LaCie or SanDisk? - Best quality of external storage

[Foghiker]

Hey guys

I am currently looking for a Time Machine storage for my MacBook Pro w/ 8TB storage.
I need a reliable disk, which will not lose any data (obviously ).

There is one from SanDisk w/ 36 TB storage for CHF 1'420.-

SanDisk PRO G-Raid 2 36 TB - BRACK.CH

SanDisk PRO G-Raid 2 36 TB: Externe HDD mit 36 TB Speicherkapazität. RAID: Ja. Schnittstellen: 2x Thunderbolt 3, 1x Type-C USB 3.0 (3.1 / 3.2 Gen. 1) und 1x HDMI. Mit zwei Ultrastar Enterprise-Festplatten bestückt. Für MacOS vorformatiert, lässt sich für Windows neu formatieren - 250'000 Artikel...

www.brack.ch

And one from LaCie w/ 36 TB storage for CHF 1'739.-

LaCie Externer RAID-Speicher 2big Dock 36 TB - BRACK.CH

LaCie Externer RAID-Speicher 2big Dock 36 TB: Mit zwei IronWolf Pro Enterprise-Festplatten bestückt. Geschwindigkeit von bis zu 440 MB/s. 2x Thunderbolt 3-Anschlüsse für 4K-Workflows. 1x USB 3.0 Port, 1x USB 3.1 und 1x DisplayPort-Anschluss. Steckplätze für SD- und CompactFlash-Karten...

www.brack.ch

Any other propositions?

Cheers
Howard

 

[Fishrrman]

I would suggest that you NOT use RAID for a tm backup.
Just a single platter-based drive.

 

[Foghiker]

Thank you for your advice. What could be the down side, when using a RAID for a Time Machine back-up?
Any idea why LaCie charges more, than SanDisk, for the same amount of storage?
There must be a technical difference, as I assume.

 

[theluggage]

Thank you for your advice. What could be the down side, when using a RAID for a Time Machine back-up?

The simple answer is that for a single-user TM backup it would be far more secure to have two, separate Time Machine disks (MacOS will alternate between them), or use one disk for Time Machine and another to do periodic backups with something else (SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner etc.)

Time machine is very convenient and is great for when you accidentally delete or overwrite an individual file and want to go back to a historical version... and can be used for disaster recovery, but has also been known to get corrupted or unusable, so having a second backup using a different system is a good idea and can be better for disaster recovery.

RAID has its uses, but it is more a data centre thing about minimising downtime when you have so many drives that random drive failures are a regular event - the performance gains are more geared to multi user server use, some of the performance-oriented modes actually increase the risk of data loss and adding parity drives to counteract that means buying up to 3x as many drives to get the same storage. The added data security from mirroring and parity comes with a lot of caveats (drives bought together and living in the same enclosure tend to fail together, and a software fault - like Time Machine stuffing up - or power spike will usually corrupt both drives).

Also, if you're using Time Machine, the backup can rapidly grow very large, and you might want to exclude some types of file from the backup - things like your media library, virtual machine disc images and other archives of large files that change infrequently (TM will want to keep multiple versions).

Also remember, if you're doing anything serious, the 3, 2, 1 rule - 3 backups, 2 different types, one of them off-site (or something like that, but you get the gist) & remember that - at best - RAID doesn't count as 2.

 

[kschendel]

+1 to what the others say. Mirroring (RAID 1) or indeed any of the RAID stuff is meant to protect against drive failure. It doesn't protect against anything else, and in particular it doesn't protect against either user failure (oops deleted the wrong file) or complete system failure as in the computer died, had red wine poured into it, etc.

I'd buy one drive and use it for Time Machine. Depending on how far back you need to save files, either buy 1 to N additional separate drives and rotate them for full backups (SuperDuper or whatever), or look into a cloud backup. Or all three.

 

[floral]

SanDisk is generally a well trusted brand when it comes to file storage. The LaCle brand looks a little sketchy plus I haven't heard of it before...

 

[MarkC426]

SanDisk is generally a well trusted brand when it comes to file storage. The LaCle brand looks a little sketchy plus I haven't heard of it before...

