Looking for an inexpensive but good external RAID harddrive...

[Canubis]

Hi,

I am looking for an inexpensive but good external harddrive with RAID functionality, so I can automatically mirror all my data.
I want to connect it to my Mac mini in my living room and use it for videos, music etc. I'd prefer a FireWire disk for greater speeds and daisy chaining.

I found the Western Digital MyBook Studio 2TB to be a very interesting option. Can you adivse me to buy this one? How is it's performance? If you have it, are you satisfied with it?

Do you have other/better options?

 

[Marsil]

I use that one - it works great... it fast enough - I use it with Firewire but you can use it with sata as well. I use it in mirror configuration but it come default as stripped. It very easy to change the drives as well and it VERY quite.

 

[Canubis]

Well that sound great! Thanks for your reply, Marsil!

Although the Mac mini I would use it with does not have a eSATA connection port, it is good to know to have this future standard supported.

What do you use it for? Also Video? When using EyeTV to simultanously compress a recording while scrolling through another recording to look for ads to cut out, EyeTV gets a bit sluggish on displaying the thumbnails of the recording. This is when both recordings are placed on the buildt-in harddrive of the Mac mini which I suppose is a 5400rpm one.
I think this will greatly improve when the recordings are stored on the MyBook Studio as FireWire 400 should be faster than the access to the slow buildt-in disk. Am I right about this?

 

[techound1]

I'll chime in with a vote for a refurb lacie 2big. We use it for our iTunes library and it's been a champ.

 

[Marsil]

I use it as backup and photos so I cant really comment on speed with video.

 

[Tomorrow]

I use a Buffalo Linkstation Pro Duo (2 x 1 Tb), it's a NAS so it's a little more pricey than straight USB or FW. Works great, though.