What is the best external hardrive for a Mac?
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Lacie…...really
But it doesn’t really matter what brand as long as it works and is fast/reliable
The trick is this: find out who makes the actual hard drive inside the enclosure. The “enclosure” is the thing stamped “LaCie,” “Iomega,” “Maxtor,” or whatever. The enclosure doesn’t matter. Graphic designers I know swear by their LaCie drives, which uses drives manufactured by Western Digital. Iomega’s drives are made by Hitachi. WD and Hitachi have good reputations, Maxtor and Quantum do not. (Your mileage may vary.)
Here’s what I would do if I were you. I would buy a Western Digital internal hard disk at whatever size you need. Then, I would buy a third-party enclosure (CoolMax makes a great triple-interface one that I love to pieces) and install the drive in it. (It’s not difficult, and doesn’t require tools.)
In four years, when the drive dies—and it will, prepare for it—you just take out the old disk, and replace it with a new disk in the same enclosure. It’s cheap and flexible.
And that is the super duper important thing to remember: Every hard disk will fail. It’s a consumable item, much like a printer cartridge. You’ll wear it out, and one day it won’t work. So back up your data!
LaCie’s are always highly rated. I have an iomega, and am satisfied.
I have always had good luck with Western Digital drives, and Seagate. Bad luck with Maxtor. I also second what the above post mentions – buy and internal drive and an enclosure, that way you can swap out the drive in the future when you want a larger capacity.
mrtomservo makes a valid point, but to completely ignore the manufacture of the enclosure is a mistake. for example, lacie uses western digital drives in both their d2 enclosures and their porsche enclosures; the porsche drives fail much more often because they do not have good fans or venting. the d2 enclosures are very sturdy, dissipate heat well, and have a high quality fan.
so i would agree with mrtomservo’s advice, but amend it: buy a disk and an enclosure, but research the enclosure and make sure you get a well built one with a good fan.
I have never had anything but trouble with LaCie. I had 4 of them at 3 different places I worked and they all died.
Seagate barracodas have always been the hard runners for me. Never had one problem.
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