External hard drive ??

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Im looking to take an external hard drive with me when i travel. Is there a company that anyone recommends or one to stay away from? I know this may come down to personal preference but I want a small one (travel) thats pretty good quality. In scott kelby"s book he uses a owc on the go hard drive but in all my internet research not one person mentioned this company or these drives. Are they good ( I mean a pro is using them lol ) ? Again small and lightweight are my main concerns. I was reading a lot of good reviews on the "clickfree". Any help will ...well ... help lol
 
Stay away from the cheap ebay ones is all i can say
 
I only buy Western Digital Portable Hard Drives because I haven't had any bad experiences with them. My first external hard drive was a Maxtor and that thing got corrupted every two months for no reason. I would just be using it and bam it would freeze and I wouldn't be able to open it until I reformatted it. This happened way too much that I don't use it anymore. Later Maxtor changed to Seagate, so I wouldn't buy from them. Most people I know have Western Digital ones.

If you travel a lot and want a durable one, I heard LaCie one's are good and rugged, but I haven't personally used one.
 
PC or Mac? PC look at the Verbatim, if Mac get the Western Digital for Mac. The FireWire connection is so much faster than the USB. Stay away from the Western Digital green series. They crap out left and right. The my book series is great.
 
Thanks for all the info. Isn't the my book series from western Digital still pretty big thou ?
 
Sorry ment the my passport, not my book.
 
I've always had good luck with Maxtor 3.5" HDD. I have 3 of them, one of which lasted me 7 years before I sold it with the computer. Yes, 7 years. I kept the HDD even as I got new computers.

Anyways, I don't have them now. I got a WD 2.5" last year and it's been fine, no issue at all. I recently got a 1TB Toshiba with USB 3.0 connection. The other day the connection was very unstable. It will keep getting disconnected for no reason, but when I restarted the computer, it was fine, so I don't know if it was the computer or the HDD.

I've heard that brand doesn't really determine the quality because they are all sourced from different supplier anyways. It really depends on the factory that makes them. If factory A makes the first batch and factory B makes the second of the same model, you can get quality or reliability differences. It's luck really. That's why I always keep multiple back ups on separate HDDs.
 
I have a SimpleTech that works great.

Just go to bestbuy or something and pickup the size you want. they are almost all the same.
 
I've disassembled the My Passport before to revive a dead harddisk (abused, so don't worry from what I can tell they are reliable). They have a very rugged build and the one I pulled apart had some degree of vibration protection in the form of foam and rubber grommets. It's bigger than those plain eBay harddisk cases you can get, but it may be worth it.

I'm actually travelling through Europe right now using a borrowed My Passport to store photos :) and it's survived so far, but then again during my last trip my cheap eBay one survived too so that doesn't say much.
 
Another happy user of WD external drives. If you think a book size drive is too big what about a memory stick? They come small and you can stick a lot on them.
 
I prefer Seagate, but WD is also good and is my second choice. They both. make their own units. While they can be good, I stear away from "branded" external drive units as they don't make their own drives and could use a good brand drive one week and a poor brand drive the next.

Having built computers for friends and family for over 25, Maxtor was my primary choice thru most of the time. Maxtor got a bad rap when they bought out Quantum about ten years ago. Quantum weren't that good. Maxtor's mistake was to sell off Quantum's stock as Maxtor drives: legally OK, but lots of bad drives gave Maxtor a bad name.

Seagate bought Maxtor for some of their technology. Since, I've stayed with Seagate. (My early drives, back in the early '80s were Seagates.) I haven't been building for a while, but I don't think Seagate puts out a "Maxtor" brand anymore.
 
LaCie all the way! Never ever had an issue. I use the LaCie Two GB Two Bay Raid External Hard Drive and change out the bay drives when ever they are full. I label the date the drives went in and label the date they came out. Makes for easy access archiving of your images! Very affordable and the RAID is super great if one crashes, which has never happened to me. Cheers!

Eric & Amanda


Heres the link to the portable drive:
LaCie 500GB Portable Firewire 800
 
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I have a stack of WD Passports. For years, I've never had any trouble with them. I've cracked open a few of them and put the hdd in Macbook's and a Mac mini desktop. Besides my "stack", I have 1 usb Mac version and 1 usb / firewire version, all portable. I have one WD hard case for transport and it is sweet. Yes, I recommend them.
 

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