EXternal H'drive up to 1tb, which 1?

Hey, I'm aware that there are many threads like this but those didn't really seem to suit me.

I'm looking for a 1tb h'drive for my mac, and it should be windows compatible when i get my boot camp running. My maxtor 1tb just died on me... ya so i have to get another hd for backup.

My h'drive can be firewire or usb whichever is better, i won't mind paying more money for it since the data is quite important, my files + Time machine backups. Though it must be 1tb or more, 500 is far too little.

I like FW personally, faster speed is always good.

Is you Maxtor not under warranty? Most drives have a 3 year warranty from the manufacturer.

If you're willing to spend, why not go with 1.5Tb or even 2Tb....?

that could be good, any recommendations?

I've always been a fan of "build your own" when it comes to externals. For instance, I just purchased a 1Tb Seagate SATA II drive for $69.99 this evening and paired it to an external Firewire 400 case that ran me $29.99. Out the door for ~$109. Drives are cheap and so are cases. A comparable name brand off the shelf drive would have run me ~$145 out the door. Not much, but it's something.

On a side note I go with FW as it has a higher continuous throughput when transferring data vice USB 2. It always seemed silly to me to put a large, fast drive into a fairly slow case such as USB 2. I really should be going with FW 800 but I'm not willing to pay for the cases just yet. This is just a personal preference though. IF I really wanted to get speed I'd buy an eSATA PCI card for my Mac and use eSATA vice any FW.

well i can't really make myself a hard drive since i'm kinda rushing for a hard drive... thinking of a seagate or a lacie

Are you buying on-line or in a store?

i'm buying from a store. Challenger, heard of it?

No, but there are lots of chains around. My point though is that you can buy both the drive and the case at Challenger, probably for less money than a pre-assembled drive, and get more "bang" for your buck so to speak. I mean, you have to go to the store already, building your own simply requires you to put the drive in the case, hook it up and format it. Not a lot of work for the potential savings really.

Anyhow, that's just my thinking...

Build your own like baggss recommended. It's cheaper and you can piece together what you want.
And don't forget Firewire baby!!!

yea thats great, thanks for helping. I also thought of making hard drive soon, but its quite difficult to get the parts and make..=.=

It's not that hard. You buy a drive and you buy a case. Putting the two together takes maybe 5 min. I don't mean build your own drive from scratch, or your own case. These are items that should be readily available at you local computer store.

I have very little trust of anything from Seagate anymore, to many failed drives for me.

I now have two external setups. I use a Macally enclosure with a 500GB WD drive, Firewire 400 for my Time Machine.

And I just purchased a Guardian MAXimus from Newmar Tech. I then added two WD 1TB Black drives and connected with Firewire 800. The Guardian comes setup for Raid-1 Mirror. Its a sweet little box, drives can bit a tad loud but I'll move it off to the lower part of the desk later on and that should solve that issue.