Topic: Rugged portable hard drives for field use (Read 6737 times)

Swede · « **on:** December 30, 2008, 02:10:59 pm »

Dear friends,

I'm looking for a good rugged portable hard drive of 500 GB for field use.

My options seems to be between;

LaCie rugged All-terrain (142 x 90 x 27.5 mm/ 250 grams)
or
Transcend StoreJet 25 Mobile (134 x 80 x 19 mm/ 206 grams)

The Transcend is a little bit smaller and lighter than the LaCie and Transcend has passed the US Military “Drop-test”.
Review: http://livingdigitalindia.ciol.com/Archive...0_Archives.aspx
But the drop test doesn't appear to be much of a fall; 76 cm onto plywood on top of concrete.

Another non scientific "test" can be found here:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology...ws/4275478.html

I have seen Iomega have a few options but no 500 GB.

Anyone having experience to share and recommendations for me?

Thanks.

heinrichvoelkel · « **Reply #1 on:** December 30, 2008, 03:06:14 pm »

Don't buy the Lacie. Or any Lacie...

I bought two and both were dead on arrival...even worse..they corrupted files while writing...not easy to see or recognize...except sitting at your clients office hearing the files are having streaks in it...

David Sutton · « **Reply #2 on:** December 30, 2008, 04:50:37 pm »

I'd stay away from 500gb usb powered drives. Too many things to go wrong.
I think the "rugged'" label is often misleading and you often pay extra for no extra reliability.
I use WD Passports. They don't get thrown around but get a thorough rattling every day in car boots, briefcases, backpacks and pockets. Never had any problem with them. Cheers,David

David Sutton · « **Reply #3 on:** December 30, 2008, 07:29:05 pm »

Ps. As long as you don't have to impress clients with your gear, the best protective casing I know for hard drives is bubble wrap. As with all drives, keep an eye on their temperature. D

Ben Rubinstein · « **Reply #4 on:** December 31, 2008, 01:23:09 am »

Quote from: Taquin

Ps. As long as you don't have to impress clients with your gear, the best protective casing I know for hard drives is bubble wrap. As with all drives, keep an eye on their temperature. D

i've dropped my lacie 6' if thats any use, my one is a Toshiba inside. still going strong.

giles · « **Reply #5 on:** December 31, 2008, 02:13:54 am »

Quote from: heinrichvoelkel

Don't buy the Lacie. Or any Lacie...

I bought two and both were dead on arrival...even worse..they corrupted files while writing...not easy to see or recognize...except sitting at your clients office hearing the files are having streaks in it...

Ouch, that's ugly. Silent data corruption is not my favourite thing. (I used to troubleshoot problems like that sometimes back when I worked for a computer vendor -- very time consuming and difficult isolating and proving the root cause of the corruption.)

I have two LaCie 500GB USB drives: so far no problems, and the actual disks in the enclosures I have are Hitachi models which is a good thing. I plan various bits of computer configuration tomorrow; I'll see about some stress testing and report back. (If I don't report back, assume something happened and I got busy; I've got two days before I travel for a month.)

I've heard of -- but not seen myself -- problems with USB hubs and high levels of disk I/O. Too much USB hardware is built to the cheapest possible price, unfortunately. Where possible connecting disks directly to the computer is preferable.

Giles

Jack Flesher · « **Reply #6 on:** December 31, 2008, 10:51:17 am »

I use the OWC brand in the plastic cases and am very satisfied. I have dropped mine a few times and it works great. Not much to look at, but they have a USB2, USB2+FW400 and a USB2+FW400/800 version. I use the FW port versions for more reliable power to the unit.

Link: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go

Cheers,

richardhagen · « **Reply #7 on:** December 31, 2008, 11:38:55 am »

I too own the OWC brand wit USB2 + 2 x FW800 (320 GB). They've been great. So far, no problems at all. Definitely stay away from Lacie.

rh

digitaldog · « **Reply #8 on:** January 01, 2009, 10:22:38 am »

Quote from: heinrichvoelkel

Don't buy the Lacie. Or any Lacie...

After many years, I have to agree. The quality of their OEM work is slipping.

IF money is of no, or little concern and you want a lovely looking, very cool running, fast and small drive, I have three G-Drive Mini's and love them all:

https://www.g-technology.com/

jani · « **Reply #9 on:** January 01, 2009, 11:30:59 am »

Quote from: digitaldog

After many years, I have to agree. The quality of their OEM work is slipping.

IF money is of no, or little concern and you want a lovely looking, very cool running, fast and small drive, I have three G-Drive Mini's and love them all:

https://www.g-technology.com/

If money is of no or little concern, I'd advise getting a device where you can replace the hard drive yourself, and then use solid state "disks" with the same form factor.

They don't have any moving parts, and are likely to be far more robust against damage while operating.

You can soon get 2.5" devices with a capacity of 256 GB, and during 2009, you get to purchase devices with 512 GB.

larryg · « **Reply #10 on:** January 01, 2009, 11:41:14 am »

I have used the Passport hard drives for a while absolutely no problem with them in the field (I treat them gently as possible).
I just purchased a passport 500gb (hopefully no problems) for a backup in the field.

