External Hard drives.... what do you use?

jesso · Post by **jesso** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 12:00 pm

I know this is kind of a boring question... but theres so much choice it can be a bit daunting.... or maybe Im just a lazy bastard and want advice from someone whos already spent hours comparing specs.
Im after a hard drive for recording away from the studio.
It doesnt have to be very big, only 160 gigs or more.
Has to work from USB 2 cos my Firewire port (macbook) is taken up with my interface. Also, ideally it would be tough, and should be powered by the usb port... I've enough wallwarts in my life already.
What do you people use?

FrancodeLeon88 · Post by **FrancodeLeon88** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 1:10 pm

http://www.g-technology.com/products/G-DRIVE-mini.cfm

That's what I use. Everything is better now that I do. I've had tons of drives: cheap ones, big ones, little ones, huge cap, low cap...this is the real deal.

DJ Franco de Leon
www.FRANCODELEON.com

lola · Post by **lola** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 2:06 pm

3 maxtors , 160, 200, 200 gig
2 WD's 250 gig

Where the maxtor's are 4 years old now i think, and never crashed( knock on wood)
Only 1 time it happened, 1 WD crashed due a problem where windows did not recognize it and said it was not formatted... so lost 250 gig.

I only use small amounts of gig's due platter's used in those drives.
My paranoid thought is, the more platters (like a 500 or 1 tb uses) the more the chance it will crash .

jesso · Post by **jesso** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 2:44 pm

The Gdrive looks plush.
thing is, it only powers up from the firewire connection. Is there such a thing as a drive that will power from the usb2?

elblanco · Post by **elblanco** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 2:52 pm

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go

Geezus · Post by **Geezus** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 3:00 pm

I get internal WD's placed in an external enclosure. its cheaper, more reliable, and if anything fucks up I can take it out and plug in the internal drive's SATA connection to recover my data.

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 3:05 pm

Seagate SATA drive in an Icydock enclosure. It's nice!

SubFunk · Post by **SubFunk** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 4:27 pm

right now, 3 icy box enclosures 2 with firewire / usb and 1 with eSATA / usb connex

2x 250gb 1x 500gb drives vary from maxtor, samsung, seagate

the icy boxes never gave me a problem... fanless, alloy and stackable... nice.

drive wise, all are still working, the seagate and samsung being the quietest.

love the eSATA over the card slot on the MBP, fast, really fast, this is actually my audio work drive, the other two are backups.

going to get some firewire 400 / 800 / eSATA box with a terra drive soon.

Atomikat · Post by **Atomikat** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 4:49 pm

Two LaCie's here...160/320 Gb no problem, very reliable.
What kind of audiocard do you have? doesn't it have a second firewire port that you can daisychain card and hard drive? I used to do it with my old ibook G4.

Baron von Case · Post by **Baron von Case** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 5:40 pm

M-Audio Fast Track Pro

It sucks. Hard.

jesso · Post by **jesso** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 5:51 pm

I never thought of daisy chaining a FW hard drive with my interface...
Its an RME fireface 400.
If I was (for example) recording 8 tracks of 44bit audio via the fireface and straight into an external drive, rather than the drive of my macbook....
Would that work?

FrancodeLeon88 · Post by **FrancodeLeon88** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 6:10 pm

for live performance gigs, I use the one firewire 400 port on my computer, connected to my m-audio firewire 1814, then from there, have my firewire g-tech mini...

works fine, and is all bus powered...

DJ Franco de Leon
www.FRANCODELEON.com

Mike Goodwin · Post by **Mike Goodwin** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 8:19 pm

segate free agent. works well. I only use seagate in my studio computers so I went the same way with externals.

j2j · Post by **j2j** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 8:31 pm

I'm using dual seagates as well. no problems as of yet...

knock on wood....

andrew_ · Post by **andrew_** » Tue Sep 30, 2008 8:46 pm

I've got a LaCie drive. 1 terabye. FW800, 400, and USB 2. It's the greatest.