Help me find reliable external storage

October 24, 2007 3:32 AM

What 500Gb+ external HDD should I buy? Quietness, coolness, and reliability are a priority.

At the moment I'm looking at this: Western Digital 500GB USB/Firewire 400/800 External Hard Drive 16MB Cache

I like it for its capacity, free space indicators on the front, and it's well known brand name. However I have no idea about it's quietness, coolness (temperature) and reliability. I'll be using it to store my treasured photos, videos and music on - so I'm deathly afraid of the "Delayed Write Failed" message that I seem to get with all my previous drives.

Is there anything better available in the UK for around the £100 mark?

posted by lemonfridge to computers & internet (20 comments total)

2nd the WD, I got one and have no problems yet, it's quiet and cool looking.
posted by kanemano at 3:41 AM on October 24, 2007

2nd the WD, I got one and have no problems yet, it's quiet and cool looking. Sorry I cannot say anything about long term reliability since it is a new purchase, temperature wise it runs pretty cool, no internal fan but it shuts it self off when not in demand
posted by kanemano at 3:46 AM on October 24, 2007

I have three of these WD drives, two 500s and a 750, two USB and one Firewire, and they've all served me well. I plan on buying another soon.

The capacity gauge on the front requires some sort of driver and I never bothered to get it working. Other than that I've never had an issue with these.

They're quiet, in fact they'll go to sleep and be silent if you're not using them, and temperature is not an issue as long as you give them some breathing space.
posted by mmoncur at 3:51 AM on October 24, 2007

An alternative might be to pick up an internal 3.5" HDD and an empty enclosure. I got a fan-cooled USB2/eSATA enclosure from www.scan.co.uk for about £25 last year (Venus, I think the brand was, and they do other connection combinations as well). A 500GB SATA II drive to fit inside will set you back another £50-60.
posted by Nice Guy Mike at 4:15 AM on October 24, 2007

I've got two of the 500GB Firewire 800 WD drives, they're great. Reliable. Seem fairly cool. And fairly quiet (but I've nothing to compare them with).

I got the capacity indicator working. It's a functionless gimmick because the blue LED light 'bleeds' around the display circle. But who cares!
posted by algreer at 4:47 AM on October 24, 2007

Seagate offers 5 year warranties on their external HDs. Was a purchasing factor for me.
posted by maxpower at 5:24 AM on October 24, 2007

Buy an enclosure and then just buy HDD's separately. Buy them together - warranty hell. Believe me.
posted by daveyt at 5:44 AM on October 24, 2007

Just bought a 500GB Seagate FreeAgent, mainly for the same reason as maxpower states (a 5 year warranty won't get your data back, but at least it might get you a replacement drive, and it says something about the company's confidence in its product). The design is a little weird, but it works well, and I can't hear it over my computer's fan.
posted by AwkwardPause at 6:06 AM on October 24, 2007

I have 2 500 GB WD External Hard Drives.

CORRECTION - I have 1 500 GB WD External Hard Drive and 1 500 GB WD Paper Weight.
posted by B(oYo)BIES at 6:52 AM on October 24, 2007 [1 favorite]

I just bought a 500 GB Seagate as well.
posted by yeti at 7:22 AM on October 24, 2007

This thing is pretty cool.
posted by StickyCarpet at 7:24 AM on October 24, 2007 [1 favorite]

buy two and use one as an archive drive that you turn off unless you're actually backing up to it. (or the 1TB version - it's configurable to automatically mirror your data.) your hard drive will fail; it's just a question of when. that said, I like my MyBook (I bought the step down - only FW400 - but same capacity) and I've generally had good luck with Western Digitals - the ones I've had that failed did it when they stopped being really useful. I can hear it when it spins up but not so much when it's in use. (I have a Mac mini with 3 external drives, though - the MyBook and two Maxtors in cheap cases - so it just might be quieter than everything else.) Seagate is also really good - their bare drives have 5year warranties.
posted by mrg at 9:01 AM on October 24, 2007

I have two of these LaCie drives. One is a 250GB that I've had for a year or so for my iTunes and photo libraries and extra space for audio production files. The new one is a 500GB that I bought about a month ago to use exclusively for backups.

Love them both. No complaints. They look nice (they're stackable!). They're quiet. And they haven't given me any trouble.
posted by wheat at 9:26 AM on October 24, 2007

UK link for you (sorry).
posted by wheat at 9:28 AM on October 24, 2007

I have a WD and it is NOT quiet
posted by allelopath at 10:15 AM on October 24, 2007

I'd definitely recommend a Seagate product. Most HDD manufacturers don't have ANY warranties, unless its DOA. Seagate's, as others have said, is five years.
posted by fvox13 at 11:14 AM on October 24, 2007

I have just bought a WD MyBook 500Gb and the disappointing thing is it takes a few seconds to spin up if it hasn't been accessed for a while. This is annoying as I use it as a media drive and have to wait for it to wake up if I put some music on. Before that I had a LaCie which didn't have this problem.
posted by kenchie at 12:07 PM on October 24, 2007

The LaCie's are designed by Porsche and are pretty slick looking. 500GB for around ~$110.
posted by fe2dell at 4:03 PM on October 24, 2007

I had a WD MyBook 500GB which died just a week or two out of warranty. No warning, just dead. Replaced it with a Seagate FreeAgent, very nice drive.
posted by lhauser at 10:00 PM on October 24, 2007

http://www.storagereview.com/
posted by gmarceau at 3:36 PM on October 25, 2007