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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Best portable hard drives
Jesse Beals, Photographer
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Tracyton | WA | USA | Posted: 8:46 PM on 12.03.10 |
->> Ok its the holiday season and I am seeing a ton of portable 500gig and 1T portable hard drives for sale at just about every store I go to.
Is there any brands to stay away from or a one brand that is the cream of the crop?
I have heard mixed results about the WD's and so so about the Transcend and the OWC models. |
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Brian Westerholt, Photographer
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Kannapolis | NC | USA | Posted: 8:58 PM on 12.03.10 |
| ->> I have used WD Passport drives for years starting with 250GB models all the way up to currently using 2 of the 1TB models. With the exception of my own clumsiness dropping one, I have not had any problems (fingers crossed) with the WD portable external drives. |
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Yamil Sued, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Peoria | AZ | USA | Posted: 9:26 PM on 12.03.10 |
->> I have used several WD Passport Drives over the years without a single problem, but everyone tells me that WD is crap!! I don't know what to say, never had an issue!!
But.... I have been told that Seagate is the one to buy.
Y |
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Jim Pierce, Photographer
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Waltham | MA | USA | Posted: 9:35 PM on 12.03.10 |
->> Jesse,
I am a fan of Western Digital no matter if they are portable, desktop or internal hard drives. Yes I have had a couple fail but all have been able to be recovered with no data loss. ALL drives fail at some point I just have a preference for WD.
Jim |
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Yamil Sued, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Peoria | AZ | USA | Posted: 9:45 PM on 12.03.10 |
->> I use my DROBO's for important Data, but I use a lot of Portable Drives for sending Images to clients. Most of the time, I buy these Drives to send Images to my clients. Most of the times, the clients purchase these drives from me. I've had clients purchase 3 and 4 drives from me in one year. I agree, WD drives are great and I've never had one fail me yet.
I just found some Toshiba 1TB Portables at a good price at Best Buy.
Y |
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Erik Markov, Photographer
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anywhere | IN | | Posted: 9:50 PM on 12.03.10 |
| ->> huge fan of Seagates free agent portable drives, have a 500gb that is fast fast fast. 2.0 USB is what I've got right now and its a smooth transfer to my RAID. |
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Jim Pierce, Photographer
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Waltham | MA | USA | Posted: 10:15 PM on 12.03.10 |
->> Stew,
Those look like great HD's. Any idea who actually makes the disk drive? I once bought a rubber coated drive similar to the ones on your link and once I opened it up it was a repackaged WD.
Jim |
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Eric Canha, Photographer
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Brockton | MA | United States | Posted: 11:00 PM on 12.03.10 |
->> Jim I only looked at one drive the 500gb/16mb and the spec sheet listed the drive as a Seagate 'mechanism'.
The only piece of advise that I would throw out here is that I personally try to stick to externals that run a 12v d/c input and convert to the 12v/5v in the enclosure.
External switching supplies just don't seem to last mostly because quality units are expensive. Lacie is a great example of one such "problem" p/s. Almost every single person that I know who has more than one Lacie external HD has replaced a p/s. |
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Israel Shirk, Photographer, Assistant
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Boise | ID | US | Posted: 11:23 PM on 12.03.10 |
->> All drives fail... I just use the portables as an extra backup for when the laptop drive fails.
Google's data (http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf) does indicate that there are specific manufacturers with lower failure rates; however, the difference between manufacturers is far less significant than the length of time the drive has been in use.
As others have said, Seagate is generally regarded as highest-quality; however, as always, YMMV. |
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Jim Pierce, Photographer
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Waltham | MA | USA | Posted: 11:40 PM on 12.03.10 |
->> Leave it to Eric and Israel to dig into hardware details!!!
As eric stated one drive from Stew's link is a Seagate but others are Hitachi, Toshiba, as well as solid state drives from mercury Extreme?
