Quick hard drive question

Can anyone recommend a decent external HD? I'm hoping for something fairly portable but durable. I had ordered one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-WDXMS2500TN-Passport-Portable/dp/B000RY2PLQ/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1199567046&sr=8-1

but it turns out my powerbook is not new enough to power it without a powered USB cable, which uses both USB ports and is therefore useless. Any reliable alternatives? I guess I might look at a firewire drive as I'm never far from a power outlet, but I'd like something easy to carry around with me.

Thanks!

I've had good luck with the bigger Western Digital MyBook drives, as well as putting internal drives in cheap external enclosures (which are smaller than the MyBook). They've all traveled well, on road trips and planes - but they all require a power outlet.

How much data do you need to carry? Is a big memory card an option?

Probably not - this would be for video editing. The MyBook reviews make it sound like it doesn't like Powerbooks.

There are some good LaCie bus-powered firewire drives that you might like.

xpost: Do NOT get a bus-powered drive for video editing!

Bus-powered enclosures almost always use 2.5" disks, which, unless they're SAS, are significantly slower than 3.5" disks.

Am going to get a 1TB external for my MacMini soonish. All recommendations welcome.

http://www.buy.com/prod/lacie-mini-320gb-external-320gb-hard-drive/q/loc/101/203018508.html

I'd like to get one or two big-ass hard drives for my Mac Pro. Thinking about the Seagate Barracuda, 1 TB or 1.5 TB. Any yeas or nays? General HD recommendations wanted for SATA drives in that size range, I guess.

I can't give any positive recommendations in that size, but just from the chatter I heard when I was researching them a few months ago, avoid the 7200.11 drives - there was supposedly a firmware fix but the bad rep remains (I'm guessing .10 and .12 are okay, it's specifically certain makes of .11). Similarly I'm not sure 1.5tb drive tech has matured yet, but maybe by now it has? I'm guessing most drives at newegg with a 4/5 star review is safe, especially if there are hundreds of ratings.

Thanks -- the 7200.12 1TB for $100 looks like it might be a done deal.

I've had good luck buying OEM Western Digital drives from Newegg. My Mac Pro now has a 300 gig, a 500 gig and a 1tb. All Western Digital. The 300 is what came with the computer, the 500 I pulled out of my old mac and the 1tb I installed for Time Machine.

All the harddrive research I read basically said Western Digital or Seagate, that you'll find people complaining about one or the other because nobody's perfect and there's always bad apples. I've had 2 Lacie harddrives (not sure what was inside) that died on me.

This is my 1TB:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284

same deal as the Seagate but has over 900 reviews.

Thanks for the recommendation dan, I got two of those WD Caviars. I'd never ordered from Newegg before and it was a little nerve-wracking to see all the complaints in their reviews about padding/packaging. But everything seems okay so far.

I named them Lurch and Fester.

Anybody here who could maybe help with suggestions of what to do with a hard drive that isn't being acknowledged when I plug it in and is beeping?

Pay hundreds of dollars to a data recovery place, otherwise hit it with a hammer and put it in the trash

Like if you can’t get the drive to mount at all you are beyond the help of anyone without deep knowledge and specialized equipment.

first replace the cable. if this doesn't work, the drive is broken, you could go down to a local computer shop and get someone to take out the physical media inside and put it in another drive, they will probably charge you a fair amount though.

thanks, it's pretty clearly the drive. There's about four tb of data in there i really dont wanna lose; will need to find someone reliable in the BK area i guess.