Recommend External HDD for iMac?

PilotBrad · September 1, 2011

Now that my summer travel is complete I am getting ready to order a new iMac and I will also need a new external HDD to go along with it.

Does anyone have any suggestions for good quality, 1-3TB, QUIET, reasonably fast external HDD that will play nice with an iMac? I was hoping someone would have released a Thunderbolt drive by now, so I guess I'll just stick with FW800.

Art Scott · September 1, 2011

I no longer use an external drive for my archiving but instead use a ThermalTake Blac X harddrive docking unit(s)....mine are single drive docks but they make double drive docks also......this is so you can use an Internal Sata Drive just it were an USB external drive...they can be hot swapped and all....by using an Internal drive this way it keeps the heat down also........mine are 1st or 2nd generation docks but the boxes state Win / Mac.....mine being so old are only good for upto 2tb drives.......the newer ones are probably good for larger drives......

Finally........since internal drives have no enclosures they also take up less storage room......these docks do have off on switch so they can be turned off when not needed......and as to brands......I stake my business on Seagate and Hitachi.......both real quiet and reliable........they are the only 2 brands I will use any more....I have just way too much trouble wit hwestern Digital and Maxtor........Best Buy had 2tb Seagates for 89.99 last week.........

arodney · September 2, 2011

Love the build quality of Gtech drives. I have a good half dozen and they are rock solid albeit not the least expensive drives for sure.
http://www.g-technology.com/products/products.cfm
The G-Drive Mini (of which I own four) are great for location work. Run nice and cool. I also have a few G-Drive non mini's, better for a desktop workstation.

BradfordBenn · September 2, 2011

I am very happy with my Lacie drives, I have three.

MattDeRose · September 2, 2011

Personally I have had some issues with my seagate drive. My brother has had issues as well. We are both on macs. I have had to backup and restore/reformat the seagate drive twice since January. Not fun. Sometimes it mounts, sometimes it just disappears - have to unplug and power cycle...
With so many issues I bought an iomega 'mac edition' and have had zero issues with it. Wouldn't think anything would be different between drives and probably just a marketing ploy (mac edition) but... zero issues.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=iomega+mac&N=0&InitialSearch=yes

mstens · September 2, 2011

Yep, it's just a formatting and marketing issue (although it can be kind of nice not to have to format a drive out of the box). I just picked up a Gtech mini several weeks ago, so far I like it. That said, sooner or later I'll spend the dosh on a Thunderbolt RAID array.. something like this http://store.apple.com/us/product/H5184VC/A/Thunderbolt?n=thunderbolt&fnode=MTY1NDA0Nw&mco=MjI4MTM1ODg&s=topSellers

PilotBrad · September 3, 2011

Thanks everyone! I just purchased the iMac yesterday, and I am getting everything moved over this weekend so I'll need something soon.

antibiotic · September 10, 2011

I agree, i really like the G-Tech line, though I can't wait to see what comes out affordable with the new Thundervolt.

arodney wrote: »

Love the build quality of Gtech drives. I have a good half dozen and they are rock solid albeit not the least expensive drives for sure.
http://www.g-technology.com/products/products.cfm
The G-Drive Mini (of which I own four) are great for location work. Run nice and cool. I also have a few G-Drive non mini's, better for a desktop workstation.

PilotBrad · September 10, 2011

I ended up buying a 2TB G-Drive, and so far I am really happy. I wish I could have waited for a Thunderbolt drive, but I have a feeling they are going to be charging a premium at first so I guess I'll just have to get by with FW800 for a while. ;-)

arodney · September 12, 2011

antibiotic wrote: »

I agree, i really like the G-Tech line, though I can't wait to see what comes out affordable with the new Thundervolt.

http://www.powerpage.org/2011/09/09/hitachi-announces-4tb-external-hard-drive-unit-includes-thunderbolt-port/

Affordable? Can’t say.

Manfr3d · September 14, 2011

PilotBrad wrote: »

Now that my summer travel is complete I am getting ready to order a new iMac and I will also need a new external HDD to go along with it.

Does anyone have any suggestions for good quality, 1-3TB, QUIET, reasonably fast external HDD that will play nice with an iMac? I was hoping someone would have released a Thunderbolt drive by now, so I guess I'll just stick with FW800.

Western digital studio is a very good FW800 drive. If I had a Thunderbolt iMac I would buy something that supports that however.

2quick2clique · September 22, 2011

Manfr3d wrote: »

Western digital studio is a very good FW800 drive. If I had a Thunderbolt iMac I would buy something that supports that however.

Friend, please do yourself a favor, and put that device back in the horse it exited from.

I run a Mac repair shop (all we do is Mac - portables, desktops, board repairs, recover data, etc), and WD drives are one of our better income sources.

The only thing better is the "MyBook" drives by Seagate (those are terrible devices).

We've never once had to do a recovery on a G-Tech drive. Not to say they don't fail, but we've never seen one.

There is something to be said for an aluminum housing for a hard drive:
1. it can absorb a metric ton of thermal heat directly from the hard drive, which translates to cooler drives
2. it makes the drive heavier, which translates to better vibration/shock protection.

the G-techs have thermal fan control as well - the fans stay off till they get really warm.. then the fans cut on.. very nice for when you're needing a quiet work environment.

personally, I prefer my NASBox RAID.. We build 'em for clients: a 2-3 yr old Dell running our own stripped flavor of linux with a concatenation of patches and a web-based storage setup.. they run from 1-8 tb in size, and well, if you're on a good gigabit network, they'll outperform any Firewire 800 drive (albeit a bit slower than eSata).

They can easily run Time Machine for all your Macs (think 1 TimeMachine drive instead of 1 for each machine in your shop/house), with data in redundant Raid 3, 4 or 5 configuration (exponentially lower risk of failure than any other possible setup due to inherent double or triple redundancy).

I'm not trying to sell one here - just letting you know there are real options which do exist.... The software is free out on the web and a great way to go, if you're able to swim with the penguins (ie, work in Linux). If not, you can hire a dweeb like me to punch keys and make it all happy...

Manfr3d · September 22, 2011

Thanks for the advice. I guess I must consider myself lucky,
because I have not had any WD drives fail me within the last
5 or 6 years until yesterday. I currently run:

+ 2x 500GB WD Elements (the old silver ones)
+ 2x 1500GB WD Elements
+ 2x 2TB WD MyBook Studio II (mirroring)
+ 2x 1TB WD MyBook Essentials

One of the old 500GB Drives just failed. Maybe that should get me thinking

I'd buy other brand too .. if only their drives weren't so darn ugly.

2quick2clique · September 22, 2011

Manfr3d wrote: »

Thanks for the advice. I guess I must consider myself lucky,
because I have not had any WD drives fail me within the last
5 or 6 years until yesterday. I currently run:

+ 2x 500GB WD Elements (the old silver ones)
+ 2x 1500GB WD Elements
+ 2x 2TB WD MyBook Studio II (mirroring)
+ 2x 1TB WD MyBook Essentials

One of the old 500GB Drives just failed. Maybe that should get me thinking
I'd buy other brand too .. if only their drives weren't so darn ugly.

The MyBooks are the ones that we see all the time.. they use low end power supplies, and fry the drives....

Recommend External HDD for iMac?

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