Help deciding between two network hard drives

patwa_2

Hello,

The free space on my current external Freecom ToughDrive Pro 160GB ran out today, as has th space on my laptop's 250GB drive.

I was originaly just going to settle for buying a new Freecom ToughDrive, now that they have the 250GB capacity. However, thinking of the future, I was wondering whether I shouldn't buy something bigger. I mean, logically, carrying even 160GB around with me in addition to my laptop is a lot.

This led me to looking at network drives, and I've found two that take my fancy:

Western Digital My Book World Edition II: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=340 - £255
Lacie Ethernet Big Disk: http://www.lacie.com/uk/products/product.htm?pid=10882 - £366.

I've heard that the WD, though cheaper, has a slower transfer speed. However, the Lacie seems to be more robust and comes with less 'show frills'. Having said that, the WD has a handy capacity meter on the outside of the case, but the Lacie supports user shares, etc.

I'm just looking for advice on which would be the better one to go for. I'm looking at 2TB here, that's the capacity matching the prices I've quoted above.

Cheers,

H.

albertross_2

Is it all compressed files mp3/mpg etc? If not, you could compress it.

patwa_2

Hi, most of it is compressed, documents to rar or tar/gzip. My main reason for getting the network drive would be so i can put my entire music collection on there, plus all the software I have, movies etc. Whereas I do compress i.e albums into archives, it is a pain having to uncompress them each time I want to listen to them.

Hence my req. for advice on which of the above two (or any other high capacity network drive) to go for.

Cheers,

H.

albertross_2

Haven't used either, so can't help, but seen a few posts about dead lacie drives.

If you buy one, then you might want another one for backup, and it starts to get very expensive. It might be cheaper in the long run to buy small and wait for the prices to tumble.

bookduck

maplin and ??? were doing a 1tb usb drive (maxtor) for £150 around xmas, It surely must have dropped in price a bit by now?

PC world ware also doing something similar

patwa_2

I'll by all means look at the Maxtor, although having had four internal SATA drives die on me in a row I'm sceptical of their quality and reliability.

H.

tomsolomon

Why not buy one or a couple of big drives for you home desktop, and upload any files to that, through local network or remotely. Use your desktop for data storage.
Ive not tried this myself yet, but may do.
http://www.download.com/Remote-Desktop-Manager/3000-7240_4-10611879.html?tag=lst-0-2&cdlPid=10840573

Bob63

Lacie is a great product.

WD have implemented copyright / digital rights management on their MyBook World Edition drives, which means that they will refuse to share certain types of file using the WD Anywhere Access facility.
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1495&p_created=1168641440&p_sid=bLTfVJLi&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9NSw1JnBfcHJvZHM9MCZwX2NhdHM9MCZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3NlYXJjaF90eXBlPWFuc3dlcnMuc2VhcmNoX2ZubCZwX3BhZ2U9MSZwX3NlYXJjaF90ZXh0PS5hdmk*&p_li=&p_topview=1

patwa_2

yes, that got me about the WD as well, which is a shame as otherwise it looks a good product for home use if you don't mind slow transfer speeds, and face it, for backup only that's not that big of a deal.

Therefore, it's looking like the Lacie is the better alternative. What I'll probably do is if the 1TB version is less than half the price of the 2TB version I'll go for that, otherwise I'll fork out for the 2TB version. I suppose if I need more space in the future I can always buy a second backup devices, I can have up to 238 of them on my current network lol.

As for the desktop PC idea, it's a good one, but not efficient in the long run from an energy saving point of view. Backup is the primary objective here, media access the second and remote access the third.

H.

sjc_2

I was in a similar situation and got a WD drive as well it got a G|igabit Ethernet adapter, has as my PC and Switch but it is painfully slow, so much so I do not use it. It's only 500GB but to transfer 300GB was nearly 17 Hours, reverted back to a direct USB Connected device rather than the NAS Drives.

Cheapest option I can see is getting a £200ish PC with Gigabit Network Card and using that as a media centre/network hard drive. That's my next option.