New hard drive

[Bobby]

WD for me...

[Bob]

I have had too many Maxtor drives die over the years so I don't touch them anymore.

Maxtor has had a spotty past. But, that Maxtor doesn't exist anymore. As of May 2006, Seagate owns Maxtor and positive changes have already been occuring. Seagate is a good sound company which has been around a long time -- they provided the hard drives for the original IBM XT (they were known as Shugart Technology back then). Seagate is now the largest disk drive manufacturer in the world. I'm not sure how far Seagate has come consolidating the companies, but eventually Maxtor will be just a marketing brand.

The last two drives I purchased were Seagate drives.

[Chuck Engels]

I have a number of Seagate drives as well, my new 1TB drive is a Seagate
Still like WD best of all though.

[Tony Wade]

Thanks guys, I am going with a Western Digital 1Tb for £94 here in the UK. Delivered for that price. Includes cables etc new. Not a bad deal I think.
Thanks for your advice.

[jackfalbey]

Important article if you're looking at a WD MyBook World Edition:
http://www.techradar.com/news/computing ... ons-148780

[Tony Wade]

Thanks Jack, I was considering one of those but I'm not into being a hub etc and I didn't know enough about it so I bought the WD 1tb (normal) tonight.
Right now I only have 2x250gb drives, so getting an extra 1000gb all of a sudden is going to make my heart go flutter and seek out the wife.
I plan to put ALL my storage on there and use my other EXT 250 for ongoing editing, while my INT 250 will be all the programs etc etc.
I think that makes sense.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

All of my hard drives are WD. No problems to date.

[Tony Wade]

Since I posted, my Phillips 250gig HD crashed and I lost every video on it. I had not yet received my new WD 1tb drive...
I have since bought another WD My Book 1tb, to have 2 WD's.
I hope WD's will last...???

QUESTION:?
Is a H drive's life shortened if you have it close to full?
My 250gb drive was close to max when it crashed. It crashed when I was not using it, just wasn't there when I booted up one morning.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

In my view, the 'fullness' of a drive shouldn't affect it in any way. Did you lose anything vital on the drive? There are companies in the UK that will try to recover data from a dead drive but I suspect that it is not cheap.

[Bobby]

Being full will not crash your hard drive.

But you should use them on a regular basis - take them off the shelf and plug them into your PC once a month or so.

There used to be a problem called "stiction" where the heads would stick to the recording surface. This was because the heads float over the surface in operation by a cushion of air created by the aerodynamic properties of the head. But when not rotating, this doesn't happen. But stickion is an old problem and not normally an issue now. The bearing in the motor can also stick sometimes. Again, regular use should help.

[Tony Wade]

Thank you both.
The drive was plugged in and used regularly.
I gave it to a Polish geek that I know, who seems to be so savvy that he might have been a founder of Microsoft (He's not however, as he works cheap as he needs the money).

He say's that he can recognise file names etc, so I have left it to him. Everything on the drive was edited personal projects, not client projects, and I have the back-up tapes (unedited)...Oh well, I think the drive died because it knew I was buying another one and was jealous

btw, the drive lasted one year only.

[stanatou]

Western Digital appears to be a favorite here. Best buy is showing this one on-line for $120 today: My Book Essential Edition 750GB External Hard Drive
Model: WDH1U7500N | SKU: 8475731

I just need a place to store current project(s) video and move it to my 'working' drive as needed. That being the case, is there any reason this drive wouldn't be a good idea?

Stan

[Chuck Engels]

That is a very good drive Stan, and the price is reasonable.
You may be able to find it for closer to $100 if you look around, I'm sure you can find a 500gb for under $100 that might be enough space for you.
But all in all the price and size are a good buy.

[George Tyndall]

I use western digitals also and I also like LaCie drives.

My 1Tb LaCie external died 2 weeks after the 1-year warranty expired.

[stanatou]

My wife got me the My Book Essential Edition 750GB External Hard Drive for Christmas (as I had hoped and hinted ). I've got it hooked up and opertional but have a question regarding the 'advertised' capacity. Out of the box, it was formated as FAT32 and showed 715gb available. Following the instructions provided, I reformatted the drive to NTSC and it dropped to 698gb. Is this normal or did I do something wrong when reformatting the drive?

Stan