You should also take a look at OWC, they have some very good external drives. They have a very good warranty and also great customer service. I bought the OWC Mercury Elite 250GB FireWire 800+USB2 external hd from them about 12 months ago and it's been working great since. I use it for time machine and I also have a second OWC Mercury Elite that's 500GB. I mainly use that one to store all my itunes music, videos and also my handbrake dvd rips.
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Advice badly needed for a RELIABLE hard drive to save music/movies/etc
- Thread starter TechNutt
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I'll just repeat what has been said........don't rely on putting your data on only one drive if you want to protect it
I'll just throw in another recommendation for Seagate drives.
I have a seagate freeagent pro and it's worked wonderfully...
I have a seagate freeagent pro and it's worked wonderfully...
I been looking at HD's lately to go with a new portable mac not knowing that much about it all either but I found the GTech ones looking rather nice http://www.g-raid.com/products/G-RAID-mini.cfm I'm going to use with me all the time.
..... going to use http://www.g-raid.com/products/G-RAID2.cfm for back up and for using with Logic & SSL .... just to be sure a http://www.g-raid.com/products/G-SAFE.cfm for that piece of mind back up
thoughts?
I'll probably end up getting the mini HD and the G safe or http://www.macwarehouse.co.uk/catalogue/item/GTECH041 .....the above is really a dream scenario
..... going to use http://www.g-raid.com/products/G-RAID2.cfm for back up and for using with Logic & SSL .... just to be sure a http://www.g-raid.com/products/G-SAFE.cfm for that piece of mind back up
thoughts?
I'll probably end up getting the mini HD and the G safe or http://www.macwarehouse.co.uk/catalogue/item/GTECH041 .....the above is really a dream scenario
They'll all fail
A couple years ago I bought a Maxtor that failed just after its year warranty was up. So I bought a Western Digital... that failed just after its warranty was up. So I wised up last year and broke my poor little piggy bank and got TWO hard drives, this time Lacies. Both drives' USB ports failed almost immediately, but that was ok because they still each had 2 Firewire ports. And now (this month) now both drives died completely. A lot of the data was also on cassette tapes, videotapes, zip drives and floppies (remember those?) almost none of which are readable any more, and in any case I no longer own vcr's, zip drives and floppy drives.
The one time I actually had everything multiply backed up, the entire lab burned down. (no joke. Univ. Washington 1996 biology dept. fire.) The guy down the hall left a hot plate on. It was the last year of my Ph.D. I had to stay a whole nother year to re-do all my labwork. Then a year later came the SECOND fire. Another lab, another hot plate. *sigh*
A lot of the advice for protecting data boils down to "buy a lot of expensive equipment and spend weeks and weeks moving stuff around" which always makes me wonder just what kind of budget the hard drive manufacturers think we've got.... and what kind of life to have that much time free.
I have a double strategy now:
(1) I back up my current projects - the ones where, if I lost the data, I'd lose a job or a publication - on 2 computers, 2 flash drives, 2 ipods and a website. I rename files constantly so as not to overwrite stuff. My computers are littered with extra backup folders. Since the fires, I also put major completed projects on a private website, always keep stuff in 2 different houses and also give a copy to a friend in another state. (And I cruise my lab every night and unplug every hot plate and water bath, you better believe it)
(2) and when all that fails, I don't much worry about it much anymore. Whatever you lost, dearly beloved photos of your deceased pet rabbit, your rare Hungarian trumpet-fiddle, your priceless field recordings of Rio Carnaval bands, the original data from your Ph.D., whatever it is, nothing matters as the fact that you are still alive. It's funny, after 5 major losses, now when the second Lacie died it didn't even really bug me; it was just like "Huh, the second Lacie died and all my data is gone again. Oh well!" I guess I've gotten used to having an annual data purge.
Anyway I am taking on a second job this month to buy a new Seagate. I'll write back with an update as soon as my new Seagate fails.
A couple years ago I bought a Maxtor that failed just after its year warranty was up. So I bought a Western Digital... that failed just after its warranty was up. So I wised up last year and broke my poor little piggy bank and got TWO hard drives, this time Lacies. Both drives' USB ports failed almost immediately, but that was ok because they still each had 2 Firewire ports. And now (this month) now both drives died completely. A lot of the data was also on cassette tapes, videotapes, zip drives and floppies (remember those?) almost none of which are readable any more, and in any case I no longer own vcr's, zip drives and floppy drives.
