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smoking monkey

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Mar 5, 2008
2,330
1,460
I HUNGER
Looking for help from members who know the deal when it comes to TM storage.

I got my new iMac and now I want to update from crappy USB 2 speeds for my Time machine back up. I'd like to use the Thunderbolt ports and keep the USB 3 ports from for other things.

I'm looking at this external...

LaCie 2TB Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Hard Drive (5400 rpm)

It's 20,000 yen here in Japan (about $ 220 USD) but because it's got two 1TB drives inside, will that cause trouble for Time Machine backups bigger than 1TB?

Obviously I'd set up the raid for type 0, but after that it is a bit murky.

Thanks.
SM.
 

MatthewAMEL

macrumors 6502
Oct 23, 2007
380
13
Orlando, FL
That will work fine. I use 2x 3TB Western Digital (USB3) in a RAID0 with Time Machine.

BTW- I get ~190MB/sec reads and ~165MB/sec writes using USB3. I can only imagine your TB speeds will be better.
 

dalefleury

macrumors newbie
Jan 5, 2011
3
0
That will work fine. I use 2x 3TB Western Digital (USB3) in a RAID0 with Time Machine.

BTW- I get ~190MB/sec reads and ~165MB/sec writes using USB3. I can only imagine your TB speeds will be better.

I have a WD 'My Book' 3 TB external HD, USB3. I connect it to my Mac, and do a backup, then it disconnects. I don't know why it's disconnecting...
You refer to a RAID 0, what is that, or do I need to know
 

MatthewAMEL

macrumors 6502
Oct 23, 2007
380
13
Orlando, FL
I have a WD 'My Book' 3 TB external HD, USB3. I connect it to my Mac, and do a backup, then it disconnects. I don't know why it's disconnecting...
You refer to a RAID 0, what is that, or do I need to know

I don't have any issues with my WD drives. Have you checked the firmware on your My Book?
http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=125&lang=en

RAID0 is also referred to as 'striping'. It increases the speed, but provides no redundancy. You need 2 drives to enable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels
 

dalefleury

macrumors newbie
Jan 5, 2011
3
0
Well I updated the firmware on my WD 3 TB hard drive.

I reinstalled Timemachine Editor and made sure it was turned off, so as not to conflict with TimeMachine. I then put Timemachine Editor in the Trash. I restarted my Mac. And, the same thing happened, it did one back up and the hard drive must have disconnected as I received the message about not ejecting my device in the proper manner....

Timemachine works when it is connected to my external WD HD, but it won't stay connected..... HELP
 

hfg

macrumors 68040
Dec 1, 2006
3,621
312
Cedar Rapids, IA. USA
Looking for help from members who know the deal when it comes to TM storage.

I got my new iMac and now I want to update from crappy USB 2 speeds for my Time machine back up. I'd like to use the Thunderbolt ports and keep the USB 3 ports from for other things.

I'm looking at this external...

LaCie 2TB Little Big Disk Thunderbolt Hard Drive (5400 rpm)

It's 20,000 yen here in Japan (about $ 220 USD) but because it's got two 1TB drives inside, will that cause trouble for Time Machine backups bigger than 1TB?

Obviously I'd set up the raid for type 0, but after that it is a bit murky.

Thanks.
SM.

I use the LaCie 2TB "LittleBigDdisk" for Time Machine backups all the time, works great although the tiny fan can be a bit obnoxious.

The Thunderbolt LBD enclosure also works well for a SSD transplant replacing the hard drives. I have several and have disconnected the fan when using SSDs in them (also in RAID-0).

Do keep in mind however, that any RAID with multiple striped drives increases the chance for disk failure which will take out all the data. Of course, you do still have your original current data on your computer, but the time-historical data is only on the TM backup. I have a 2-tier backup with a slower NAS to help mitigate this issue by keeping 3 copies.

If this is a concern to you, you can reconfigure the 2 drives in the LBD to "RAID-Concatenate" which will be slower but still 2TB ... or ... "RAID-Mirror" which will give you only 1TB of redundant storage. The LBD is a very flexible enclosure! :)
 
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