Best external storage solution for me?

In the other post you mentioned a WD passport. My dad has had one for like 5 years now and it's still working... I think their portable drives use 5400 rpm drives rather than 7200 rpm though. 7200 rpm should be faster in most cases (you mentioned quick but no SSD.)

You can also look into OWC which have some 7200 rpm portable drives. They have benchmarks for all their drives as well...

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/

On-the-Go Pro and Elite Pro Mini. They also have a Elite Pro Dual Mini.


Partitioning a drive is easy enough. Just use disk utility>partition. Use Mac OS Extended (Journaled) if you plan on using Time Machine or have a cloning on one of the partitions. Also the GUID partition table.

gazing said:

Now that my lovely new rmbp 512 is here I need to get a external storage solution suitable for me....
I basically need a nice 1-2 TB drive for my audio production (storing samples plugins , recalling them)so it needs to be quick although SSDS are too expensive
And a 2tb backup just needs
To be reliable

The first must be portable
And my backup drive I'd like to be portable but not essential

What would be best for me and what are other peoples solutions?

One thing I'm interested is could I do it all in 1 4tb drive and partition it ?

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I personally like Western Digital. I have two My Passports for extra files and one My Book for Time Machine.

You might also look at LaCie's thunderbolt drives. They're pricy, but it's faster than USB3. For backups you could also look into an Apple Time Capsule. It's wifi so no need to connect to it with a cable. Depends on your budget, really.

I'm not sure there are any 4TB portable drives out there. You'd probably have to buy a USB enclosure and a separate 4TB drive.

You might consider getting one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/MiniPro-Exter...34&sr=8-3&keywords=oyen+digital+2.5+enclosure
or
http://www.amazon.com/Optimized-Inateck-Enclosure-Installation-Compatible/dp/B00FCLG65U

... and then buy a "bare" 2.5" drive of your choosing to go inside. You could keep an eye on dealmac.com daily for good drive deals.

Building your own drive is -easy- -- ANYone can do this. The Inateck enclosure above doesn't even use screws. "Assembly" takes about 45 seconds.

The advantage of doing this is that you know what goes inside because "you built it". And if there's ever a problem with the "drive inside", just take it apart, and put a new drive in. Again, easy.

gazing said:

Yeah but each drive can't cost more than 150
That's why one 4tb drive for 300 sense

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Ahh well you didn't specify a budget in your first post.

Unfortunately speed and storage capacity are somewhat mutually exclusive without paying lots of money. And 4TB is very hard to find without building it yourself. So I'd suggest buying an enclosure and separate drive.

KUguardgrl13 said:

I'm not sure there are any 4TB portable drives out there.

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Seagate 4Tb USB3 bus-powered portable.

I have three of these and am delighted.

It is basically two Seagate M9T in a hardware RAID 0 box.

Fast and small.

The speed and capacity are possible because it is RAID so higher risk of failure. I have increased my number of backups because of this.

Mike Boreham said:

Seagate 4Tb USB3 bus-powered portable.

I have three of these and am delighted.

It is basically two Seagate M9T in a hardware RAID 0 box.

Fast and small.

The speed and capacity are possible because it is RAID so higher risk of failure. I have increased my number of backups because of this.

Click to expand...

Interesting. I looked at the WD My Passport Ultras and only saw 1 or 2TB. I'm not worried about high capacity. So I've never really shopped around. 3.25TB is plenty for me across external and internal. That's two MBPs, one desktop external, and two portables.

I think your idea looks good but not sure about drives...

gazing said:

Ok Had an idea!

How about use this enclosure
http://www.cineraid.com/products/home_h212.htm

And stick either two of these drives in?(Which one ??)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/MacBook-2-8...s&ie=UTF8&qid=1398009776&sr=1-17&keywords=2.5

or this one

http://www.amazon.co.uk/HGST-Travel...=UTF8&qid=1398009967&sr=1-1&keywords=2.5+hgst


Raid 0! And Im set for just over 200!

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That enclosure is certainly interesting. Thanks for the link. Interesting too that is offered with SSD options so they must be pretty confident of the power supply.

Which drives would be a matter of choice and need. Personally I wouldn't go for either of the two you suggested. I think the HGST 1.5 Tb 5400 and Seagate M9T 2 Tb 5400 are quite close on speed to the HGST 1Tb 7200, due to platter density, and offer a lot more capacity.

Yeah ... Hardly any good 7200 dribes on amazon
Found this on ebay and it looks good:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1TB-2-5-H...K_Computing_HardDrives_RL&hash=item2338d1643f

Pretty sure Hitachi are most realible drives??
And in raid 0 pair of these could easily reach 250mb/s

edit: nevermind

Your Best bet would be either the Hitachi or WD black if you wanna reach those speeds in RAID 0 . If you wanna know which one is more reliable to put it straight I'd trust WD with my life

So Id go with two of them then your set for audio production on the go alongside the odd backup of main ssd drive

gazing said:

Also are WD black drives the fastest 2.5 inch 7200 rpm drives out there??

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No idea but anything @ 7200rpm has a limit !

I just bought 2 x 1tb HGST 7200rpm's and they seem good, transfer rate is
about 110-120 MB/sec and you won't get much more than that.

I have a WB Black in my MP so it's a 3,5 version and that does over 160MB/sec

My fastest drive is a WD Velociraptor @ 10,000 rpm - it's a 2,5 drive inside a 3,5 size
heatsink .... gets hot otherwise !!
That does over 250MB/sec as an Audio Recording drive.

As a 2,5 version, I don't know if the WD Black is faster??

M.

gazing said:

Would 2 wd black drives in RAID 0 get 250mb/s plus?

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I would think so, any decent pair of 7200rpm's should get close in Raid 0

As to specific WD "Blacks" I don't know the 2.5in version.

I'm using a single HGST 7200 - so not a Raid system.

From a UASP Inateck USB3.0 enclosure & EVO 840 I get 338/358 write/read.

- it's only 500gb though !! ... cost for both €220 which is a great deal.

M.