Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler External hard drive recommendations

My Freeagent Pro is run via an eSATA connection. As far as connection speeds go, as far as I know, eSATA transfer speeds vary, as it is dependent on what your computer does with it.

I have read many, many complaints of a slow eSATA transfer rate, many stating that they find it no faster than USB 2.0.

Just get a HP Smart Media Server. I love mine.

But, if you don't want to go that route, I prefer my Seagate Free Agent Pro over my two WD drives. It works all time without any issue, ever. The WD's have given me troubles from time to time.

Yep, my computer and external hard drive are on every day, from first thing in the morning until 11 at night, and the Seagate keeps on rolling on (touch wood).

How's the power usage on the HP Smart Media Server? Does it sleep when it's not being contacted by the client computers? Does it have at least mirrored drives?

I've been using a 320 GB Seagate Freeagent Pro as a backup drive for a few years. It works great and hasn't given me any trouble.

Keep in mind that most consumer-level external hard drives aren't meant to be used 24/7. They usually have basic enclosures and don't have the proper cooling to be used around the clock. Like with all electronics, excessive heat will damage a hard drive.

Make sure you get an external drive with a properly cooled enclosure, especially if you will be leaving it on often.

HP MediaSmart is essentially running Windows Server 2003 renamed "Home Server". It can do wakeup-on-LAN, I think.
It uses replication to spread copies on various disks.

All of my USB external drives are turning only when accessed and they remain cool unless they are part of constant streaming. The Comstar seem to be the hottest.

Not real sure about that Ken. It's always humming along because I have Squeezcenter installed on it as an app and it's always ready to go whenever I hit the play button. You can set up the drives however you like. I just installed a 1T drive on it and set it up to back up the other two 500 gig drives.

For more info on the server, I go here http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/index.php

I've looked at the HPs before and am interested, but I think I'll wait until Windows 7 is out before I look at any media servers. I want to build a new computer and that other stuff all at once. Right now I'll just go with a hard drive. I'm glad to hear these positive things about Seagate, since I didn't even have them on my radar.

CV,
This was mentioned in another thread a while back, but you may want to consider a unit like the DNS-323. It'll let you choose whatever hard drives you want as long as their 3.5 inch SATA/SATA2.

BTW, I also agree with the positive Seagate experiences.