Which External Drive?

I have an iMac with about 160 gb drive. I bought a 500 gb LaCie external drive (USB2/FW400/FW800) that I use for backups, and in particular my photo collection.

Because I shoow RAW files my internal drive is getting a bit full and I'd like to remove some to an external drive but I'm a little worried about some reports of the LaCie 500 not being so reliable.

I'd like to invest in another external drive. Firewire is preferred, maybe with USB for future use.

What brand / capacity do people recommend? Are there any really good ones and are there any I should steer well clear of?

Regards

Mike

Hi Mike,

Hard drives are much of the same really, horses for courses so to speak, you will hear reports of people recommending one hard drive and others who are unhappy with the same brand of drive.

If you are concerned that you may lose your photo collection through drive failure, I would recommend perhaps also backing up your photo's to disc - DVD preferably, especially if your iMac has a superdrive.

You can back up to normal disc but you may find you use a lot of discs - in the long run it may be cheaper to invest in an external DVD RW drive if your iMac does not have the superdrive.

Then you can store your archived DVD discs away until you need them - and every couple of years or so, test the discs to make sure the dye has not delaminated and copy to a fresh disc when necessary.

Hi Mike,

I tend to go down the Maplin route, a lot...I buy enclosures and then fit in my existing or new drives.

I also have quite a few Maxtor, LaCie and a few Seagate 'bought' external drives.

I've probably had fifty D2/Lacie drives over the years...the only problem that I used to have with the D2 drives (before they changed their name to Lacie) was their power supplies...if the Drive had a 2 Year warranty...the power supply in the case would always blow at around two years and one month...the drive itself would normally be okay, it would just need some new capacitors in the power supply.

What problems have you heard about the LaCie 500 ?

regards

Ric