Hardware Seagate ST305004EXA101-RK VS WD My Book Essential WDBAAF500EBK

[Master_C]

Hi everyone !

I must buy tomorrow 1 out of 3 for my WII:

1) Seagate ST305004EXA101-RK
2) WD My Book Essential WDBAAF500EBK
3) WD My Passport Essential WDBAAA3200ABK

My indecision as regards the next criteria :
Stability, speed, warming, reliability, resistant even 6 hours in consecutive gaming , noise, and of course compatibility with USB Loader GX & GEEXBOX.

HDD size is not a parameter here, neither the HDD physical size.

Please puncture in the preferred drive and name the reason in order to enable me to make a decision intelligent.

Thank you!!

 

[DVS]

Personally if I had to choose from those 3, it would be the WD My Passport Essential WDBAAA3200ABK. It's small and gets power from the USB port. I have 2 Wii's so on one I use a Seagate 500gb expansion portable ($80 Costco). The other Wii has a Seagate 320gb go portable. For computer use I have a bulky Seagate 1tb and I have another Seagate 500gb expansion. As you can see I'm a Seagate fan.

 

[Master_C]

Personally if I had to choose from those 3, it would be the WD My Passport Essential WDBAAA3200ABK. It's small and gets power from the USB port. I have 2 Wii's so on one I use a Seagate 500gb expansion portable ($80 Costco). The other Wii has a Seagate 320gb go portable. For computer use I have a bulky Seagate 1tb and I have another Seagate 500gb expansion. As you can see I'm a Seagate fan.

But will the WDBAAA3200ABK can hold with 6+- hours in consecutive gaming without being damaged?

If the WD My Book Essential WDBAAF500EBK or Seagate ST305004EXA101-RK can stand long, and do not noisy after period, and has good compatibility with the USB Loader GX & the GEEXBOX, I will prefer them....

Can't make a decision......

 

[afnuke]

I have an essential edition WD with an external power supply. In my opinion, you should get one that has its own power instead of pulling it from the wii....im not expert but I would say they only meant for it to push out so much power.

As far as the drive warming up, I did hook a usb fan to the wii and install it onto my hard drive enclosure because after hours of use it did warm up. With the fan, it hardly gets warm at all (kid tested at 12 straight hours of play). Since then, both my wiis have HDD with extra fans installed on both the hard drive and the wii itself. plus the wii looks cool sitting onto of a LED fan.

 

[Master_C]

I have an essential edition WD with an external power supply. In my opinion, you should get one that has its own power instead of pulling it from the wii....im not expert but I would say they only meant for it to push out so much power.

As far as the drive warming up, I did hook a usb fan to the wii and install it onto my hard drive enclosure because after hours of use it did warm up. With the fan, it hardly gets warm at all (kid tested at 12 straight hours of play). Since then, both my wiis have HDD with extra fans installed on both the hard drive and the wii itself. plus the wii looks cool sitting onto of a LED fan.

You have the WD My Book Essential ? and if so, how is the compatibility with the WII ? and is it noisy ?

 

[afnuke]

The my book essential I use the most is 320 WDh1u3200n. I only use configurable usb loader on one wii and wiiflow on the other. I have everything in WBFS file system and its almost silent, I am very satisfied. It works flawless for usb loading.
I also have a maxtor 60 GB that my kids use a lot and it has worked great.
I set a friends up with the my book essential 500 a couple weeks ago and he hasnt had any issues as of yet and I know he plays after work daily.

Compatibility problems seem to be the worst when people use old laptop drives and such and install them in new enclosures.

I dont really see any point in having more than a 500 GB.....no one has time to play that much *lol*

 

[HelpDesk]

afnuke is spot on.
unless you're planning on using the hdd with a pc as well, you won't need more than 500. the WD's have good compatibility on the most part, but they are surely not as hardy as seagate externals. unfortunately, these compact hdds weren't made for prolonged continuous use, that is, spinning for hours on end, which they need to do because you can't have any spin down when playing games off of them. the only real way to cool them down is to turn them off, some of the bigger models like WD's my book can be kept cool by use of a fan or two. they all are super quiet, personally i'd go the seagate. WD's crappy smart wizard irks me big time. also WD only have a 1 year warranty, while seagate offer... 3 or 4 i think, and believe me, you'll want that. portable hdds aren't built to last. just make sure whatever you get you keep it cool, and they'll luv-yoo long-time.

 

[Master_C]

afnuke is spot on.
unless you're planning on using the hdd with a pc as well, you won't need more than 500. the WD's have good compatibility on the most part, but they are surely not as hardy as seagate externals. unfortunately, these compact hdds weren't made for prolonged continuous use, that is, spinning for hours on end, which they need to do because you can't have any spin down when playing games off of them. the only real way to cool them down is to turn them off, some of the bigger models like WD's my book can be kept cool by use of a fan or two. they all are super quiet, personally i'd go the seagate. WD's crappy smart wizard irks me big time. also WD only have a 1 year warranty, while seagate offer... 3 or 4 i think, and believe me, you'll want that. portable hdds aren't built to last. just make sure whatever you get you keep it cool, and they'll luv-yoo long-time.

And if I'll buy the Seagate ST305004EXA101-RK, should I have to cool it? and if so, how ? he does not have place for a fan... and how about his compatibility for Wii games (without partitions)? and how about self on \off when WII turns on \ off ? don't want neither sleep mode issues... 10X

 

[HelpDesk]

if you want it to last, keep it well ventilated at least. keep it out of the sun, don't block the vent holes, have a small desk fan set on low passing air over it if you notice it warming up or even before. this hdd should come with power-save software as most sg's do, which means you can disable sleep mode. the drive has no on/off switch, most external hdd's are adopting this such as WD's. it will power on/off with the Wii. As this EXACT model isn't listed on the compatibility list, i can't guarantee anything but, like all the freeagent models, it should have no trouble partitioning to WBFS and running games and USBloaders smoothly. try a few iso's, if it does have compatibility issues, return it to the shop and say it's not quite what you're looking for

the least they can give you is store credit

seagate is a pretty solid brand, if anything, i'd bet on it to work just fine as far as compatibility goes. the drive will come prepartitioned in FAT for compatibility reasons, so it's mac friendly, if you're that way inclined...

 

[afnuke]

I would use a fan on any hdd you use. I built a box that my wii sits on and has a 2 inch led fan pushing air through the wii and I made a hole on the side and used a piece of hose that hooks to my Hdd enclosure to push air through that as well. They sell all kinds of fans you could use and helpdesk is right, just a little desktop fan would work great.....it doent take much to keep the heat from building up, and heat is its worst enemy. My Maxtor external(60GB) runs about 7 hours a day with the kids and it has a fan and never gets very warm. When I hook it to my computer to tranfer games I dont have fan hooked to it and it gets a lot warmer than it ever does with the wii.

I started using fans when my old wii burnt up....it was stock, but those docking\charging stations I had it on only left a little small opening on the bottom for air to get sucked in.

And as far as seagate, Ive built computer systems for years and they do rank above WD in my opinion.........they just cost a little more and WD has had a lot of sales over the past 6 months.