Welcome to working with USB 2.0. You did pick the slowest possible interface you could possibly buy on the market with practically the slowest spindle speed available. Yup, it's going to be slow. I get 25-30MB/sec if I'm lucky doing backups to my Seagate 7200RPM USB 2.0 drive.

Devon

Well, one thing is was dumb about when buying this is sold myself a pack of lies. "Oh, it's just a backup drive" "I don't need anything faster" blah blah.

If you are getting crap speeds from a 7200 rpm drive, wow......that really is disturbing.

Well, I happened to purchase a Glyph drive for my macbook pro... 7200 rpm 32mb cache 1TB...SEAGATE.

Should I be frightened now?

As in will it die? Yes. From my experience Seagates can't be trusted. All three drives I had malfunctioned. The last one died after 6 months of use.

I've had a Seagate 2TB external drive (Black Armor) for backup, and it's fine. Speed is fine and it's over a year old, and works fine.

<running to touch wood...>

During the last three years I've had three Seagates fail (slightly different ages and models, but none of them was more than four years old) and I've replaced them with WD and Samsung, all doing fine. I know it's a statistically insignificant sample to base one's opinions on, but still, I have to admit I've assumed the same stance ("Seagate... avoid.")

Seagate kind of started to lose me with the fiasco of their failing 1TB drives and initially trying to downplay it for an uncomfortably long time. Still, only one of the three drives I lost was due to this particular issue. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-7200.11-failing,684 4.html

My Seagate died after a week. Computers wouldn't even recognize it. There was a lot of stuff on there I needed. The guy at Office Depot finally took the base off and somehow put it on this thing and got my files off (he's in my prayers now and got a special thank you email sent to his bosses)
I've had a Hitachi portable drive for 3 years that's been dragged around Texas in 115 degree heat and 15 degree cold and that thing runs like a beast. Go figure.

What if i were to change the internal 5400 rpm Drive for a 7200 rpm Drive would that not then completely solve the issue for speeds all round ? especially for streaming sample Libraries. Then again this is a Macbook late 2008 can i get a 7200 rpm drive 500GB for this model ???

I didn't have many choices, considering that the numerous hard drive threads never got me anywhere, and I can't spend more than $200. That is, I couldn't find a suitable internal drive with an enclosure, and most of the external drive combinations I've found use Seagates. (The WD ones didn't have fw800) I suppose that I have to cope with it, but I don't want to be in constant fear. Of course I have my files back-uped elsewhere as well.

i salvaged an older WD 7200 rpm 320GB hard drive from my old windows computer and bought one of those IDE to usb converter box thingie from chinatown

formatted into mac system and voila - extra 320GB for my audio backups

i have no problems with the speed

in fact all my hard drives are Western digital, i self upgraded my macbook pro to WD scorpio blue 750GB and its really really decent, very happy so far

the only hard drives that crapped on me (maybe just my bad luck) happen to be seagates and seagates only

You're only making me nervous haha...again I don't have the $500 or so to get a good enclosure + WD drive...I have no clue how I'd replace my macbook pro's internal drive, but it would cost a lot of money considering the service prices in addition to the scorpio blue.

I just hope that my Glyph drive will be fine.

oh wow after reading thru the thread again (before i just read the 1st page and then replied) seems like im not the only one with seagate problems!

i upgraded my macbook pro hard drive for really really cheap, WD Scorpio blue are not expensive at all, the enclosure i bought for just USD $20, then again I live in singapore hahaha but i doubt it will be a lot more expensive where you are, where are you located btw?

oh and replacing macbook hard drives are piece of cake, its like assembling the toys that came with kinder surprise eggs, it just looks scarier than it actually is hahaha, believe me on this one! DIY upgrade = a lot cheaper and more choice

I couldn't find a single good-quality external enclosure that had fw800 and USB 2.0...

Maybe I could purchase a WD drive (Caviar Black for $200?) and swap it with the Seagate from my Glyph enclosure, but it's really too much money...

I'm not going to be moving my new drive, so I'll see if it lasts.

I have eSATA outputs on the back of the computer ....is that going to be best for an external HD ??

I'd get the same speeds if the external was SSD. It's not the drive, it's the interface. I can't push an ocean through a 1/2" water pipe, no matter how badly I want it. USB 2 is very slow because it has a lot of overhead.

Devon