So I learned the hard way about external hard drives being fragile earlier this week. My iMac is dying in some way, and so I decided to move my external drives to my AirPort Extreme Base Station so I could use them from my MacBook Air. I've pretty much been using the iMac as a media server for the Apple TVs and to store my iPhoto Library with its 2 TB internal drive.
Anywho, moved the drives next to my cable modem and router. Managed to knock one of the drives over, not too far but it clunked the side of the furniture it was on. I had seen it listed on my MBA when checking for drives. After I knocked it over -- which also unplugged the cables -- I plugged it up and got a very bad screeching noise. It also didn't get recognized as a drive, so I'm guessing the actual disk probably got damaged. I have a ton of movies I ripped on there (I own them all!) and some other stuff. So it's probably gone. I don't think anything major or else I would've had it on my internal drive that backs up via Time Machine.
To my point: I'm looking at doing this storage right now. It seems like the best options available without breaking a budget are either to get one of these WD/Seagate home cloud dual-drive boxes that allow the use of RAID 1 or to buy an empty box and place a pair of hard drives in it.
I see that a lot of people have experience doing this. I don't. I've just had a few external drives for big media like movies and TV shows. I would really like to start a backup system between my dad's iPhoto library and mine -- basically backing up his to a setup in my home, my library to a setup in his -- so we won't lose photos even if one of our homes burned to the ground. We're talking many gigs, so I don't want to do the remote storage services like iCloud or whatever because they're costly when you get up to how much we need.
It looks like basically I'll have to buy twice the storage I really want just so I can back everything up using RAID 1. But I don't know the usage characteristics of these external enclosures. I found one on Amazon that's $100 for four bays. Can I buy this, start with two 4TB drives using RAID 1 and then expand it with two more 4TB drives? Could I start with a pair of fours and then go with a pair of sixes if they drop in price a bunch? (FYI I'm seeing $100 for 3TB, $130 for 4TB, $250 for 6TB in the WD Caviar Green series).
I'm also considering the Seagate Personal Cloud series, especially for lesser storage for my dad. It's $479 for 8TB in two bays, which is kind of expensive with the above box plus drives I mentioned for two 4TB drives and the enclosure -- with two bays still open.
So thanks if you're still reading. This is all new to me and I really need to get this set up before I lose something more important than ripped movies -- I still have the discs so I can do it again. But had I stored an important backup there, it would've been grr time.
Anywho, moved the drives next to my cable modem and router. Managed to knock one of the drives over, not too far but it clunked the side of the furniture it was on. I had seen it listed on my MBA when checking for drives. After I knocked it over -- which also unplugged the cables -- I plugged it up and got a very bad screeching noise. It also didn't get recognized as a drive, so I'm guessing the actual disk probably got damaged. I have a ton of movies I ripped on there (I own them all!) and some other stuff. So it's probably gone. I don't think anything major or else I would've had it on my internal drive that backs up via Time Machine.
To my point: I'm looking at doing this storage right now. It seems like the best options available without breaking a budget are either to get one of these WD/Seagate home cloud dual-drive boxes that allow the use of RAID 1 or to buy an empty box and place a pair of hard drives in it.
I see that a lot of people have experience doing this. I don't. I've just had a few external drives for big media like movies and TV shows. I would really like to start a backup system between my dad's iPhoto library and mine -- basically backing up his to a setup in my home, my library to a setup in his -- so we won't lose photos even if one of our homes burned to the ground. We're talking many gigs, so I don't want to do the remote storage services like iCloud or whatever because they're costly when you get up to how much we need.
It looks like basically I'll have to buy twice the storage I really want just so I can back everything up using RAID 1. But I don't know the usage characteristics of these external enclosures. I found one on Amazon that's $100 for four bays. Can I buy this, start with two 4TB drives using RAID 1 and then expand it with two more 4TB drives? Could I start with a pair of fours and then go with a pair of sixes if they drop in price a bunch? (FYI I'm seeing $100 for 3TB, $130 for 4TB, $250 for 6TB in the WD Caviar Green series).
I'm also considering the Seagate Personal Cloud series, especially for lesser storage for my dad. It's $479 for 8TB in two bays, which is kind of expensive with the above box plus drives I mentioned for two 4TB drives and the enclosure -- with two bays still open.
So thanks if you're still reading. This is all new to me and I really need to get this set up before I lose something more important than ripped movies -- I still have the discs so I can do it again. But had I stored an important backup there, it would've been grr time.