It doesn't matter what hard drive you use. Best not to pay the premium. LaCie isn't a hard drive brand; they use common brands of hard drives such as Seagate.
You really are better off either getting your own hard drive with a longer warranty and throwing it in an external case or buying one ready-made, such as the Western Digital MyBook or the Seagate FreeAgent. I recommend the SeaGate because of the long 5-year (many models) warranty.
I have used Seagate since the start of PCs...LOL. No Seagate has failed on me yet. I have a server downstairs that's been running since 2002 and rarely turns off unless there's a vacation. That Seagate harddrive is still running with no odd noises and it's been more than 8 years!
The ones I have had fail or diagnosed other's failures are Hitachi, Toshiba, and Maxtor.
--Trevor--
Vancouver, BC
Call Me Dane l 2/2004 330i ZHP l 18x8 ET45 BBS CK's wrapped with Michelin Pilot Sport AS3+ @ 245-40-18 l KW V1 Coilovers in front l KW V1 springs w/ Bilstein B8 dampeners in rear l BMW Performance Rotors l UUC StrutBarbarian l Racing Dynamics Rear Strut Bar l Jim Conforti Shark Injector l Light Birch Interior Trim l Bimmian Celly Mount l M3 Trunk Mat l l e90 Performance E-Brake & Shift Knob l M3 Tri-Stitched Boots l AL Headlight Retrofit with ZKW Lenses l CobyWheel Wrap w/M3 Stitching l LCM sw 4.5 triple blink and rear fogs l Maple Interior Trim
Dane, you could always use 3.5" floppy disks in a magnetically sealed lunchbox.
Mmmm.........lmao!!!!!
I'm just gonna get a 1TB drive.....ass monkey.
Call Me Dane l 2/2004 330i ZHP l 18x8 ET45 BBS CK's wrapped with Michelin Pilot Sport AS3+ @ 245-40-18 l KW V1 Coilovers in front l KW V1 springs w/ Bilstein B8 dampeners in rear l BMW Performance Rotors l UUC StrutBarbarian l Racing Dynamics Rear Strut Bar l Jim Conforti Shark Injector l Light Birch Interior Trim l Bimmian Celly Mount l M3 Trunk Mat l l e90 Performance E-Brake & Shift Knob l M3 Tri-Stitched Boots l AL Headlight Retrofit with ZKW Lenses l CobyWheel Wrap w/M3 Stitching l LCM sw 4.5 triple blink and rear fogs l Maple Interior Trim
If you're using an external drive as a backup, make sure it's actually that- a backup. As in all the content is actually stored somewhere else. My parents' external drive was used to store all their pictures, and it physically failed. It would have cost them about $2k to have the data professionally restored, but I was lucky enough to be able to fix it and recover most of their stuff. Took me many many many hours...
You could get a RAID device though - I think it's raid 0 that you'd want? I forgot... But it's basically a couple of drives grouped together in one box, and then if one drive fails you can swap it out without losing any data. It could definitely save you a whole lot of pain. Or you could be totally fine with a normal drive. It'd just be like insurance. Except that every drive, given enough time and use, will eventually fail. Some sooner than others I guess. Oh, and if you ever hear weird clicking, immediately back it up to a new drive!
I'll stop rambling now
I've had a bad experience with seagate. i had a 320 gig drive fail on me. had a lot of data that i wanted to keep. my western digital drives have not failed ever even 40gig drives that are 6 to 7 years old. essentially the best type of hdd to use is a ssd (solid state drive) so a large flash drive in a sense. They make up to 60 or 100 gig ssd drives though they are much pricier than standard magnetic drives. No moving parts= less chance of failure.