The one time I actually had everything multiply backed up, the entire lab burned down. (no joke. Univ. Washington 1996 biology dept. fire.) The guy down the hall left a hot plate on. It was the last year of my Ph.D. I had to stay a whole nother year to re-do all my labwork. Then a year later came the SECOND fire. Another lab, another hot plate. *sigh*
A lot of the advice for protecting data boils down to "buy a lot of expensive equipment and spend weeks and weeks moving stuff around" which always makes me wonder just what kind of budget the hard drive manufacturers think we've got.... and what kind of life to have that much time free.
I have a double strategy now:
(1) I back up my current projects - the ones where, if I lost the data, I'd lose a job or a publication - on 2 computers, 2 flash drives, 2 ipods and a website. I rename files constantly so as not to overwrite stuff. My computers are littered with extra backup folders. Since the fires, I also put major completed projects on a private website, always keep stuff in 2 different houses and also give a copy to a friend in another state. (And I cruise my lab every night and unplug every hot plate and water bath, you better believe it)
(2) and when all that fails, I don't much worry about it much anymore. Whatever you lost, dearly beloved photos of your deceased pet rabbit, your rare Hungarian trumpet-fiddle, your priceless field recordings of Rio Carnaval bands, the original data from your Ph.D., whatever it is, nothing matters as the fact that you are still alive. It's funny, after 5 major losses, now when the second Lacie died it didn't even really bug me; it was just like "Huh, the second Lacie died and all my data is gone again. Oh well!" I guess I've gotten used to having an annual data purge.
Anyway I am taking on a second job this month to buy a new Seagate. I'll write back with an update as soon as my new Seagate fails.
I've been using a 200GB Maxtor OneTouch external drive for about four years or more now. Never had a single hiccup and its now my network drive for media and setup files (basically anything that I want access to on more than one machine). In the past it was turned on or off as needed, which I'm surprised didn't kill it. Considering its age, I have a 320GB Seagate (I only buy Seagates for my PCs) with a matching 200GB partition with the rest for Ubuntu. I'm doing full backups of that drive twice a month so it doesn't go out and lose 100GB of important stuff.
This is all on the PC-side of things. No Montevina=no Macs for me yet.
I'd say that you need to keep in mind what keeps drives lasting. Anything that gets moved around is more likely to fail (especially while in operation) and runs the risk of being dropped. My internal 500GB Seagates are guaranteed to withstand a 10ft drop, but your mileage will vary. Drives get worn out by turning them on and off, but its not that likely you'll kill it from that, the number of cycles is huge. Your last main enemy is heat. A drive that stands vertically probably has a better chance of a long life due to extra cooling. If the drive is portable or taken anywhere like in a car where it encounters extreme heat or cold will likely do some damage either from expansion/contraction or condensation.
Remember that problems you hear online are always from a vocal minority, but with hard drives it is more serious than say, a CPU failure, since you will be losing possibly irreplaceable data.
This is all on the PC-side of things. No Montevina=no Macs for me yet.
I'd say that you need to keep in mind what keeps drives lasting. Anything that gets moved around is more likely to fail (especially while in operation) and runs the risk of being dropped. My internal 500GB Seagates are guaranteed to withstand a 10ft drop, but your mileage will vary. Drives get worn out by turning them on and off, but its not that likely you'll kill it from that, the number of cycles is huge. Your last main enemy is heat. A drive that stands vertically probably has a better chance of a long life due to extra cooling. If the drive is portable or taken anywhere like in a car where it encounters extreme heat or cold will likely do some damage either from expansion/contraction or condensation.
Remember that problems you hear online are always from a vocal minority, but with hard drives it is more serious than say, a CPU failure, since you will be losing possibly irreplaceable data.
I've seen a lot of people recommend the G-RAID2 for backup, because they see the "RAID" part of the name. Well, the only problem with that is the G-RAID2 is RAID-0, which is bad for reliability. It basically doubles the chance of losing data due to drive failure (if any one of the two drives dies, you lose everything).
The G-SAFE is fine for redundancy. RAID-1 generally requires the two drives be identical, but I've been told it doesn't always seem to matter. If one drive dies, just make sure the replacement is as large or larger than the remaining drive (you won't be able to use any capacity greater than the smallest drive).