Lacie are massive....I am surprised you have never heard of them.
I choose Lacie personally, as I have used them since my G4, and never had one fail.
I recently accessed a clone of my G4 PowerBook (not accessed for about 10 years), and worked like new.
I have numerous drives used for TM and clones, all Lacie, they are a very solid build (d2 range).

 

[theluggage]

I am currently looking for a Time Machine storage for my MacBook Pro w/ 8TB storage.

...another point - both of those look like thunderbolt hard drive enclosures, which is probably doubling the price. There's not a lot to be gained from using Thunderbolt to connect a pair of mechanical hard drives unless you need to daisy-chain another Thunderbolt device or a display from it. If you just want hard drive storage, USB3 (either with old style or USB-C connectors) is more than fast enough for a backup drive.

SanDisk is generally a well trusted brand when it comes to file storage. The LaCle brand looks a little sketchy plus I haven't heard of it before...

Both names have been around for ages - but these firms get bought and sold! LaCie have a long association with making Mac-friendly external drives with "designer" cases and are something of a premium brand. SanDisk are more usually associated with SSDs, memory sticks, SD cards etc. but "SanDisk Professional" is what used to be G-Technology - another established Mac-oriented external drive maker.

Anyway, the only people actually making hard drive mechanisms now are Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba and
a quick check on Wikipedia shows that - what a surprise - LaCie is now a brand of Seagate, and both SanDisk and SanDisk Professional (nee G-Technology) are brands of Western Digital.

(OK, that's enough of me trying to sound clever by looking things up on Wikipedia).

 

[MacGizmo]

LaCie charges extra for fancy names and case designs. They're the Cold Stone Creamery of storage.

 

[floral]

Both names have been around for ages - but these firms get bought and sold! LaCie have a long association with making Mac-friendly external drives with "designer" cases and are something of a premium brand. SanDisk are more usually associated with SSDs, memory sticks, SD cards etc. but "SanDisk Professional" is what used to be G-Technology - another established Mac-oriented external drive maker.

Anyway, the only people actually making hard drive mechanisms now are Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba and
a quick check on Wikipedia shows that - what a surprise - LaCie is now a brand of Seagate, and both SanDisk and SanDisk Professional (nee G-Technology) are brands of Western Digital.

MarkC426:
Lacie are massive....I am surprised you have never heard of them.
I choose Lacie personally, as I have used them since my G4, and never had one fail.
I recently accessed a clone of my G4 PowerBook (not accessed for about 10 years), and worked like new.
I have numerous drives used for TM and clones, all Lacie, they are a very solid build (d2 range).

Oooh. I didn't know LaCie was such a big hit! I stand corrected.

 

[Scott Baret]

LaCie has been around forever. I got my first LaCie external drive 30 years ago...

 

[Foghiker]

Hey folks

I already read all your comments, but did not answer yet.
You helped me a lot.

Especially @theluggage!
Based on your information I found the following article, which backs your information:

Why LaCie Hard Drives Are More Expensive That Seagate Or Western Digital

From the moment that LaCie hit the marketplace, they have been doing something interesting. They use Seagate,

aesonlabs.ca

And I like the 3,2, 1 rule.
I will have all the data on my MacBook and keep the TimeMachine at a friends place.
All new data will be backed in iCloud, too.
I Currently I do have 2.3 TB of pictures and videos (219'494 media files), hence the need to safely offload them.


Last question: Will I be able to use any of the linked storages without RAID, or would any of the systems force me to?

Cheers
Howard

 

[theluggage]

Last question: Will I be able to use any of the linked storages without RAID, or would any of the systems force me to?

Don't have direct experience, but the specs say that they both offer JBOD mode - which stands for "Just a Bunch Of Disks" - which is what you want.

Just be aware that you're choosing something of a premium system by going for a Thunderbolt interface. For most purposes USB3.0 (either with USB-C or old-style connectors) is more than fast enough for mechanical drives. The main advantage of Thunderbolt here will be that you can connect displays and other USB/TB peripherals via the drive.

 

[Silencio]

G-Tech was historically a pretty solid brand. I don't know if Sandisk's purchase of them has had an impact on their products.

