How many hard drives do you use ?

[dukebound85]

desk top = 3 internals for a total of 2.08TB

lap top= 500GB

external = 250GB

 

[Bennieboy©]

only got 2 technically,
120Gb in my MBP and a 1TB external, for music, films and so forth,

 

[DARKJ3DI]

only 3 for me:

>internal MacBook drive - 250GB - for my important homework
>external WD usb drive - 500GB - media drive (movies, games)
>external Seagate drive - 160GB - my Time Machine and dumping ground

I have pretty much filled these up. And i remember when my mums old windows 98 machine with a 10GB drive was enough to store everything we had

 

[Angelo95210]

You guys who have >10 drives, i have headache when I think about your backup strategy...

 

[nanofrog]

You guys who have >10 drives, i have headache when I think about your backup strategy...

Nah. Most of mine are in arrays, so it's seen as one logical drive, unless there's partitions (then it's one logical drive per parititon).

And then there's the backup software. Once set up, you leave it alone, and let the scheduling take care of it.

 

[MWPULSE]

I have 7... well i should have 7!

2 internals, one each for my machines..

then a 1TB movie/series storage HD, i set up seperate partitions on it, for time machine, each of the afore mentioned media, and 2 mini ones- a tiger and leopard install for the mac mini.

Then i have a 320 removable USB for my MBP which i use to transfer stuff around, also set 2 thirds of it for time machine.

I have 3 cases for broken western digital drives, which im going to replace with Samsung F1/3 1TB drives. So 4 TB just there..

Eventually i will have probably a TB for my videos n such. 250 for my musical stuffs.. Then also have another 2TB for backing everything up, im mainly concerned about my mac mini, its got all my music that i produce, and all my media.. might also make a seperate backup for my itunes library on my MBP.. hmmm choices

PTP

 

[Shawnstra]

Soon to be iMac - 1TB
Windows Laptop - 80GB
Macbook Pro - 200GB
Time Capsule - 500GB
Seagate External - 320GB
WD Portable External - 160GB

I also have a bunch of thumbdrives (like 5 1GBs, 1 8GB, 1 2GB)

 

[Transporteur]

Internal:

1 x 160GB MBP
2 x 1TB Raid0 MacPro (Data)
1 x 500GB MacPro (Windows)
1 x 160GB MacPro (OS X)
1 x 160GB Server (OS)
8 x 500GB Raid6 (Data)

External:

1 x 640GB (Timemachine & CCC backup for MacPro OS drive)
1 x 160GB (don't know what's on that drive, old Windows stuff I guess)
2 x 500GB Raid1 (Backup)
2 x 1TB Raid1 (Backup)
2 x 1TB Raid1 (Backup)


Still don't have a decent backup for the server, but as a matter of fact it does not store any exclusive data, so that's not that important.

 

[pukifloyd]

Desktop:
2 internals (250 gb each)
1 external (500gb)

MBP:
1 internal(500gb)
1 external(1tb)

HP laptop (yeah...it sucks)
1 internal(320 gb)

 

[crhudy1985]

One internal in my macbook obviously... one 250gb for time machine and one 500 for my media collection (which I just set up wirelessly with my aebs and am loving it) I guess I have four if I include the hd for my gateway laptop I never use (it has been at my friend's parent's house for over two months).

 

[KeriJane]

Lots and Lots

Mac Pro- 4 internal, 2 in a 2BigTriple, 1 in a D2 Quadra, 3 used in a dock for Video work (1 at a time)
total- 10

Mac Mini- 1 internal

G5 iMac (at Mom's house) - 1 internal

Windows Netbook- 1 internal

Windows Shuttle- 1 internal

Grand Total- 14-ish.

Really glad that the vast majority are on Macs and not Windows boxes
Keri

 

[zw-gator]

x1 in my MBP @ 500GB
x1 External WD My Book @ 500GB
x1 160GB MBP stock HD in an enclosure
x1 External WD Passpost @ 120GB

The 160GB and 120GB hold the same files, but the 120GB is stored at an off sight location.

Edit: I'm waiting for 2TB 3.5" drives to drop in price (~$100 Canadian) and I'll pick one of them up. I never thought I'd use this much storage a few years ago haha

 

[kellen]

Too many. 4 in the macpro, 2 WD 640 blacks are raided, one 320 GB stock drive solely for windows and a 1.5tb for backup of documents and video (not time machine).

