Lookin' for an external backup drive

I like my Seagate FreeAgent Pro external drive. In my experience using it over firewire is 20-30% faster than USB2. Really good value and the 750GB is indeed the sweet spot these days. Also, it glows orange when spun up. Looks cool.

Haven’t had that problem. (Yet.) The only problem with it that I’ve really noticed is that the LEDs on the front are obnoxious.


^–this

But it’s pretty and it supports Firewire 800 (which we have on our laptops, but not on the Mini). And it looks nice enough to leave visible in the living room. Other than the aforementioned really obnoxious LEDs. :)

Edit: and by ‘obnoxious’ i mean ‘awesome’ – if i were living alone, i would consider the LEDs to be the absolute coolest thing about it; but with a wife and kid to worry about, anything that makes my son go “Hey what’s that?” and start pushing random buttons and pulling random cables is bad

On my black 500GB WD Book one, I would not access that drive for x minutes (30 min or whatever) and when I went to go back to it, it would seize the system momentarily as it whirred the drive to life again.

if you are into command line haxoring, apparently you can disable the led on some models.

hmm, over a year later apparently keeping the tacky ‘button manager’ software running may keep it awake. are you running that?

I don’t mind that on my 1TB drive, as it runs cool thanks to the powering down. I had an Iomega before that could cook pizza after a few hours on (but not being accessed). It’s a very small delay, to be fair.

rei, was your WD a USB-only? I wonder if that has anything to do with it. I haven’t seen any seizing up.

i believe it is USB only. the spin-up and spin-down sound bothered me more than the momentary freeze. i think i have 7 external drives and this is getting to be ridiculous so i have to consolidate them into one big 5-drive tower or something.

Oh good lord, I notice it now. You’re right. It’s… it’s obnoxious. I don’t hear it much, fortunately; it’s quieter than, say, the refrigerator compressor. It’s just that the compressor’s not running right now and the house is empty.

Thread resurrection, so I can ask yr advice:

As I’ve started converting more of my DVDs so I can watch on my Ipod Touch, I’ve started storing the ripped files on hard drives. I figured a 1TB Western Digital would be a perfect place to store and grow the collection, as I’ve got a 750 I use for regular backups and it’s perfect for my purposes.

But I’m seeing more comments online that the WD 1TBs are a little short on the lifespan side of things. Has that been anyone’s experience, or am I just falling for competitors’ sock puppet shenanigans?

Mine hasn’t died yet, but it does seem to be unnecessarily hot and frail. Also, one of the Firewire 800 ports doesn’t work, and didn’t right out of the box. I wouldn’t recommend it.

Completely anecdotal, but I’ve been running mine plugged in non-stop for a year. I’ll need to go and sacrifice a chicken now to avoid the bad juju caused by even talking about it failing.

Edit: It’s the MyBook USB/eSata 1TB. I use it through USB only.

Personally I like my QBack-35S with WD’s GP 1TB drive, it spins down fine and its absolutely silent.
It’s also been on a year and half with constant access and its running fine.

The only problem I’ve encountered is I set my password using my old Vista 32 and when I migrated to Vista 64 it wouldn’t accept the password anymore, though if you set the password using Vista 64 it should work fine I hear. I can still access the rest of the drive though, I was only using a few GB for secure backup.

Thanks for the anecdotes and the Qback tip. The latter sounds like a lot more muscle than I need for some simple DVD back-ups, but is sure does look impressive. I’ll keep looking into it…