A Review of the Top Four External Hard Drives

Lucas123 writes "There's a really good, detailed review at the Computerworld site on the top four external hard drives with more than 500GB of capacity. The story reveals some big flaws in the external drives, like malfunctioning one-touch backup buttons, USB 2.0 ports that don't recognize the drives, and drives coming out of the boxes unformatted. It's also an eye opener with regard to actual backup speeds. 'Broadband connections, peer-to-peer networks and larger media files coupled with new regulations that require diligence in backing up files have clearly affected the external hard drive market as drive capacities expand to 1TB and beyond. Meanwhile, the prices of those drives continue to drop, making them ever more attractive, particularly with the ease of deployment -- literally a two-minute installation, and you're ready to go. We put four of the leading external hard drives to the test. Our criteria were simple: The drives had to have multiple connection technologies (USB 2.0 plus FireWire 400 or FireWire 800 or both), include backup software and have a capacity of at least 500GB.'"

TFA: one page, less advertising

[choongiri]

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=printArticleBasic&articleId=9015945 [computerworld.com]

What the shit is this?

[voice_of_all_reason]

Article = trap. Save your money.

I get my 500gb hard drives from new egg. Was $179 last year, down to $159 now. Maxtor Onetouch 3. Reasonably quiet (can't hear it move than a few feet away), comes preformatted. Doesn't spin down after like 5m of inactivity. Only issue is that it has an huge, annoying blinking light even when idle. I cover that with a beer can.

Re:Why not just do it yourself?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree it's cheaper, and you want to partition/format it in your preferred way anyhow (FAT32, NTFS, EXT2, etc). The only thing here is watching out for shitty enclosures -- the cheap ones with insufficient cooling. Even if made of metal, sometimes they fry. I've seen countless ByteCC enclosures go bad (to the point of not even worrying about RMA'ing it, what good is another enclosure that'll last another 2 weeks?) I'd at least opt for one with a cooling fan, or at the VERY least one with a good warranty (that's perhaps the ONLY item I'd ever buy an extended warranty for!)

As for the one-touch button, I don't see much of a need for it personally. Besides, what does it do? It just launches the sync software -- my actual worry (software must already be installed for it to work in the first place). Just give me good sync'ing software and I'll be happy (I'll just schedule it or start it manually) -- preferably freeware/open source. Buying a drive already in an enclosure doesn't do one any good here. There just isn't a whole lot of sync'ing software that "just works" (I'm using SyncBack SE personally).

Re:Why wasn't the LaCie rated higher?

[MightyYar]

Lacie has been around in the Mac world for a long time, which may explain the nice Firewire performance. It may also explain why it "wasn't formatted"... I'm speculating, but it is conceivable that it was Mac-formatted. Or not. I'm not sure who would back up to a drive without first doing a format anyway, if only to check for integrity.

Regarding the inoperable button, which is their main complaint about the drive, I'm surprised that they didn't contact Lacie support and report back... it's conceivable that it is a know issue or a bum unit. Then again, I'm rarely impressed by the reporting at Computerworld.

Western Digital Passport? My Book "Essential"?

[MiceHead]

I've purchased a few WD Passports (they're up to 160GB now [wdc.com]), and while they seem to be meant more for personal "sync up your stuff!" use, they're not bad for backups. In their favor are the facts that they're powered by USB (you can just plug one in and go, sans supply) and that they're relatively small. The tradeoff is the modest capacity (I really like that we can call 160,000 megabytes "modest" -- simple pleasures for a simple mind, I suppose) and the price-for-storage (they're much more expensive per gig than the WD My Books).

TFA reviews the My Book Pro, but they also have a USB-only My Book "Essential" (read: Cheaper!) version; anyone tried those?
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No G-tech ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't look at G-tech because they blow away all of these cheaply made enclosures.

Valid reasons for not preformatting.

