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Best Enormous External Hard Drive Solution

J

jwiener

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 25, 2006
8
0
Hey Guys,
I'm looking for a huge, fast external backup solution. This is partly in anticipation for leopard and partly because I have lots of data (video, audio and graphics work) that I want to keep but don't necessarily need on my laptop all the time. I'm wondering what people think about various backup solutions.
My ideas are:

1) 2 500gb drives inside a firewire 800 raid enclosure (anyone have any experience with brands??)
2) 1 or 2 simple external 500gm drives (are there any reliable firewire 800 options here?)
3) wait for the 1tb drives to come out and put one of them in an enclosure

I'm sure there are more, but what do you all think. I want something reliable and fast. every time I think I've found something good, I find reviews that call reliability into question. Thanks so much guys.

-Jesse
 
The Iomega UltraMax 1TB is highly recommended if you can stash it somewhere to avoid being disturbed by the fans.

Built like a tank with two 500GB drives inside that can be configured for a blazing 1TB with Raid 0 or as an ultra-secure 500GB Raid 1 array.

Beware of anything by Lacie.
 
4) build an external network attached storage box. using gigabit ethernet you will get faster than FW400 transfer speeds. you could also (i think) build the box and use an eSATA connection + an eSATA card/adapter in your mac for even faster transfer speeds.

i built a NAS with 1.2TB (4 x 500GB drives) of redundant RAID 5 storage with gigabit ethernet connectivity for under $1000. had i gone to lower end parts i could have built it even cheaper.
 
I have just one piece of advice:

Stay away from Lacie;)

They make good products, but their after sales service sucks, IMO at least.
 
shecky said:
4) build an external network attached storage box. using gigabit ethernet you will get faster than FW400 transfer speeds. you could also (i think) build the box and use an eSATA connection + an eSATA card/adapter in your mac for even faster transfer speeds.

i built a NAS with 1.2TB (4 x 500GB drives) of redundant RAID 5 storage with gigabit ethernet connectivity for under $1000. had i gone to lower end parts i could have built it even cheaper.
Click to expand...

I seem to recall someone posted on this forum that Ethernet is a bad way to connect a hard drive due to packet collisions or something along those lines. USB and FireWire have built in controllers to prevent collisions (whoever posted it can give a better explanation!).
 
Also, backup all your most important data to DVD's aswell as your hard drive. Hard drive failures are not that uncommon, so having a hard copy is worthwhile too.
 
How about a NAS? We have the Infrant one and so far the experience has been pretty good. It's built for this kind of thing. And it's RAID5. You could put 4 750MB drives and get a bit more than 2TB of storage.

They've got a support forum that's pretty active. I'm sure you could get any questions answered there.
 
jwiener said:
Hey Guys,
I'm looking for a huge, fast external backup solution. This is partly in anticipation for leopard and partly because I have lots of data (video, audio and graphics work) that I want to keep but don't necessarily need on my laptop all the time. I'm wondering what people think about various backup solutions.
My ideas are:

Jesse
Click to expand...

OWC has some really good enclosures [I have not used their RAID enclosures, just single drive units]

This one looks good for a two drive config http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/hard-drives/EliteAL/StripedRAID
 
Mac Mall

MacMall has a 1Terabyte (two dual 500gig SATA Drives) Fanthom Drive with Firewire 400/800 and USB 2 Interfaces on sale for $299 after an $80 rebate.

Pretty damn good price -- can't build my own for that.

Not sure of warranty.
 
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