Best manufacturer of cheap hard disk storage

Ceroc Addict

Ceroc Addict

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Want to get a 1Tb LaCie external hard drive, but can't afford it.

Can anyone name a cheaper brand(s) that make 1Tb disks that they would still trust?

Kap
 
there are no 1tb disks. they are external firewire or usb RAID units, with several ultra-ata drives.
 
I wouldn't buy anything but a LaCie external...very happy with mine and the cost isn't that bad, as long as you don't go after the latest in size from them. I do know two people who have the single drive enclosures bought from OWC...they've worked fine for them.


MacSales.com/OWC has a http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Othe...]dual drive firewire (800) enclosure for $130. It'll accept up to two 600GB SATA drives, or regular IDE/ATA drives. The price is still slightly cheaper than two of their stackable single drive FW400 enclosures ($68).

TigerDirect has a long list of enclosures...some are USB/USB2 only though.

TigerDirect has two 400GB SATA drives currently listed, one by Seagate and one by Hitachi. They go for $380 and $400 respectively a piece.

NewEgg has four 400GB SATA drives currently listed, two by Segate and two by Hitachi. Prices are $280 or $289 for the Hitachi models, and $309 or $329 for the Segate models.​


NewEgg has the 1TB Lacie Extreme FW800/400 drive for $871 US. They also have the 1TB Lacie Extreme FW800/400/USB2 drive for $900. Amazon has the LaCie 1TB D2 Extreme for $850.

You could buy 4 of the 250GB LaCie single drive based enclosures and stack them. They're selling for $186 each at NewEgg right now. Or buy 4 of the D2 single 250GB drives and use the desktop rack they sell to hold them. Of course, by the time you do that you'd spend less on the 1GB D2 Extreme.
 
When it comes to external firewire drive units, they are basically all exactly the same. Just about every single maker uses the Oxford 911 chipset and the same exact drives made by ibm/hitachi/western digital/maxtor/etc. The only difference between a LaCie external drive and a no name one is the case itself (ie. the fans and power supply in the case). The actual firewire portion and the drive portions are exatly the same.

As to the 1TB drive, as was previously mentioned there is no such thing as a 1TB external drive unit that is not using RAID to do so. That is where the cost is, in the RAID hardware.

Brian
 
Another option is to get something like this:
G-SATA

It is an external case, and holds two SATA drives. you then connect them with two SATA cables (and the included PCI adapter). For raid, you could either: use a different SATA card that does hardware RAID, or use OSX Software RAID.

I would choose option a personally.
 
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