I also just read/heard about the new solid state hard drives that will be coming in 2009 Apparently no moving parts (similar to cf cards but larger).
These would appear to be a better choice for safety.

I also have had significant issues with the Lacie drives (crash crash crash)

budjames · « **Reply #11 on:** January 01, 2009, 11:54:59 am »

I ditto the warnings on Lacie external drives. Over the past 5 years, 3 of the 5 that I purchased failed (internal PC board kaput!)

I have been very happy with the various external drives that I have purchased from Other World Computing (OWC). I took a pair of OWC Mercury On-The-Go FireWire 800/400 & USB 2.0/1.1 2.5" 320GB drives with my this summer to Alaska. The FW800 is greatly appreciated for speedy backups when I was shooting 20GB+ RAW files from my Canon 1Ds MkIII and digital video with my HD camcorder. They come with FW and USB cables and a nice carrying case.

If you have a preference for the hard drive used in the enclosure, you can buy the OWC On-The-Go enclosure kit and roll your own.

The drive is a little bigger than some other portable drives but it uses standard cables and has excellent speed.

Cheers.
Bud James

Pete_G · « **Reply #12 on:** January 04, 2009, 07:28:20 am »

The reason why so many external hard drives fail or corrupt data is not to do with the case or the hard disks themselves but with the interface chipset.
AFAIK there are three popular chipsets, Prolific, Cypress and Oxford. ONLY the latter can be considered reliable, and this chipset is usually only used in more expensive enclosures. Even then there seem to be differences between the types of chipsets, I have found that USB only or FW only are more robust than USB/FW interfaces.

It is often difficult to establish what type of chipset is fitted to a particular enclosure, it is usually not mentioned in the specs.

Obviously case/housing design is important to. As with many things, you get what you pay for. Cheap off the shelf external drives may be OK at home but on the road only the best will do. I agree about LaCie too, but many other brands are suspect. Drives designed for proffesional video editing tend to be the most reliable and about 3 times more expensive.

dalethorn · « **Reply #13 on:** January 04, 2009, 09:58:17 am »

I've used several Firelite Smartdisks with USB2 over the last several years, with good performance and no problems. I don't know if their latest capacities are in the 400-plus GB range yet. I did see small USB2 Toshiba drives at Best Buy, 400 GB or so, and I would have 100 percent confidence in those, since I work in Irvine where they put them together, and am familiar with their QC. I've also used Toshiba laptops since 1998 without a failure, a couple of them in constant use on Internet for 7-plus years. My previous Toshiba external drives were the PCMCIA 5 gb drives circa 2000, and again, heavy portable use with no problems.

Attached is a photo of some of my portable gear from a few years ago. I would have preferred even today to have PCMCIA drives in 500 GB capacities, but that's not going to happen apparently. Some of the new laptops don't even have PCMCIA slots now. Is that progress in portability, to replace a backup drive carried internally with one carried externally? Sure, the capacity is higher, but....

giles · « **Reply #14 on:** January 04, 2009, 01:15:10 pm »

Quote from: giles

I have two LaCie 500GB USB drives: so far no problems, and the actual disks in the enclosures I have are Hitachi models which is a good thing. I plan various bits of computer configuration tomorrow; I'll see about some stress testing and report back. (If I don't report back, assume something happened and I got busy; I've got two days before I travel for a month.)

I moved many GB around both from an internal drive, from one external drive to another, and duplicated data on one of the external drives. No hangs, no data corruption, all was well. And this was even using a powered USB hub. (Better performance is available at least on my MacBook Pro when not using a hub.)

The one problem I did strike was that the drives were fussy about USB cables: not all my cables (some of which came with cheapo equipment over the years) would work; the cables that came with the LaCie drives would work as would one with a second "vampire" USB power connection that uses two USB ports. (If there's a proper name for that type of cable, I don't know it.)

The drive I've checked since arriving in BA survived 37 (or whatever number) of hours of travel in carry on bags.

Summary: I grant that the historical reputation of LaCie drives is "mixed" (the case for all the disk vendors if you know who to talk to and what model to ask about) but at present I'm happy with the current USB only 500GB model. Fingers crossed that I stay happy!

Cheerio,

Giles

Fritzer · « **Reply #15 on:** January 04, 2009, 09:45:26 pm »

I have a bunch of LaCie portable drives, some cheap 'Porsche' and some Rugged, never had a single issue (knocking on wood).
My first Rugged was a blue 20GB model, guess that makes it 5-7 years old, works like a charm.
The Rugged enclosures are very weak, though, very thin metal and dents easily, they seem to rely on the rubber edge protection.

However, all the drives are Firewire, I'd never trust USB for critical data transfer, no matter what brand.
Too many power, read&write issues with USB, in particular w/o an extra power supply.

Author Topic: Rugged portable hard drives for field use (Read 6737 times)

Pete_G

dalethorn