Reliable External Hard Drive??

chillined1212 · Feb 26, 2012

I am a cinematographer/film maker who has tons and tons of gigs of video footage created each week. I have tired a couple different brands of external hard drives, but somehow they always end up crashing, and I loose everything. I keep telling myself time and time again that I will not let this keep happening to me. I lost a total of 4 terabytes of data so far. I am at the point now where
I can avoid a crash since my hard drive failed to mount, but i repaired it and that data was all still there. I need to buy a new one but I really don't know what brand is the most reliable. They all have mixed reviews. I need a reliable external hard drive roughly 1.5 tb to 2 if I could. I have tons of gigs of hd video, and I edit on the go with my laptop. I was just wondering if anyone knew of a brand that would fit my needs. I will carry it around a lot as I move from place to place. Please all help would be appreciated. I really would like a hard drive that could last for more than a year and not crash on me. I would like to add price is another factor.. i really don't want to be paying $500. $200 or lower if possible please

AlabamaSlammer · Feb 26, 2012

Personally I have had a great experience with Seagate external drives. I currently own 3 and 1 is about 2 years old and completely full with old video files and pictures. I do a lot of video editing also, so I was in the need for a good external hdd. But I have nothing but positive things to say about Seagate.

This is currently my main dive... http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-FreeA...844G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330284394&sr=8-1

GGJstudios · Feb 26, 2012

I've been very pleased with both of these, from Other World Computing (OWC):

OWC Mercury On-The-Go Pro..........................OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro

shiekh · Feb 26, 2012

I like the MyBook Studio II in RAID 1 mode (mirroring), but only since the recent firmware update, as it finally stops spontaneously disconnecting

Mirroring will let one drive crash without you losing the data, and then rebuild the array when a replacement drive is available.

sublimeguide · Mar 17, 2012

chillined1212 said:
I am a cinematographer/film maker who has tons and tons of gigs of video footage created each week. I have tired a couple different brands of external hard drives, but somehow they always end up crashing, and I loose everything. I keep telling myself time and time again that I will not let this keep happening to me. I lost a total of 4 terabytes of data so far. I am at the point now where
I can avoid a crash since my hard drive failed to mount, but i repaired it and that data was all still there. I need to buy a new one but I really don't know what brand is the most reliable. They all have mixed reviews. I need a reliable external hard drive roughly 1.5 tb to 2 if I could. I have tons of gigs of hd video, and I edit on the go with my laptop. I was just wondering if anyone knew of a brand that would fit my needs. I will carry it around a lot as I move from place to place. Please all help would be appreciated. I really would like a hard drive that could last for more than a year and not crash on me. I would like to add price is another factor.. i really don't want to be paying $500. $200 or lower if possible please

I am in search for an external hard drive with similar specifications to the one you want. Big space and reliability.
If you are going to use one, your best bet is dual combo drives in RAID , which will give you more reliability, of course it's more expensive, than a single one, but I think you might be much more pleased with it (google RAID 0 to learn more about the benefits if, because I am too lazy to explain it here ) . Western digital my book live/essential duo offers such functionality.
But if you are really serious about your data (I know how frustrating it is to lose so big chink of data) you would ALWAYS keep at least 2 copies of it! Any hardware can fail, but doing this reduces the chances to permanently lose your data by a LOT. from what I read here, I figure, that you really need that data to be safe and you could sacrifice some extra dollars to ensure that.
Another option are the cloud services. Some offer backup of HUGE amount of data (more than a terabyte) and on not such a bad prices considering the storage and relability, but I don't know if your Internet connection will allow that.

LaWally · Mar 17, 2012

chillined1212 said:
I am a cinematographer/film maker who has tons and tons of gigs of video footage created each week. I have tired a couple different brands of external hard drives, but somehow they always end up crashing, and I loose everything. I keep telling myself time and time again that I will not let this keep happening to me. I lost a total of 4 terabytes of data so far. I am at the point now where
I can avoid a crash since my hard drive failed to mount, but i repaired it and that data was all still there. I need to buy a new one but I really don't know what brand is the most reliable. They all have mixed reviews. I need a reliable external hard drive roughly 1.5 tb to 2 if I could. I have tons of gigs of hd video, and I edit on the go with my laptop. I was just wondering if anyone knew of a brand that would fit my needs. I will carry it around a lot as I move from place to place. Please all help would be appreciated. I really would like a hard drive that could last for more than a year and not crash on me. I would like to add price is another factor.. i really don't want to be paying $500. $200 or lower if possible please

The only solution that will prevent loss of data is some kind of data redundancy across two or more drives. Whether you pay $1000 or $200 for a hard drive, you will always be susceptible to loss of data if and when the hard drive fails.

Just from your post, you appear to be attaching no value to the data you lost, looking at it only as a pita. Is that correct? If you do attach a value to it, then your solution should take the value of your data into account.

Since you seem to be taking the external drive on the road with you, I suggest looking at something built specifically for that purpose, rather than something built as a desktop drive that will never be jostled about. That could be a contributing factor as to why your drives are failing. They will be a little more expensive, but the increased reliability might have value to you.

chillined1212 · Mar 17, 2012

LaWally said:
The only solution that will prevent loss of data is some kind of data redundancy across two or more drives. Whether you pay $1000 or $200 for a hard drive, you will always be susceptible to loss of data if and when the hard drive fails.

Just from your post, you appear to be attaching no value to the data you lost, looking at it only as a pita. Is that correct? If you do attach a value to it, then your solution should take the value of your data into account.

Since you seem to be taking the external drive on the road with you, I suggest looking at something built specifically for that purpose, rather than something built as a desktop drive that will never be jostled about. That could be a contributing factor as to why your drives are failing. They will be a little more expensive, but the increased reliability might have value to you.

yes thats probably one of the reasons why I probably lost everything the last time. Part of it too was not having a fan in the hard drive enclosure. I just want some way to keep my data safe, so I guess my best bet is to have 2 hard drives, plus a cloud service. I still have to call crashplan about speeds, because they offer a 80/year unlimited data backup. I lost 2 hard drives already, its frustrating, but I have learned after the second one that I shouldn't get that mad over it, since it could happen to any hard drive. It just happen 2 time, so I wanna know what to do to make sure it doesn't happen again.

MovieCutter · Mar 17, 2012

From my experience as a filmmaker and editor who deals with dozens of TBs of data.... There's no such thing as a reliable hard drive.

jenaface · Nov 19, 2012

chillined1212 said:
I can avoid a crash since my hard drive failed to mount, but i repaired it and that data was all still there.

Hi, I have just recently had the same problem and lost a lot of my photography. Can you tell me how you were able to get it to mount again?? Every site I visit tells me I am pretty much out of luck.

Search

Search

Reliable External Hard Drive??

chillined1212

macrumors member

AlabamaSlammer

macrumors 6502

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere

shiekh

macrumors member

Attachments

sublimeguide

macrumors member

LaWally

macrumors 6502a

chillined1212

macrumors member

MovieCutter

macrumors 68040

jenaface

macrumors newbie

Our Staff