb 2.5" drives in each enclosure. They run off USB power and are really small, +- R180 for the enclosures and +-R800 a HDD (a little expensive, but that is 'cause they are 2.5" HDD's) Great for backing up data and for technical (updates, installations etc)
 
Ink_Blotch said:
I bought a Maxtor 160Gb HDD less than a year ago, and it has already gone belly up. Not good, especially since I am unlikely to get my data back. The drive is still under warranty, but it shouldn't fail in less than a year. It SUCKS!!!! :mad:
Click to expand...

Okay, seems like a common thing! I bought a 250GB Maxtor in the states in December last year, crashed on me this July. Problem is, can't reclaim warranty since it was bought in the states!

Did manage to get my data back, though - www.getdataback.com
Great software!
 
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Seagate works for me. I have a 120GB drive in casing, casing was from Mecer around R200 for it, plus hard drive costs.
 
I've got some el cheapo Liquid SIlver/Silver River (seen it sold under both brand names) external enclosure as well as a Thermaltake enclosure.

I highly recommend paying slightly more and getting an enclosure with its own internal fans to cool the drive. It makes a big difference. Okay, so if you're going to place a 5400rpm 40 GB drive in then you don't need fans, but a fast, nasty 7200 300 GB generates a lot of heat (in an unventilated tight spot).

Some of the enclosures with built-in fans are quite big and cumbersome. Shop around. My Thermaltake is barely bigger than a 3.5" HDD, yet has 2 x internal fans.
 
Interesting reading about the realibity of some poster's hard drives.

My three current Maxtors (40 GB, 40 GB, 160 GB) seem completely bulletproof. The one is 5 years old! It was one of the early 7200 rpm drives.

On the other hand (Darren), I've already had TWO 250 GB Western Digitals fail on me!!! Got 90% of the data back, was a dodgy spindle motor in the one case and a total piece o' crap drive in the other.

My most reliable drive ever is a 106 MB (megs, not gigs) Seagate from 1990. It has been in use everyday since the day it got purchased until right now, and is STILL WORKING 100%!. They don't make 'em like they used to, that's for sure!
 
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If you want to use the external drive a lot, get one that supports firewire (1394) in addition to USB. One can really notice the difference in speed.

P.S. I lost a half year old Seagate a couple of weeks ago. The bottom line is, whatever make your drive, make sure you have backups.
 
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