I seem to be having a lot of problems with external firewire drives. I've lost 2 in the last 6 months. One makes a weird clicking noise and the other just refuses to mount. Both drives have been Lacie drives. I know that can't be the norm. What kind of life do you get out of your external drivers? Do anyone recommend a good brand to use? I'm getting tired of my Lacie drives dieing
Average Life of External Hard Drive
- Thread starter thanhtan
- Start date
While external enclosures have been available for some time the line up of external self powered external drives has been rather recent in the last 2yrs. where no one can say just how long a good working drive will last. The initial complaints by some were that some ran hot? I haven't that to be the case with the Western Digital model in use here.
Lacie sounds like a generic brand just like any of the other quick popup names where they simply bulk order drives from a manufacturer(no one knows who) and slaps them in some cheap external casings! Stay with an established brand like WD or Seagate there.
As far as the drive not mounting you have to download the replacement zip files for the software and unpack that onto the drive to see the installer come up again or simply change the Factory Fat32 partition to NTFS where Windows will automatically install it as a new logical drive. With the Fat32 gone here I can unplug and replug the drive in to see the autoplay popup as the drive is redetected by Windows.
Lacie sounds like a generic brand just like any of the other quick popup names where they simply bulk order drives from a manufacturer(no one knows who) and slaps them in some cheap external casings! Stay with an established brand like WD or Seagate there.
As far as the drive not mounting you have to download the replacement zip files for the software and unpack that onto the drive to see the installer come up again or simply change the Factory Fat32 partition to NTFS where Windows will automatically install it as a new logical drive. With the Fat32 gone here I can unplug and replug the drive in to see the autoplay popup as the drive is redetected by Windows.
Twist86
Active Member
I have to agree with the above...Seagate or WD are a good choice.
I have had Seagate drives last over 32,000 hours and still kicking which is pretty impressive imo....though I don't use them but for internal storage drives (leave un-powered till I need um) since 2mb cache = SLOW vista boot ^-^
I have had Seagate drives last over 32,000 hours and still kicking which is pretty impressive imo....though I don't use them but for internal storage drives (leave un-powered till I need um) since 2mb cache = SLOW vista boot ^-^
From what others have mentioned lately they can take the drive out of an external housing and run the drive internally since the drives are still either a standard ide or sata drive simply placed in the self powered external housing. I haven't tried that one here quite yet since why break what isn't broke already!