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I have and external USB2 HD box that can take both serial and parallel internal drives. I want to upgrade the 128 gb internal drive that it now has in it to a 500gb internal drive. I don't need the fastest thing available, but something in keeping with USB2 speed.

Any suggestions? This is for day to day use not just archiving. It spends most of the time hooked up to a netbook that I will be using LR and Bibblelabs Pro on.

I recommend the green series from western digital.

Anything by seagate is a long lasting success. I have never had a serious problem with either Seagate, Western Digital or Toshiba drives, but what gets me is the 5 year warranty that Seagate offers.

Only once have I had a Seagate drive fail and they replaced it in 2 days without me even sending them the drive back first. They sent me the new drive in a box and a return label for the defective drive.

I also agree though that the Western Digital Green Series is fantastic for efficiency and price.

http://www.tpmg.ca/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13535
http://www.tpmg.ca/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9344

I use Western Digital Passport drives.

Are the passport drives fast enough for everyday use all be it usb 2, or are they only good for archiving, ie start the backup and go to bed. I have 2 1TB WD Bookshelf drives for that purpose.

The passports are great for everyday use. USB 2.0, light weight, not bulky. I think there's a newer version that's even lighter. "My Passport Essential" is what you're looking for. I use the "My Book" drives for archiving.

Thanks, I think I may go with the My Passport Essential Drive. Costco has a 750GB drive for 149.00. Would that be about the right price for the drive. I don't know if they have them in the store, but the online price includes shipping, I will check for in store availablity and price. Sometimes the in store price varies from the online and the difference can go either way.

The price is average. Nothing cheaper as of now. I would wait for a sale if you don't need it yet.

I always refer to RedFlagDeals.com to keep up to date.

Something to keep in mind when you make a decision on a hard drive based on the warranty

1. You loose your data on the drive when it fails. It doesn't matter if it's a 2,3, 5 or 10 year warranty, once the data is gone, it's gone.

2. Statistically over the past 5 years, the drive capacity doubles every 6 months, for the same cost you paid for your drive.


I had a Seagate drive that had a 5 year warranty. The drive failed around the year 4 mark. The cost to ship the defective drive to seagate to get it repaired was more that the cost to replace the drive drive with a new one that had double the capacity. Hard drives have now pretty much become a throw away media. If you can get 1TB for under $100, and the smallest new drive is 250gb for $48, I'd put more value to the data stored on the drive, than the actual drive itself.

Matt.
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Anything other than a Seagate. I've owned a lot of drives over the years and had my share of failures. Every failure except one has been a Seagate and every Seagate drive I've had since 1997 has failed (I keep getting them as OEM drives in systems, and keep having to replace them).

Futureshop has Iomega 1TB drives on sale for $99. $150 for a 750GB is way too expensive, even for overpriced name-brand stuff.

Thanks mawz, just one question for clarity, does the Iomega drive have the speed for day to day use as opposed for just archival use?

Unless they recently changed their policy the five years warranty applies only to OEM disks. The retail boxed disks carry the one (maybe two?) year warranty.

From what I've seen, Seagate drives have seen an unusual number of failures the last couple of years. I'm about to buy about 4-6 WD Green or Black drives.

Anyone see any good deals on 1 or 1.5TB ones?

If you are buying a Western Digital drive, make sure it's a black. The green drives are not really what they say. They don't spin at a constant 7200rpm, so the true thruput is not all that great. They work fine for backup or storage drives as they have a large cache on them. The drive spins at a variable rate.

The black drive however comes with a smaller cache, but a constant 7200rpm. Far faster in the long run.

Matt.

I can't see an external USB2 enclosure taking advantage of the higher performance of a high speed drive. USB2 is going to be the limiting factor anyways.

+1

USB 2.0 is the bottleneck. Unless using eSATA, spindle speed doesn't matter. As a matter of fact, I prefer 5400rpm drive in external case because they are usually cooler runing than 7200rpm drive, and given the fact that the drive is inside a small / close enclosure, cooler running drive is more preferable in my book.

Which is why a green drive may actually be perfectly fine. I believe those run at 5400rpm.

Yes. Green is 5400rpm. Another thing to look out for thou (there's always a catch... ) The newer 1TB to 2TB WD green drive with the model number ending EARS (1TB will be WD10EARS for example) use a bigger disk sector...omitting all the technical blah blah blah..., to use them in Windows XP, one will need to download a utility from WD to re-optimize the drive. You can Google "WD 4KB sector" to view more technical information.