Israel, What does YMMV mean? you got me on this one
Jim |
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Israel Shirk, Photographer, Assistant
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Boise | ID | US | Posted: 11:42 PM on 12.03.10 |
| ->> Your Mileage May Vary :) |
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Debra L Rothenberg, Photographer
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New York | NY | USA | Posted: 12:19 AM on 12.04.10 |
| ->> I know there are not a lot of LaCie fans here, but I am up to my 20th HD and not a single problem |
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Israel Shirk, Photographer, Assistant
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Boise | ID | US | Posted: 12:58 AM on 12.04.10 |
| ->> LaCie makes cases; the drives come from whoever is cheap at any given point. |
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Mike Doran, Photographer
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Petaluma | CA | U.S.A. | Posted: 1:07 AM on 12.04.10 |
| ->> LaCie whicj I have been using for over 8 years. |
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Kevin Krows, Photographer
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Forsyth | IL | USA | Posted: 5:48 AM on 12.04.10 |
| ->> Put me down for Seagate FreeAgent drives. I've been using Seagate for 6 years. Great value, 5 year warranty, great customer service. |
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Jamey Price, Photographer, Assistant
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Middleham | North Yorkshire | England | Posted: 6:31 AM on 12.04.10 |
| ->> +1 for Western Digital |
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Keith Crowley, Photographer
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Hudson | WI | USA | Posted: 10:06 AM on 12.04.10 |
| ->> Western Digital for me. FWIW, my father designed drives (for Seagate, and CDC before that) for 35 years. He used Maxtors and Seagates interchangeably at home and told me there wasn't a significant difference with failure rates among the big makers. I started with WD because the Passport was the right physical size. Two 2TB My Books and one 500GB Passport later, and no problems yet--knock wood. I even dropped the Passport on the street once and split the case open. It's still cracked but the drive runs fine. |
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Philip Johnson, Photographer
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Garland | TX | USA | Posted: 11:56 AM on 12.04.10 |
| ->> For what it's worth OWC uses seagate drives. |
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Steven E. Frischling, Photographer
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| | | Posted: 3:25 PM on 12.04.10 |
->> No problems, knock on wood, with WD Passport or myBook drives over the past few years. I had two Lacie drives crap out with power issues, not actual drive issues.
My two catastrophic hard drive failures were both Seagate drives. |
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Phil Hawkins, Photographer
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Fresno | ca | usa | Posted: 4:18 PM on 12.04.10 |
->> What Eric Canha said.
I used Maxtor internals for years, then all of a sudden they started failing. About 50% of my Maxtors are now paperweights.
I use Western Digital now, and they just keep on ticking. Be careful of external drives in an enclosure (which is the only way they come). They tend to heat up and fail much more frequently than you would like. I use internal drives (cheaper) in an after-market enclosure with the top part left off so it will stay cool. I also use the Green Caviar drives; they stay cool and I can swap them out. (1.5 TB $59 at Tiger Direct) I travel with it for my laptop. It looks funky, people stare when I have to pull out a power supply for my HD, but I don't care. I'm paying 30% less for HDs and travel all over the world. |
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Jim Colburn, Photo Editor, Photographer
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McAllen | TX | USA | Posted: 6:00 PM on 12.05.10 |
| ->> I've used Macsales drives, both desktop and portable, for years and love 'em. I really wouldn't buy anything else. |
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Eric Isaacs, Photographer, Assistant
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Santa Barbara | CA | USA | Posted: 12:29 AM on 12.06.10 |
->> Beware the "SmartWare"
WD integrates their backup software in the firmware so you can't actually remove it. The newer ones use a portion of your hard drive to house its own software and it can't just be reformatted.
There are steps on the WD website to upgrade the firmware in order to disable the smartware. Huge PIA and when I tried it, no dice. I also had to install NTFS drivers on my mac in order to use the thing.
I've counseled my customers (computer repair) to return the WDs and buy something that doesn't try to be smart.
I linked a few threads below from others that have been frustrated with WD.
http://community.wdc.com/t5/WD-Smartware/How-do-I-remove-this-smartware-sof...
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1353136
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa;jsessionid=25D82C7096D07DB8B6930A7488C68648.node0?messageID=11827571� |
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