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recommend 1TB external HD?

M

.mark.

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 28, 2007
266
1
Jersey, C.I.
Can anyone recommend me a 1TB external HD to use with my MBP? I'm in need of a bit more space with time machine and thought 1TB should do me for the foreseeable future.
 
I thought TB drives were still on the pricey side.

Also consider multiple smaller drives - say 2 500G drives (daisy chain them under fire wire and lose no USB ports)

Just for the sake that if this is a backup drive - it may be cheaper, and more reliable to use 2 drives instead of one.
 
Big-TDI-Guy said:
I thought TB drives were still on the pricey side.

Also consider multiple smaller drives - say 2 500G drives (daisy chain them under fire wire and lose no USB ports)

Just for the sake that if this is a backup drive - it may be cheaper, and more reliable to use 2 drives instead of one.
Click to expand...
That doesn't help him with Time MAchine as much as using a single 1 TB drive. Even though they might be daisy chained, TM will still treat them as separate drives, and thus as separate TM backups.

I'm waiting for the price of 1 TB disks to come down, so I don't have to go with a RAID 0 setup, but I may just get a 750 if I see a FW model at an attractive price.
 
Big-TDI-Guy said:
I thought TB drives were still on the pricey side.

Also consider multiple smaller drives - say 2 500G drives (daisy chain them under fire wire and lose no USB ports)
Click to expand...

to the OP: i would personally advise buying your own case, and your own HD. turns out to be cheaper from my experience.

Big-TDI-Guy: i spent a solid month researching hard drives because i was going to buy one and it turned out that the 1Tb hard drive was quite a bit cheaper than the 2x500gb hard drives.
e.g. 500gb $190x2 + external case $260 = 640
1tb $350 + external case $260 = $610
 
DoFoT9 said:
to the OP: i would personally advise buying your own case, and your own HD. turns out to be cheaper from my experience.

Big-TDI-Guy: i spent a solid month researching hard drives because i was going to buy one and it turned out that the 1Tb hard drive was quite a bit cheaper than the 2x500gb hard drives.
e.g. 500gb $190x2 + external case $260 = 640
1tb $350 + external case $260 = $610
Click to expand...
External FW/USB 1 TB drives can be had for around $300 now. How is building your own cheaper at $600+?
 
I didn't know Time Machine was retarded when it came to multiple drives. Sorry for making that assumption - glad someone spotted it.

There are plenty of "dual" hard drive cases available up here - not sure about down under having the same availability.

I definitely agree with building your own drive if you're not afraid to. For one reason alone: Internal hard drives (intended for inside your PC) almost ALWAYS are of better quality, quieter and have longer warranties. Even from the same company. Seagate 1 to 3 years on external - but the same "level" of drive for internal is cheaper, and sports a 5 year warranty.

Also: If you can purchase from this site - these cases seem to be tip-top and dirt cheap. I have NOT purchased one from this vendor yet - so DO exercise due caution. But I'm going to in the near future. This particular one is dirt cheap, and appears to be the bag out of most twice it's price range in terms of case design / interface and options: http://www.firewiremax.com/fi800sahadre.html

Only catch I'm seeing - is it lists 750G as the largest drive - but you should inquire if that has changed. (if it hasn't already - I'm sure it will soon - and he might have others that already do) Also worth inquiring about on the cases you're already looking at. Not worth much if you have a 1TB drive - but a controller that will only address 500Gs of it.

Oh yeah - not sure what part of Down Under you're in or what the temps are. But try to avoid an external case using a fan. Not necessary unless it's going to be super hot and driven really hard. I found a nice document from an IT company showing hard drive failure rates in a wide range of mounting positions / temperatures / humidity levels / ambient shock / vibration -- I think just about every condition imaginable. And it turned out, heat was NOT a found connection between failures VS temp. (over the typical range of operating environments - obviously -55 C and 120 C will change things) I think the biggest killer was intermittent usage with long storage and spin-down times. I need to find that again - it had a lot of good stuff in it.
 
iGrf said:
I was looking at the same one, seems to be marketed with a different brand name in different countries.
So it might be sold by someone else down under.

G
Click to expand...

I JUST came back to this thread to inform you I found that. Like 2 minutes ago.

Well if you get it - as I said to the other individual, let me know where you got it form - and how it well worked for you. (please)
 
Big-TDI-Guy said:
I JUST came back to this thread to inform you I found that. Like 2 minutes ago.

