looking into buying an external hdd

[iconboy]

hey guys im looking into buying an external 500GB hdd for my macbook pro and a friend of mine suggested getting a seagat freeagent. it comes with a 5 year warranty! but i wanted to hear from you guys as to what you thought the best solutions was! RELIABILITY is the most important factor for me. Ive had 3 ide hdds that ive had hooked upto external noname enclosures die on me so this time i want to spend the extra money and buy a brand name external hdd that was meant to be used externally!

[TurboTuna]

I've had no problems with just buying the drive seperatly and then buying a Caddy to hold it in. Often comes out alot cheaper.

[iconboy]

I've had no problems with just buying the drive seperatly and then buying a Caddy to hold it in. Often comes out alot cheaper.

dude i said ive already tried that and now im looking for a more "official" solution.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

don't buy a non-name enclosure. that is your problem.

Seagate and Western Digital are on the same level these days.

[iconboy]

don't buy a non-name enclosure. that is your problem.

Seagate and Western Digital are on the same level these days.

are there "brand" name enclosures? i dont mean the all in one solutions (enclosure + hdd) that seagate and WD have, but an empty enclosure with a brand name on it?

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

It depends on what hard drive you have. IDE/SATA I/II

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?min...bminorcatid=330

[slippery]

Seagate and Western Digital are on the same level these days.

Not by a long shot - Seagate offers a 5 year warranty while WD offers only a 1 year.

Have you considered anything like this, along with a oem drive?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16817153066

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Yeah, you can run off a hard drive for more than 5 years...

and, he's in Canada.

[iconboy]

please keep in mind stability above all else! i like the blackx eject hot swappable concept but is it as dependable and stable as the seagate freeagent?

[+Gary7 Subscriber²]

I bought an enclosure for 19 dollars 6 years ago and it is working fine. I would go with Seagate.

[iconboy]

my external hdd is a 250 GB Maxtor HDD hooked upto a Bytecc Enclosure. I went away for 2 months and left the enclosure on by accident, when i got back i couldnt access the drive! ive got it hookedup to both my dell and my macbook pro. its formatted NTFS and i recently heard that macs can not write to NTFS, could this have been the problem that led to it crashing (i mean besides leaving it on for so long)? i recently also got a program for my mac that runs in the background that allows it to write to ntfs drives now. when i attached the hdd to the mac i tried to use disk utility to recover it, but i kep getting some i/o error. when i hooked it upto the dell i couldnt get access to it through my computer, but i was able to through admin tools and format it so its ok now and both systems can access it, BUT now im still concerned about data loss and might get a seagate freeagent anyways.