recommend a external drive?

[ted demen]

since a second hard drive is failing in my external firewire enclosure, i decided to try going the external harddrive route (as opposed to enclosure and drive) and im wondering if there is one out there that is recomended or more stable than the rest.

i would like at least 500gigs sata firewire

any suggestions?

[budz]

Judging from the external hard drives with firewire at Newegg they don't look promising at all.

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=414&name=External-Hard-Drives

IMHO it's better to buy a sata internal hard drive then buy a external enclosure for it that has a fan built in to keep it cool.

[ted demen]

yeah i already checked newegg and nithing stands out.

i should have also mentioned that im lookling for a 3.5 drive.

im considering an enclosure with a fan but since this will be used for music production, silent is much preferred (the drive/enclosure i want to replace is currently the loudest device in my studio)

im sort of thining of either getting the lacie or maxtor:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822154294

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3617658&Sku=M122-7820

[redwudz]

From those choices, I'd probably look at the LaCie. It appears to use Samsung HDDs, which are decent. I don't trust Maxtor much these days.

The Western Digital external drives are also popular. I don't use FireWire for hard drives much any more. I prefer e-SATA drives as they operate at the same speed as a internal drive. But that may not work for you, depending on your setup.

[ted demen]

well im using a laptop and my expresscard slot is reserved for a highend soundcard, so firewire is my only option (all usbs are also taken up)

and i know what u mean about the enclosure... originally i thought it was no contest, but reading the reviews; people say the lacie vibrates a bit while the maxtor is dead silent (its sort of the opposite what i was expecting to hear especially since lacie uses samsungs which are among the quietest)

also its hard to get the firewire version lacie around here... an the places that do have em list them for almost double what newegg sells em for

[alegator]

Does anyone know if this is a reliable system? Sounds too good to be true:
http://www.drobo.com/products/drobo.php
http://www.drobo.com/products/drobopro/index.php

[redwudz]

The Drobo is a nice system, but it's about $400US without any drives. If you use it in a RAID redundant configuration you will need two drives minimum.

LaCie became popular with the Mac users and I hadn't heard about noise problems. I understand about the laptop, sort of limited for external connections. You could also look around at CoolDrives as they have a lot of external cases: http://www.cooldrives.com/firen.html

I just went with a fairly cheap two drive external case with a self-contained power supply and two eSATA connectors. I have installed one 1TB drive and will probably add another. I have plenty of spare SATA connections on my PC, so I added a couple of eSATA PCI slot adapters.

[alegator]

eSATA is a faster interface than either FW800 or USB2. I wonder why Drobo or many other external drives come without eSATA nowadays, specially since average HD capacities have surpassed the 1TB mark.

[yoda313]

Heres another vote for Western Digital externals. I have an older 160gb usb 2.0 drive still kicking. And I have a newer 320gb with esata, firewire, and usb2.0.