External is a e-sata OWC dual drive. One is a 1TB time machine into two 500GB partitions, one for my MP, one for the MBP. Other drive is a 500GB seagate for video redundancy.

Then the MBP has its own backup 320 WD drive, not a time machine drive.

Then a 500GB time capsule. Just used for more video stuff, don't trust it as much after reading about all the problems with the power supplys.

I lost 2 HDs at once a couple years back, a system drive and a time machine drive. Had to piece it all my data back from different sources. Not fun. So I am overly protective.

 

[63dot]

I now have a Mac with one large enough hard drive for my purposes at 80 gigs, but my previous Mac, an old G4 Power Mac had three internal small hard drives. But when I used that computer, I sometimes used the second drive to put files on, but never the third one.

I think my next Mac with be another mini, and I will probably get a small external hard drive and a nice portable flash drive. But by then the portable 100 GB flash drive will probably come in a 320 GB size.

 

[Angelo95210]

When I threw this poll, I would never have thought mac users have so many drives. This is really interesting.

Thanks for raising the idea of drive arrays, which sounds really interesting to make use of so many units.

Mac Pros with their huge storage room have still a nice future me thinks.

 

[jzuena]

I answered 3 since my mini has two external drives as well. But I also have a NAS with 4 drives in a RAID array (would this be one drive or 4?), 4 laptops, an Xbox, an Apple TV, and a Linux file server. The NAS and Linux file server each have a USB drive connected to them as well. So I could have answered 16 if I had thought about it more before answering.

 

[BertyBoy]

You guys who have >10 drives, i have headache when I think about your backup strategy...

Well more than half of these are backups (I used to make my fortune from organising backups for large corporate clients with many thousands of disks. We'd get about 10 disk failures a week in the summer, just the law of averages).

About half the disks contain a bootable OS., and the important stuff gets backed up each night. Less important - usually after it's been backed up to DVD - once a week. It's a busy schedule, backups every night at 11pm, 1am, and 3am, on each of the three desktops. For some of the backups, the backup files, from the backup at 1am, are backed up to another Mac at 3am.

As a rule the laptops don't hold anything valuable, all work is saved directly to an AES encrypted disk image on a large capacity USB stick. This then gets loaded back to the Mac Pro - or other desktop Mac.

 

[mjones185]

I have these:

Mac Pro
Four 1TB Internal
Two 750ZGB External
Two 500GB External

MacBook Pro
One 500GB Internal
Two 160GB External

HP Media Server
Three 1TB Internal
One 750GB Internal

PC
One 80GB Raptor Internal
One 750GB Internal
One 300GB Internal
Two 160GB Internal


That is 20 Hard Drives totaling 11TB's. I'm a data packrat


Mike

 

[63dot]

That is 20 Hard Drives totaling 11TB's. I'm a data packrat


Mike

Imagine now if you had that much stuff, or junk, in the old school style of books, magazines, periodicals, encyclopedias, catalogs, photo albums, and newspapers. I know a couple of people who have terabytes of this stuff creating both a fire hazard and an unbelievable awful smell. The first time I realized the funky smell that a huge number of old books could produce was when I walked into one of London's major libraries. I couldn't put my finger on it, but this Yankee almost passed out. I know many of these books are historical and very old, but they must have people working there who are impervious to mold.

 

[macbook yes]

one 160gb internal and one 500gb external.

i also have 3 or 4 flash drives but those don't really count

 

[jamesdmc]

Mac Pro
640g boot drive
One 320 gig original Mac Pro boot drive (not currently being used)
Two 750 gig in software RAID 0 for Movies
One 750 gig Bootcamp
One 640 gig in OWC external for SuperDuper
One 1TB in OWC external for Time Machine

iMac
750 gig internal boot
One 750 gig in OWC external for SuperDuper
One 1TB in OWC external for Time Machine

Macbook Pro
500 gig internal
the original 250 gig drive in an OWC external enclosure for SuperDuper

Mac Mini
120 gig internal
750 gig in OWC external for Plex rips


So that's 14 for OS X, plus about 4 or 5 smaller drives that are sitting idle (hmmm...Drobo?) in my unused PCs before my switch to mac. But everything important in OS X is backed up, which is something I *never* did with my PCs.