brian_faini Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 ok this might sound dumb but I need an external drive and I run a PC on XP and in may I will be switching to mac after these new mac book pros get their feet wet so taking this into accont, if I get a drive now will it just be plug- and play between the 2 systems? I will not have to reformat it to be compatible with mac. If it is formatted in fat32 all things should be fine? I was thinking it wouldnt be a problem but I wanna be sure. Also would anyone advise against getting an internal with a enclosure that allows it to become an external, which results in a lower price per GB Thanks for any input and any thing else you feel would be useful Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matthew_strand Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 As long as the drive is formatted in FAT32 you shouldnt have any problem switching between mac and PC. It should just be plug and play. A lot of my friends have gotten enclosures for internal drives and almost all of them have had problems. It might be cheap enclosures or bad setup on their part but I personally choose to purchase premade external drives. If you get them on sale you can find them pretty cheap. Just shop around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brian_faini Posted January 10, 2006 Author Share Posted January 10, 2006 ok thanks, I have been looking around they are getting pretty cheap, any brands you think I should steer from, should I just stay with the big names ie (maxtor, lacie, western digi, seagate) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael_stephens Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 I prefer Hitachi (since they purchased IBM's storage business) and have been using their drives for some time in both PC and Mac as well as in external cases. Overall they are known for reliability. I had problems with WD, although they can have good specs and lower prices. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matthew_strand Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 I've had a Buffalo for a year, working fine so far. I also have another one but I can't remember the brand, I'll check later. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alan_chan4 Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 I have had Maxtor 5000LE 80GB for two years & 2 OneTouchII 300GB for a few months. All three are trouble free so far luckily. I said luckily because there have been a long list of user complaints on Maxtor externals (but Seagate & WD too if you care to search). But the truth is, these brand name external drives have regular 3.5" HD inside. My spectulation is that some users knocked their drives or didn't keep them cool while running. These are the most likely cause of HD failure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cbender Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 Build them yourself - it is pretty easy and will be a bit cheaper. I like Seagate drives (5 yr warranty) and CoolMax enclosures. You can find the enclosures (and the drives) at Newegg. At the moment, I have two external drives: one 3.5" 160GB drive on my desktop machine, and one 2.5" 60GB drive for my notebook. Both are USB2.0. The notebook drive powers itself and transmits through a single USB connection (many drives and enclosures require two usb connections or a power supply). I can send you model numbers if you want more info. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cbender Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 Les- I just tried transfering 1.7GB of images from my 2.5" external drive (USB2.0) to my notebook HD. Both are 7200RPM drives. The transfer took about 100s, which is ~17MB/s, or 136 Mbps. I did the transfer twice; the transfer times were nearly identical. If I recall correctly, USB2.0 is supposed to transfer at speeds up to ~400Mbps. So my setup is not running quite at full speed. But, it is still pretty fast - certainly fast enough for me, and a good deal faster than all but a 1Gbps network. When I scan film, I scan directly to my external drive. I also Photoshop the files directly on the external drive. I've never noticed a slow down enough for me to change how I do things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matthew_strand Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 Video editing uses the data from the hard drive. As far as I know Photoshop loads the image into RAM first and only writes to the drive when you save so I don't think that your drive speed should have anything to do with performance while editing photos. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert DeCandido PhD Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 Hello, For an external drive enclosure, I use (and like): http://www.xpcgear.com/52535usfirco.html about $38 plus shipping ($7). It is made for an ultra ata (EIDE) drive (not a Sata = Serial ATA). Note Well! Though Sata drives are faster, EXTERNAL Sata capable enclosures are not common...and the ones I have used are not as good as the one listed above. Seagate is good, reliable...I use both SATA and EIDE. I think they (Seagate) charge for shipping to return a drive to you that they repaired under warranty (or decided to replace). Right now a Seagate 250GB HD EIDE is about $125..do a search at: www.pricegrabber.com Best Luck, rdc/nyc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vincent_j_m Posted January 11, 2006 Share Posted January 11, 2006 I regularly build external hard drives. It's easy and cheap, and it's no less reliable than buying a pre-build unit. In fact, the hard disk in the pre-built unit is the same 3.5" PC HDD as the ones you get in stores. Nothing different. I usually go with seagate or hitachi drives and get a decent casing with a nice fan. No problems so far, and they have been very reliable. I'd avoid maxtorture (anyway they've been swallowed by seagate now), and haven't had great reliability from western digital in the recent past, though they were great in 1997-2003. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.W. Wall Posted January 11, 2006 Share Posted January 11, 2006 I have had good luck with Western Digital and Hitachi drives converted to external by adding a case. I had a problem with a LaCie 200GB, purchased as an external drive, that caused loss of all data. They fixed the drive promptly during warranty, but they don't warrant data. Fortunately most was backed up. My WDs have been running at least three years now with no trouble and the newer Hitachi is fine so far. Personally, I'd avoid cheapie no-fan drives from retailers e.g. CompUSA brand etc. So, no problems here with rolling your own external. YMMV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J.W. Wall Posted January 11, 2006 Share Posted January 11, 2006 Should be, ...cheapie no-fan drive enclosures... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vincent_j_m Posted January 11, 2006 Share Posted January 11, 2006 HDD quality keeps varying. Sad but true. You simply can't pick one brand and stick with it forever. Like I said, we got great reliability from the WD drives from 1997-2003 but our recent experiences with WD have been less than satisfactory. IBM deathstars were well known problem makers, but after they got taken over by Hitachi, things have changed a lot. Hitachi drives have been giving us good service with no trouble. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike dixon Posted January 11, 2006 Share Posted January 11, 2006 I've had no problems with three different drives (two Western Digital and one Seagate) in two different external enclosures. My main external is in a fan-cooled enclosure, though I was surprised at how cool the non-fan-cooled enclosure stayed during the approx. 8 hours it took to copy everything onto the drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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