10-02-2007, 03:21 PM

Does anyone know a good external USB harddrive thats reliable for recording music onto?

Im going to eventually do layered recording so need something that got zero latency like firewire...

10-02-2007, 03:58 PM

I have a 320gb LaCie external that works great. It actually fell from about 3ft and still works perfectly fine. They use Seagate drives which I've never, ever had problems with.

You could, of course, just buy a plain-old SATA HDD and an SATA USB enclosure. It may be a bit cheaper.

10-02-2007, 04:04 PM

Originally Posted by Lycus

I have a 320gb LaCie external that works great. It actually fell from about 3ft and still works perfectly fine. They use Seagate drives which I've never, ever had problems with.

You could, of course, just buy a plain-old SATA HDD and an SATA USB enclosure. It may be a bit cheaper.

Do you record str8 onto it?

Multiple instruments etc....???


BTW whoever moved this post shouldnt have it is music recording related more than external drive, i know where i can buy external dirves, i need to know a good one for zero latency recoridng from a macbook with logic...

10-02-2007, 10:19 PM

Sorry to be negative, but I've bought two 500gb that crashed within a year and I lost all of my data. The third and fourth were given to me by WD warraty replacement because of the crashed drives. I've had no problems with #'s 3 and 4.

10-03-2007, 03:10 PM

Originally Posted by chronic

Do you record str8 onto it?

Multiple instruments etc....???


BTW whoever moved this post shouldnt have it is music recording related more than external drive, i know where i can buy external dirves, i need to know a good one for zero latency recoridng from a macbook with logic...

I run several applications (including games) directly from the HDD with absolutely no lag. If you just get a HDD running at 7200RPM and using either Firewire or USB2.0 you won't notice it being much any different from an internal.

10-03-2007, 10:39 PM

To be honest, you'll get better performance if you record to the internal hard drive instead. You can then copy the file over the the external.

10-11-2007, 02:30 AM

250 GB Seagate
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MEWA:IT&ih=005
500 GB WD
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MEWA:IT&ih=002
1 TB Iomega
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....#productdetail

Now as you can see the prices increase and also the deal get's better I believe. Of course things are going to seem cheaper on eBay but I swear all the drives with firewire are expensive as anything from stores and apple and what not so I'm thinking I'm getting a great deal with which ever one of these I get. Bigger is better and I want the Iomega. Give me feedback on what would be a good decision. Keep in mind I'm not going to settle for anything without Firewire 400 at least. Appreciate it.

10-11-2007, 03:24 AM

The first drive is not a Factory Seagate. That is a CompUSA case. I have that case and started getting errors and data corruption with every hard drive I had in it. It was something with the Firewire chip in the enclosure. I lost data 2x with that till I realized it was the case and not the hard drive.

Looks like someone put a Seagate 250GB drive in that CompUSA case. I would avoid that at all costs. The 2nd and 3rd are valid WD and Iomega drives.

Just a footnote, a close friend happened to purchase that same exact CompUSA Enclosure and had the same drive corruption problem after a few months as I did. Just a warning.

10-11-2007, 05:30 AM

I too am considering an external drive. i have looked at reviews for Seagate, Iomega, WD, and LaCie. I REALLy like the LaCie designs. I read somewhere that they use Seagate drives? But others tell of horror stories with reliability and tech support. I just don't know who to trust!

10-11-2007, 05:37 AM

With LaCie I have never had any issues but I have also read the Horror Stores. Some might be bad luck or exaggerations, but one thing that bothers me, I really want to know FOR SURE what drive is in the case, and with LaCie I am not sure. I know the biggest group of complaints I have read are about the Porsche series drives. The D2/3 seem to be good at least with the ones I have ran into.

If you get a Seagate or WD you know what Drive is in that case. I have 2 WD externals and one Seagate and all have been trouble free for around 2 years now. Iomega is another I worry about because what drive are they giving you?? One friend had a Iomega with a WD drive, but I am not sure what they use in their whole line. Drives are getting better as time goes on but there are still duds out there. I have had very good luck of late with Seagate and WD as far as the raw drives. Also I have had very good customer service from WD. A 10K Raptor died under warrantee and they cross shipped a replacement to me and sent me a box for the old drive. They gave me a brand new Raptor 10K SATA. I was very impressed with their service.

I hope some of the above at least helps.

10-14-2007, 06:49 AM

I am getting my first external hard drive. I'm thinking of getting 1 TB and then dividing that into two 500 GB hard drives so I can have two backups.

Three questions:

1 - Can I do that? If I buy 1 TB, can I divide the storage into two separate hard drives?

2 - Any recommendations? Is there much of a difference between the major brands?

3 - I usually go to buy.com for these sorts of things. Does anyone else have a website they recommend?

Thanks!

10-14-2007, 07:24 AM

1) Yes, you can divide a drive into two partitions. Be sure that if the HD fails, both your partitions are gone in the dust. Of course, it is a different case if there are two individual hard drives in the external casing, but I don't think you are talking about that.

2) I'd recommend the Western Digital MyBook series. Choose one that fits your bill. Also, I'd highly recommend Firewire since you are gonna be dealing with a lot of storage and it really kicks' USB's ***. The difference between FW400 and FW800 is not so apparent in non-RAID setups as such, so FW400 should be enough. Doesn't hurt to get a FW800 drive though.

10-14-2007, 08:44 AM

1) To elaborate on goobi's answer - you will not have two separate hard drives - you have a single drive and can create 2 partitions on that single drive. This will not really give you two back ups as both of them will be on the same physical drive, just on 2 separate partitions. If the drive fails - both of your back ups are gone.

2) A lot of folks are using the WD MyBook series of drives and I have been a long time user of WD drives, particularly their enterprise class drives (you'll know them by the 5 yr warranty they have). Agreed with goobi, go with at least FW 400 if you will be transferring a lot of large files on an ongoing basis. Also like the Seagate drives and the 5 yr warranty on their consumer version drives.

3) As to places for purchasing a drive, newegg is tuff to beat as far as the combination of price and customer service. OWC is another you may want to look at. I have used one of their external cases and the Seagate 705GB drive.

If you like to read and research your devices, you may like this thread from my own research a few months ago. Pricing may have varied some by now, but for the most part is still OK.

And if you really want two back ups - this will require two drives, not a single drive with two partitions.

10-14-2007, 07:37 PM

Just to add, the WD Mybook gave me nothing but trouble, WD replaced it multiple times within one year and it never went for more than 4 months without failing and me losing my data.

10-17-2007, 06:25 AM

i am leaning more and more towrds the "bulid-it-yourself" route. i have been searching NewEgg and found the Icy Dock aluminum enclosure in SATA 3.5" with Firewire 800 and a Seagate 500GB drive. all for $220 before shipping?

Anyone have experience with Icy Dock?

Christian