[Kadin2048]

Well, if it's designed for a Mac, it's possible that it's not formatted on purpose: first, because it's trivial to format a drive when you connect it up the first time (plug drive in, dialog comes up saying that it's not formatted, would you like to format it, click yes ... etc.), and also because there are a few filesystems that people might want.

Apple's Disk Utility offers six options to format a disk into: Mac OS Extended (HFS+), Mac OS Extended (HFS+) Journaled, Mac OS Extended (HFS+) Case-Sensitive, Mac OS Extended (HFS+) Case-Sensitive Journaled, MS-DOS File System (FAT32), UNIX File System (EXT2?).

I guess I would assume that a "high end" HW manufacturer like Lacie would pre-format the drives to Mac OS Extended Journaled, because that's what Apple recommends as a default these days, but particularly if it's a product that's being aimed at non-clueless users, they might have just decided it wasn't worth it.

Re:Why wasn't the LaCie rated higher?

[Bob C. Cock]

My employer uses LaCie drives and I frequently see problems where Windows can't detect the device. I was working on a Server 2003 machine earlier and connected one of our BigDisk Firewire/USB LaCie drives to it, and Windows wasn't finding it. I pulled it and connected another drive of the exact same model to the same server and it came up fine. LaCie's have been pretty flakey in my experience, if you're looking for an external USB drive, don't get a LaCie.

Re:Why not just do it yourself?

[CastrTroy]

Fat32 [wikipedia.org] has support for up to 8 TiB of data in a volume (partition). However the windows included utilities only let you format FAT32 drives up to 32 GiB. However, I'm with you, I fail to see why you would format a 500 GB drive with FAT32. It has a maximum file size of 4 GB, which can be pretty small once you start dealing with video, and DVD images. Of course, the plus side of FAT32 is that it can be read just about anywhere. Still I wish windows had good support for EXT2.

Re:Western Digital Passport? My Book "Essential"?

[KokorHekkus]

USB allows for half a Watt for powered devices. A HDD spinning up can easily draw over 20W. Most USB controllers will handle quite a lot more than the spec'd 0.5W, but 40x more really pushes your luck.

Actually, that is 2.5 watts, not .5 watts (check the USB specs). And the devices he's talking about are built around 2.5 inch laptop drives. Of course you're technically right that powering ordinary drives via USB... but hey, the parent poster didn't suggest that (and I've never seen anyone else do that!). These USB powered discs actually work and are correctly designed... lots of companies make them and has for years.

Re:Cheaper than $135?

[Paul Carver]

That's a great price, but Newegg currently has that exact drive (Maxtor One Touch III 500GB) for $155. Amazon doesn't seem to have it but they have a 300GB version for $170 and a 600GB version for $417. www.maxtorstore.com is also selling the 300GB version for $170.

So, if you managed to get a deal buying it for $20 less than the already low price at Newegg then good for you, but don't pretend that that's the common going rate for external hard drives.

Re: WD Passports and Mac laptops

[King_TJ]

I have a 160GB Passport drive myself, and while it's pretty cool - I do have to caution people about them. If you have an Apple Powerbook G4 aluminum as your notebook, this drive doesn't work with it. Apparently, those Powerbooks didn't provide quite enough power on their USB ports to run these. It will "sort of" spin up but never actually mount on the desktop as a drive ready to use.

I sold my Powerbook G4 15" a while back though, and now use a Macbook Pro, which works with the WD Passport without problems.

Re:Why not just do it yourself?

[sconeu]

Still I wish windows had good support for EXT2.

Not the best, but Explore2FS [chrysocome.net] is pretty nice.

Of course, writing a Windows File System is a black art. If MS documented it better, maybe there'd be more third party file systems.

You might want to look at this [fs-driver.org] as well -- disclaimer, I haven't tried it, don't know how good it is.

LaCie support = good

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess I would assume that a "high end" HW manufacturer like Lacie would pre-format the drives to Mac OS Extended Journaled, because that's what Apple recommends as a default these days...

