External Hard Drive

[chris h]

I'm thinking of buying a 250gb Maxtor or a LaCie model. I wonder if anybody uses one of these on a regular basis and has any comments.

[Xaran]

Hi Chris,

We have just purchased a 300gb Maxtor Disk where I work, we intend to piggy-back it on to our existing 500Gb Lacie Disk - the Lacie is a network disk but has a firewire port which we can connect the Maxtor to. The Network lacie disk is excellent but the other one has only been in a few days so apart from saying it works fine, I can't really comment.

You can never have too much disk space.

Christine

[Doug Nelson]

I own the Maxtor 250gb and love it. It's fast enough for documents, archiving and for playing MP3s from, but I wouldn't run apps from it. Mine has a one-button backup, which really does make me feel safer.

The USB2 and Firewire versions are identical, except you can't use the power-saving features on the USB-only version.

LaCie just brought out a 1 terabyte version, which has me looking

[chris h]

Thanks both I assumed the Maxtor 7000 model has both USB2 and Firewire connections. Doug by backup facility do you mean it continues to backup files that have been modified via the button facility?

[Doug Nelson]

It's very configurable, it can do any type of backup you like, including copying the actual files (as opposed to packing them in a proprietary backup format). The button actually just activates a macro in a very nice backup program that comes with it (Retrospect backup).

[chris h]

I've ordered a Maxtor 200gb 7000 series drive hopefully it will be more convenient for backups than my HP DAT drive. It has a dual Firewire/USB2 option. I notice it comes with a transformer so presumably there isnt enough power available through the USB connection.

[Doug Nelson]

I think it requires more power than USB or Firewire can provide. Use the Firewire mode if you can, because in USB it runs 24hrs and can make an annoying high whine.

[chris h]

Doug,

The 200gb Maxtor arrived today and it was easy to set up and the included backup software will handle my dat drive as well. Mine has 1 USB2 and 2 Firewire ports. Is the extra firewire connector for a piggy back setup? havent found anything in the manual about it yet.

[Doug Nelson]

Yes, sounds like a pass-thru type of arrangement, but don't go by me

I went storage-mad when I first got mine and started downloading stuff indiscriminately. It seems big, but fills up fast.

[chris h]

Its certainly faster than I expected, it wrote 22gb worth of stuff in 15 minutes.

[Doug Nelson]

Yes, its fast enough so doc storage is easy, but not fast enough to put apps on.

[Rexx]

Hi guys,

Sorry, I know I now sound exactly like the morons I despise on Internet, but here goes

I also own a 250GB Maxtor. The first one was DOA, so this is the replacement. After the DOA unit (yes, after...) I checked some other customers' experiences on the net, and Maxtor got a bashing. Western Digital seemed to be better. It seems the problem is the lack of cooling. No fan - a wonderfully quiet disk, but overheats and dies.

My conclusion - I use the disk only for backup, and it is rarely powered on.

My son has an internal 300GB Maxtor in his Mac. No problems whatsoever.

[chris h]

Rex,

Thanks for the info, mine seems to run warm but nothing I wouldn't consider normal, so I'll keep an eye on it. Critical stuff gets burned onto DVD. I dont work in a particularly warm environment so perhaps this might help, where did I put that ice bucket!