External Hard drive Discussion/Questions

[sonkaldebi]

Hi All

First post on these forums but have been reading them for ages haha

Anyway i wanted 2TB of raided storage for my iMac as cheep as possible while still getting performance. So after lots of research i have come down to 2 options and only £2 difference in price. So thought i would get some other people's thoughts first

Option 1

2 x Western Digital My Book Studio 2TB drives daisy chained via Firewire 800 and raided though the OS (Raid 1)

Option 2

1 x 4TB Buffalo Link Station Duo connected direct into the back of my iMac's Gigabit Ethernet port as i use the Wifi to connect to the internet. So Raid 1 setup via Hardware.

Let me know any thoughts\problems you have with either of these setups as i am hoping to order very soon

Many thanks

Ste

 

[macduke]

WD's have been flakey for me. I love my G-DRIVE. They make G-RAID (striped) and used to make G-SAFE (mirror). I think they stopped making G-SAFE a few months ago as I couldn't find it on their website the other day but you might be able to find it somewhere new still. The newer drives have TB and the older ones are eSATA and FW. If you're getting a new Macbook then you can get a USB 3.0 to eSATA adapter. I'm actually hunting for a good one at the moment.

 

[sonkaldebi]

Yeh its the mirror i am after as i have about 900GB used on my current setup so its a lot of backing up when you can can just do it on the fly with a mirror

Cheers tho

 

[Ifti]

I always use WD Studio drives and have NEVER had any issues whatsoever.

I have a My Book Studio Edition II 4TB drive, configured in a striped RAID set, which i connected to my NAS via eSATA to backup my more important data. Even though my NAS has RAID 5, you can never have enough backups!

I also have 2 My Passport Studio drives.
A 1TB for backup images of my laptop etc, and one of their more recent 2TB drives for use with iMovie/Final Cut as my scratch disc.

All of these have FireWire800, which I use with my 2 Passport drives primarily. They can be daisy chained and work flawlessly. Very speedy, and no issue whatsoever.
All the Studio drives are made for MAC primarily, and the new passport drives have an aluminium finish and look great!

Had other WD drives in the past as well, with no issues.

WD also offer 3-5 year guarantees on their drives. If something happens they just replace it pretty quickly - although Ive never needed to use it.

The only downside is that they havent incorporated USB 3 into their Studio drives yet I dont think - although I tend to use Firewire800 anyways as my laptop doesnt have USB3 anyway, and I have no plans to upgrade just yet.