external harddrives firewire/usb2/nas

[corno]

hi guys,

Do you have any recommendations in the area of external harddrives usb2.0 or firewire?
For 4 months I've had a Maxtor Onetouch II 300gb drive as my primary backup drive but it hasn't worked for a week now, not on my desktop, laptop nor on my mac - a little disappointing... I've now written to ask Maxtor what the heck the problem is - but I have considered exchanging it for a more reliable brand (not that I've had major problems with Maxtor in the past).
I've also considered a NAS-like (Network attached storage) drive, I already have a Longshine and a Linksys NSLUG server on my network, but the accesstimes are abysmal to say the least, and I'd like an external drive for my backup needs... Maxtor have made a NAS-like drive, but I'm not so sure about Maxtor anymore, and I really don't think they've improved the reading/writing speeds of these lower end network storage devices yet...

Any suggestions anyone?

 

[Frederik Magle]

I can't help you with the network drive (I don't know enough about those drives).
I use two LaCie 500 GB FireWire BigDisks myself, but one of them had to be replaced because of a hardware fault. Basically any drive can fail, I'm not sure Maxtor has a higher failure rate than others.

What are your drive's symptoms?

 

[corno]

The drive spins up like normal when it's turned on, but none of the computers recognize it when connected (either via USB og FW - makes no difference - though the USB connection on the Windows based machines comes up with an unknown USB device eventhough the drivers have been installed and uninstalled and reinstalled again - the mac doesn't take any notice of the drive whatsoever, regardless of the type of connection used.
I've tried to powercycle the drive following the Maxtor-guidelines (somthing about unpluging the datacable from the computer or the drive while both are on, waiting 10 seconds, turning of the drive, waiting again, turning on the drive, waiting again and then pluging it in again - but to no reaction whatsoever)...

 

[corno]

Quick update: the drive will be returned to Maxtor - there's, big surprise, something not quite right about it according to the tech-guys at Maxtor... I hope the next drive will have a longer lifespan.

 

[WalkingTheSky]

If you're still taking advice, I just bought one by SimpleTech, it's a great little machine. Lots of space, easy to use and was relatively inexpensive.

 

[corno]

Do you have any tech-specs/links for that one?

 

[WalkingTheSky]

http://www.simpletech.com/estore/index.php?cmp=KAC-KW6762152713

Hope this helps.

 

[corno]

Thanks... I'll look into it...
Now I've finally got a RMA in progress with Maxtor, so hopefully I'll have a replacement in hand within a short periode of time... I just hope it'll live just a wee bit longer than the old one...