Well if you get it - as I said to the other individual, let me know where you got it form - and how it well worked for you. (please)
Click to expand...

if you mean the other individual in the silent enclosure thread then I have to dissapoint you because i'm the same person :)

(also driving a TDI btw, but a small one, an A3 2l TDI)
 
I'm looking at these

I want a 1 TB drive for Time Machine too. I ordered my iMac with a 750 Gb drive, so I figure 1 TB is the right size for a dedicated Time Machine drive. I've narrowed it down to these two. The first one is a single drive, the second is two drives in a RAID 0 configuration, but both are attractive, fanless, and firewire 800:

Western Digital My Book Studio, $370. This is a single "green" drive--saves energy, slower spinning but faster than many 7200 rpm drives, plus a FIVE YEAR warranty. Also, it's beautiful.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136184
review: http://www.zdnet.com.au/reviews/har...dio-Edition-1TB-/0,139023427,339283701,00.htm

Or, if I go cheap, LaCie Extreme+, $305. 3 year warranty, 7200. Quite a bit bigger, but far more attractive than most 1 TB drives. In RAID 0, so it looks like a single drive to you and the mac.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822154185

The performance difference would be negligible (firewire 800 will still be the bottleneck I suspect), and the power savings, lower noise, smaller size, etc. make a good case for the extra $65 bucks, but, still, that's $65.

Decisions, decisions...
 
je1ani said:
is everyone elses TB drive 1 TB? Mine came out to only 930GB :mad:
Click to expand...

yea tahts normal. hard drive companies work with bytes.. we work with bits. so technically your TeraBYTE hard drive is only a teraBIT hard drive. you have to divide the overall capacity by 8 to get the actual storage space in bytes.
 
DoFoT9 said:
yea tahts normal. hard drive companies work with bytes.. we work with bits. so technically your TeraBYTE hard drive is only a teraBIT hard drive. you have to divide the overall capacity by 8 to get the actual storage space in bytes.
Click to expand...
That's not actually it. Hard drive companies multiply everything by 1000, rather than 1024, so they just measure 1TB as 1000 GB (instead of 1024 GB), 1GB as 1000 MB, and so on. So

1000KB * 1000 (= 1 MB) * 1000 (= 1 GB) * 1000 = 1TB worth of bytes as per manufacturer
but factor 1024 back into the total byte size and you get something less than a true terabyte, actually more like 909 GB (if I did my math correctly).

I think eventually the industry will be forced to be more honest with size, just like they had to with the measurement of displays a decade or so ago (there was a class action on that).

Your explanation -- i.e. bits vs bytes -- would mean the drive is only 125 GB. I don't think that's what you meant.
 
RaceTripper said:
That's not actually it. Hard drive companies multiply everything by 1000, rather than 1024, so they just measure 1TB as 1000 GB (instead of 1024 GB), 1GB as 1000 MB, and so on. So

1000KB * 1000 (= 1 MB) * 1000 (= 1 GB) * 1000 = 1TB worth of bytes as per manufacturer
but factor 1024 back into the total byte size and you get something less than a true terabyte, actually more like 909 GB (if I did my math correctly).

I think eventually the industry will be forced to be more honest with size, just like they had to with the measurement of displays a decade or so ago (there was a class action on that).

Your explanation -- i.e. bits vs bytes -- would mean the drive is only 125 GB. I don't think that's what you meant.
Click to expand...

companies are not lying. they are being completely honest with size. people just assume that it is always written in bytes, either cauz they are not aware of the industry standards, or they just dont know.

i was perfectly right in my explanation (apart from the fact that i left out one small detail)
what i did not say was that you have to divide 100,000,000,000,000 by 8, i only said 1tb. so that is a 1Tbit harddrive and converts that number into a 1TBybe harddrive, which leaves you with the normal way of saying hard drive sizes.
 
Seagate offered cash rebates over the GB/GiB fiasco. Slashdot Story.

In fact GB to indicate powers of 10 is correct, GiB is the correct designation for powers of 2.

'df' in leopard has been updated to reflect this eg:

Code: 
$ df -h
Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2    56Gi   31Gi   25Gi    56%    /
devfs          110Ki  110Ki    0Bi   100%    /dev
 
reifiedbeans said:
I want a 1 TB drive for Time Machine too. I ordered my iMac with a 750 Gb drive, so I figure 1 TB is the right size for a dedicated Time Machine drive. I've narrowed it down to these two. The first one is a single drive, the second is two drives in a RAID 0 configuration, but both are attractive, fanless, and firewire 800:

Western Digital My Book Studio, $370. This is a single "green" drive--saves energy, slower spinning but faster than many 7200 rpm drives, plus a FIVE YEAR warranty. Also, it's beautiful.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136184
review: http://www.zdnet.com.au/reviews/har...dio-Edition-1TB-/0,139023427,339283701,00.htm

Or, if I go cheap, LaCie Extreme+, $305. 3 year warranty, 7200. Quite a bit bigger, but far more attractive than most 1 TB drives. In RAID 0, so it looks like a single drive to you and the mac.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822154185

The performance difference would be negligible (firewire 800 will still be the bottleneck I suspect), and the power savings, lower noise, smaller size, etc. make a good case for the extra $65 bucks, but, still, that's $65.

Decisions, decisions...
Click to expand...

i like the look the the western digital, think i might go for that
 
edesignuk said:
And gives you twice the chance of failure. Remember with RAID0 if one drive goes, the whole lot goes.
Click to expand...
Three times the chance of failure. The controller can also fail, and if it does you are just as hosed as if a drive fails. And often times controller replacements aren't compatible enough to recognize the data.
 
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