Bingo. As a LaCie owner with both Mac & PC, they do default to PowerPC vanilla-HFS so any MacOS version can load it up. If the drive stops working properly in OSX their tech support will automatically give you a RMA and not a half hour of Windows tests to try. Their website and phone staff are pretty good too.. I've talked with both the U.S. and Canada guys.

Also, from experience, these are tough buggers. My Big Disk Extreme needed to have it's interface card replaced. The connection died on the PC, then the Mac. Had some private stuff on there, and they SAY that repair service will wipe the drive, but y'know... So, without cracking the case I gave it a go-over with a full-bore pistol-grip demagnetizer, the kind that plugs in AC, vibrates, and shouldn't run for more than 30 minutes. The drive came back in a week with a new interface card, and all my data perfectly in tact. Perfectly. Which in itself was disconcerting.

My only complaint is that despite having three interfaces, you can't have all three connected to different computers at the same time. That's just too much to ask for I guess. Time for a standalone 4-drive bay, methinks.

Beware of connected storage devices...

[rmdyer]

Before you commit to your shiny new USB/Firewire storage device, be sure you test it thoroughly. I've had several devices for whatever reason fail file checksum tests over multi-gigabytes of data. The most likely culprit is the USB interface and the drivers for them. Copy a very large multi-gigabyte tree of files back and fourth several times, checking against the master file checksums (MD5, etc). Also remember, proper checksum'ing requires that you eliminate any cache'ing that the OS may be doing, so unplug the device, then plug it back in, before running the checksum. Checksum'ing is especially important if you've formatted NTFS and the device is USB powered.

Also, even if you've verified the data is good on your storage device, moving it to another machine and connecting it up may leave you unhappy if the storage interface on the new machine isn't working properly.

You have been warned.

Two plugs, too...

[Animaether]

Very often these drives some with two USB plugs for the computer end. If your 1 USB port happens not to be able to power the thing, you plug in the other. The down side is that you take up 2 USB ports, but if you just happen to need it.. there you go.

Of course you then have to figure out still if both ports aren't just on the same controller, etc. (or even if it is a powered port - though rare these days for them not to b) but typically any USB powered port is going to have its own rated 2.5W at disposal. Won't do any good if you stick them both in a USB hub, of course.

You mean...

[g4c]

Beary carefully.

Rule #1: Never pass up a pun (or should I say, "Rule number pun?").

*ducks*

Re:Beware of connected storage devices...

[El_Oscuro]

Just use tar. Tar has the -t (test archive) and the -z (compress). Using compression by nature has checksums. After you create your backup using tar -cvzf options, you can test that same archive using the tar -tvzf options. You will definiately know if you get errors.

Re:Why wasn't the LaCie rated higher?

[1stworld]

I own one of these drives (640 Gb) and it is pre-formatted Mac OS X Extended Journaled. That alone says volumes about Computerworld's test engineers. It's very fast and quiet. I'd buy another.

Re:Why wasn't the LaCie rated higher?

[IvyKing]

Lacie has been around in the Mac world for a long time, which may explain the nice Firewire performance. It may also explain why it "wasn't formatted"... I'm speculating, but it is conceivable that it was Mac-formatted.

The docs that came with the LaCie BigDisk bought by a co-worker specifically stated that it was formatted for the Mac as Mac's were the most common computers with a FW800 interface. My co-worker had no trouble re-formatting the drive for ext3 using the FW400 interface (fastest external interface on a two or so year old e-machines AMD64 laptop - we tested the interface using my LaCie). The drive has not given any troubles despite being subject to bouncing while running, powerdowns while running and other not so gentle treatment.

While FAT32 does have the advantage that just about anything can read/write to it, the 4GB file size limitation (which dates back to Seattle Computer Products' QDOS original FAT implementation) really limits its usefulness for large drives. SOP for me is to re-format FAT drives with the most appropriate file system: UFS for Solaris (fun part was figuring out that I needed to use svcadm to kill vold) or NTFS for Windows XP.

I wasn't impressed by the review either.