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Need affordable reliable storage solution

N

nikehair

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 27, 2007
33
0
Hi,

I just purchased an iMac and Mac Mini. I would like to store all my music, movies and photos in an external storage solution, preferably RAID with firewire 800. I am on a tight budget and prefer to stay under $300.

I think 2TB will be enough for everything. Does anyone have recommendations or experience with the LaCie Quadra drives?

Thanks
 
LaCie makes quality products, and the 2TB D2 Quadra fits what your looking for and costs around $250. Sounds like a winner.
 
nikehair said:
Hi,

I just purchased an iMac and Mac Mini. I would like to store all my music, movies and photos in an external storage solution, preferably RAID with firewire 800. I am on a tight budget and prefer to stay under $300.

I think 2TB will be enough for everything. Does anyone have recommendations or experience with the LaCie Quadra drives?

Thanks
Click to expand...

I actually use that very product not the 2TB version but the 1TB one (as a RAID 1 for my itunes library) and I have had it over a year not one issue or complaint so far. The other one I would really recommend is the Lacie little big disk it is not 2TB but it is totally bus powered so all you have to do is plug in the one cable (FW800) and you are good to go.

Cheers
 
"I just purchased an iMac and Mac Mini. I would like to store all my music, movies and photos in an external storage solution, preferably RAID with firewire 800. I am on a tight budget and prefer to stay under $300."

First, get one of these:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer Technology/FWU2ES2HDK/

Then, get at least two "bare" drives to go with it.

I would suggest you partition each of the two bare drives into 4 partitions:
- backup
- music
- movies
- photos

Then, use CarbonCopyCloner to "do a dupe" of your internal drives to the bare drives. Put a dupe of the iMac onto one backup, and a dupe of the Mini onto the other.

Now, copy (manual copying does fine) all your "media files" to their respective partitions on one of the backups.

Repeat with the second backup.

Once done, you will be "doubly protected" with TWO COPIES of your important stuff. And you will have a bootable clone of each internal drive for emergencies.
 
Fishrrman said:
"I just purchased an iMac and Mac Mini. I would like to store all my music, movies and photos in an external storage solution, preferably RAID with firewire 800. I am on a tight budget and prefer to stay under $300."

First, get one of these:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer Technology/FWU2ES2HDK/

Then, get at least two "bare" drives to go with it.

I would suggest you partition each of the two bare drives into 4 partitions:
- backup
- music
- movies
- photos

Then, use CarbonCopyCloner to "do a dupe" of your internal drives to the bare drives. Put a dupe of the iMac onto one backup, and a dupe of the Mini onto the other.

Now, copy (manual copying does fine) all your "media files" to their respective partitions on one of the backups.

Repeat with the second backup.

Once done, you will be "doubly protected" with TWO COPIES of your important stuff. And you will have a bootable clone of each internal drive for emergencies.
Click to expand...

This is just silly...

If you want to be safe get two drives partition each one into two partitions on one partition clone your internal drive and then on the other use for a time machine drive.

This other duplication business makes no sense to me. If you want advice on buying a drive I need to know how big your internal drives are. How much data do you have? What do you do with the computers etc.? These are all important factors when buying a drive.

Cheers
 
I agree that the multiple partitions seems silly. How will you decide how much space to allocate to each one? By keeping all those different kinds of media on the same partition it won't matter which of your collections grows quicker. It will be annoying to run out of space on "photos" and have tons free on "music."

.
 
My iMac drive is only 320gb and my Mac Mini's is 120gb

I want a drive that serves only as a media server that is backed up. I have other externals for time machine usage.

My media collection is under 500GB at the moment, but it will grow as I move all my music to digital format and start capturing home movies.

I am pretty tech savvy so I don't mind getting my hands dirty with hardware installation.

Thanks
 
Fishrrman said:
Once done, you will be "doubly protected" with TWO COPIES of your important stuff. And you will have a bootable clone of each internal drive for emergencies.
Click to expand...

But both copies are on the same drive. Two copies on the same drive gives you no advantage, since if the drive fails you still lose both. MacForScience and I both just clone the drive and use Time Machine. You still have two copies of everything on the drive, and can still boot off the external during emergencies, but without all the fancy partition work. And there's no idea that the two copies somehow is safer since it's on the same drive.
 
"But both copies are on the same drive"

You didn't read what I wrote.

The idea is to have TWO backup drives.

The OP can partition each drive so that both of them are roughly "equal" in partition sizes.

Then, he can do a dupe of one Mac to the first drive, and the other Mac to the SECOND drive.

Then, he can use separate partitions for music, movies, and photos so that these are separated into partitions which can be easily duped if necessary.

If he uses both the SATA dock and a "USB dongle" (or even a second USB/SATA dock), he can quickly dupe the contents of one backup drive to the second, using CarbonCopyCloner.

Do you just throw all your clothes into a single dresser drawer? Or do you separate them so that they're more manageable?
 
Fishrrman said:
You didn't read what I wrote.
Click to expand...

Yes I did.

The idea is to have TWO backup drives.
Click to expand...

For two Macs, so one drive per Mac.

The OP can partition each drive so that both of them are roughly "equal" in partition sizes. Then, he can do a dupe of one Mac to the first drive, and the other Mac to the SECOND drive. Then, he can use separate partitions for music, movies, and photos so that these are separated into partitions which can be easily duped if necessary.
Click to expand...

In other words, cloning each Mac to a partition on separate drives (so there's a clone of Mac A on Drive A and Mac B on Drive B) and then having the same files for music, movies, and photos on both? If so, this seems overly complicated but would give you two copies of those files.

Do you just throw all your clothes into a single dresser drawer? Or do you separate them so that they're more manageable?
Click to expand...

Bad analogy. If you want to use the dresser analogy, more accurately a hard drive would be a whole dresser, and the drawers would be folders. I use drawers (folders) to keep my clothes (files) separate and manageable. I don't use whole dressers (hard drives) to keep them separated.

For myself, I have a 1 TB drive that I've broken into two partitions. One I clone my drive to, the other I use for TimeMachine and anything I want easily accessible but not on my internal drive. I also use DropBox to make sure that all my most important files are backed up on the internet. I use a RAID 1 to backup all my media-related files I work with.
 
I think I will just buy an enclosure and stick two 5-year warranty drives in it.
 
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