Good Ext. HDD to use with SuperDuper

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Well im 0 for 1 on external hard drives. I bought a 160 GB Maxtor Basics personal storage 3200. It worked great the first time I backed up my HDD to the external using Super Duper. A week later I use it with SuperDuper to do another backup and it worked fine. I was impressed. One week later (2 weeks after purchase) the thing makes an aweful clicking noise and it will no longer backup my files. Paid about $135 for it and its going back tomorrow. Its been about 19 days since I bought it and the Office Mac receipt says 2 weeks maximum for refund on this kind of stuff....I dont care, they WILL be giving my money back. My question is:

I need a RELIABLE, BOOTABLE external hdd for my 8 month old MBP. It will be used mainly to backup my HDD so if anything were to happen, I have all my info saved and ready to be booted to a new HDD. Prolly around a 160 GB would be fine. I dont really care about price at this point, I just want something I can be happy with. I was using USB 2.0 connection and I wasn't impressed. I would like firewire so I can keep it plugged in w/o using up a port and for the faster speed. I use Super Duper so it needs to function well with that also. Let me here it people, what do I need to do? Got any suggestions? Thanks a ton!!!
 

cwa107


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Sounds like a mechanical failure with the old (new) external drive. If it's not covered by the store's return policy, it will most definitely be covered by the manufacturer.

As to recommendations, I highly recommend Seagate drives. They are now warranted to 5 years (the longest in the industry) and this is very telling of the confidence they have in their product. I've yet to see a Seagate desktop (3.5") drive fail in recent years. I have a 300GB Maxtor One-Touch drive with USB and Firewire that I've been very happy with thus far, but I would understand your reluctance to purchase another Maxtor product (I only bought it instead of a Seagate because Costco had it on sale at a healthy discount).
 
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Well, everybody deserves a second chance. I wont hate on Maxtor just because I've had a bad experience. Even my mac has had some issues, but I still love it. Its just that external HDD are essential to what I do. As a student, I do EVERYTHING with my mac and to lose everything on an external HDD, would be catastrophic. Luckily, it was only 2 weeks old and my original mac HDD still had everything current. I will take your experience with Seagate and check them out. I appreciate your reply!
 

cwa107


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Well, everybody deserves a second chance. I wont hate on Maxtor just because I've had a bad experience. Even my mac has had some issues, but I still love it. Its just that external HDD are essential to what I do. As a student, I do EVERYTHING with my mac and to lose everything on an external HDD, would be catastrophic. Luckily, it was only 2 weeks old and my original mac HDD still had everything current. I will take your experience with Seagate and check them out. I appreciate your reply!

You certainly have the right idea. I do exactly the same thing - weekly backups to my external drive using SuperDuper.

I work as a network admin - and unfortunately, I see a lot of failed hard drives in my line of work - so it's not unusual to spot a trend here or there. In recent years, Seagate has really earned my trust.

Years ago, ALL of the manufacturers warranted drives for at least 3 years. In recent years, that warranty dropped to 1 year for almost all the manufacturers. Seagate had been struggling a few years ago and losing market share, so they brought back the 5 year warranty. I think Western Digital and Maxtor followed suit and also brought back longer warranties, although I think they're only doing 3 years at the moment.
 
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MacBook Pro 2,33GHz C2D 2GB RAM 256MB video + LCD Samsung 20" 206BW + Maxtor OneTouch III 500GB
Seagate and Maxtor are just one company, right?
 

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