LaCie has been around for decades. They've always been about elevated product design, but I feel like they've consistently had quality issues. I only used their products professionally if they were already there and someone else had chosen and bought them — I can't think of a single time when I chose a LaCie product over a competitor's storage product myself.

Back in the 90s, there was another company called APS that sold external drives that had good design and were well integrated with each other (their Short Stack SCSI connectors really cleaned up the unruly cable mess of external SCSI chains, for example), but the quality was good and their added features and design were actually useful and reliable. They got caught out when one of their hard drive vendors suddenly closed their doors, and they ended up failing and getting bought out themselves. I think LaCie actually bought them. Oh well.

 

[Foghiker]

@theluggage
Those were the only external hard drives I could find.
I would not bother finding a flash option.
My MacBook Pro from this year only offers thunderbolt ports.

 

[theluggage]

Those were the only external hard drives I could find.

There are literally 3 pages full of external hard drives available on the store you linked to, including several 16-18TB drives - enough for a Time Machine backup of your 8TB Mac - at a less than half the price of those 32GB dual drives you linked to.

My MacBook Pro from this year only offers thunderbolt ports.

...you can connect almost any USB 3.0/3.1/3.2 drive to one of those Thunderbolt ports. Anything that comes with a USB-C cable should connect directly, otherwise you'll just need a USB-C to USB-A adapter.

If those dual drives are really what you want, they're not bad choices, but just be aware that you could get something a lot cheaper that will do the backup job.

 

[Foghiker]

@theluggage

Could I use 2 of "IronWolf 20 TB"

Seagate Harddisk IronWolf Pro 3.5" SATA 20 TB - BRACK.CH

Seagate Harddisk IronWolf Pro 3.5" SATA 20 TB: 3.5"-Festplatte, 20 TB, SATA III (6Gb/s). 7200 rpm. Geeignet für den 24 x 7-Betrieb in NAS-Systemen für Gewerbe und Unternehmen. Rotationsschwingungs-Sensoren für gleichbleibend hohe Leistung in Speicherarrays. Inklusive Rescue...

www.brack.ch

In a "Alxum USB C to SATA Docking Stations for Hard Drives 2.5" ???

Alxum USB C to SATA Docking Stations for Hard Drives 2.5" and 3.5" SATA HDD and SSD, Offline Cloning Function, Supports UASP and 2 x 18TB Drives

Alxum USB C to SATA HDD hard drive docking station with offline clone function When you clone a hard drive, plug and play without connecting a PC - just connect both hard drives, press the "cloning" button for 3 seconds until the LED starts flashing and press it again, then the cloning process be...

www.amazon.de

 

[HDFan]

RAID has its uses, but it is more a data centre thing about minimising downtime when you have so many drives that random drive failures are a regular event - the performance gains are more geared to multi user server use, some of the performance-oriented modes actually increase the risk of data loss and adding parity drives to counteract that means buying up to 3x as many drives to get the same storage. The added data security from mirroring and parity comes with a lot of caveats (drives bought together and living in the same enclosure tend to fail together, and a software fault - like Time Machine stuffing up - or power spike will usually corrupt both drives).

Not necessarily just for data center servers. RAID is also a way of creating virtual disks with very large sizes for large datasets, such as multimedia volumes with some protection for disk failures. Have multiple RAID volumes up to 128 TB and have never had any failures of all drives, or even one. With hardware RAID the key is using a top tier vendor, such as Promise. Personally I would avoid software RAID.

Could I use 2 of "IronWolf 20 TB"

In a 3-2-1 backup program only 1 of the 3 disks should be Time Machine. Not sure how you would be configuring the 2 IronWolfs. There was a discussion some time back about Ironwolf (not Pro) vs Exos. Exos might be a better value with a longer TBW and warranty, depending on model.

20 TB might be a bit large for a 8 TB drive backup, assuming the drive isn't full. I have 3 TB in use on my boot drive and am using 6 TB TM backup drives. This gives me some 8 months of TM history. Depending upon your useage a 20 TB TM drive would give you hears of history. The backup will likely get corrupted long before it gets filled.

 

[Foghiker]

@HDFan
Can you say anything about the docking station?
How can I tell if it is a good one?
Technically it has just to pass a flow of current, but what about the effective data throughput?