Mar

Arrgh!

Digital storage is pretty tight, so I ordered an external hard drive. I deliberated for a while on which to purchase, and finally made my decision, a SimpleTech Pro Drive FP-UFE/500. The three year warranty along with a free 2GB of online storage are what convinced me to pay a little more for this product.

It came in good time, and I excitedly opened the box… to be disappointed by a strange rattling sound coming from within the enclosure. It sounded like a screw had come loose, and was rolling all around inside there.

So I sent it back for a replacement. I got the new one in just a couple days, and again opened it with great excitement. Only to, again, find the rattling sound. This time coupled with a shifting of the contents. So I’ve arranged to return that one, this time just for a refund, and I’m back to the drawing board. So Sad.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 1741 and is filed under Everyday Things. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 comments so far

Michael Terry

Bummer man! Any idea what you might gravitate toward next?

March 21st, 2008 at 1828

Chris

Have you heard of Drobo? http://www.drobo.com/

A little pricey on the up-front cost but an extremely good idea. I’ve got 500GB inside my machine and a 500GB external and I’m rapidly coming to an end (I rip movies to watch on Apple TV). Then I had to buy a 2TB external just to back everything up. The crappy part is that won’t even last. I wish I’d heard of Drobo when I bought these drives, it seems like such a better idea to expand as you need.

March 21st, 2008 at 1927

richard

My second choice was a 500GB usb/eSata drive by Calvary. A friend of mine got one a month or so ago, and he hasn’t informed me of any problems. I know it was at least in one piece and worked when he got it (unlike this one I ordered).

But, I’m thinking about getting a smaller, cheaper drive now. I got a used NSLU2 (from GFM) so that I could put the new external and an old 40GB external on the network. I didn’t realize, though, that you have to reformat the drive to a special format for the NSLU2, and you can’t go back and forth between the network format and windows. So you have to decide to either have it on the network or usb. And I didn’t really want to tie down the 500GB drive to the NSLU2 and a 10/100 network speed.

So now I’m thinking about getting a 250 or 320GB external for the network, along with the other 40, which should get me by for awhile. At least until I get another computer, which will have a bigger hdd for more storage. Of course, I didn’t think I’d ever outgrow the 40GB, and I have about 5MB of available space on it.

Of course, none of this accounts for backups. I do have another 60GB external hard drive, that I think I’ll use to back up important stuff… like pictures, email, financial data, etc. Maybe purchased music, but that might overfill it. Oh, I don’t need to backup my emusic stuff, since you can redownload it whenever you want (assuming they still offer it. And they don’t have everything they used to, so I probably should backup the music they no longer offer).

I’ve heard of the drobo, Chris. I saw them play with it on Tekzilla. It’s unfortunately out of my price range. Especially considering it doesn’t include the drives themselves. It makes since though, to just have to buy the hard drive when you need more space. A lot cheaper to expand storage, and typically better warranty on the drive, too. But I can’t get past the initial hurdle.

So anyhow… like I said, back to square one.

March 21st, 2008 at 2241

richard

So, I ended up getting a 320GB WD MyBook for $80. Turns out it’s actually cheaper per gigabyte than the other one. Anyhow, I’m sure this one (plus the other two external hdds I have) will last me for a while. And then I’ll just upgrade again.

March 25th, 2008 at 0800