And yet you suggest that expensive Data retrieval services are a good way to ensure backup reliability of hard drives ?
Seriously, you're not even trying anymore.
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Steve Jobs Suggests Blu-ray Not Coming to Mac Anytime Soon
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And yet you suggest that expensive Data retrieval services are a good way to ensure backup reliability of hard drives ?
Seriously, you're not even trying anymore.
While I know that optical disk are considered to offer the more secure long term solution, my personal experience is different. I don't know how many DVDs or CDs I had to throw away in the past.
Personally I have NEVER had an external HD failed on me. I use 2 for a double backup of my most important docs (plus another one for my Time Machine). Once in a blue moon I connect them, do a back up, and then they are sitting unpowered again in my shelf for months. In future I might buy one or two replacement drives (heck, there are not expensive anyway) and copy everything over in one go.
Couldn't be bothered to sit down and burn Disks for that. With BD Disks it might be a different story - because of their capacity they are a bit more convenient over DVDs. But then again, I am an extremely lazy guy...
Personally I have NEVER had an external HD failed on me. I use 2 for a double backup of my most important docs (plus another one for my Time Machine). Once in a blue moon I connect them, do a back up, and then they are sitting unpowered again in my shelf for months. In future I might buy one or two replacement drives (heck, there are not expensive anyway) and copy everything over in one go.
Couldn't be bothered to sit down and burn Disks for that.
With BD Disks it might be a different story - because of their capacity they are a bit more convenient over DVDs. But then again, I am an extremely lazy guy... 
I run production arrays as RAID 6 with 2 to 4 hot spares, so up to 6 drive failures could be handled.
Works for me. I have one on site back up and two off site back ups ( one in the same city and the other three states away). Thus my data is in three physical places and pretty secure ( especially because it is not on a windows box). No need for me to waste time or money burning to media. I am still laughing at all those griping because Steve did not put BD players in Macs. The solution is simple - don't buy a Mac. I can't stand windows but you don't see me going to windows forums hating on windows users.
how many drives are in that array and how big is it?
The one I gave the example of I believe is the array 2 arrays 6 drives large and a hot spares shared between them.
Now I know he has some other arrays in his set up that are raid 1+0.
I know with hard drives it is all a trade off in arrays at how much space is lost to the protection of the array.
Good for you that you are obviously not living in a country with restricted upload limits of 300 kbps, and/or you have only a few gigs to backup.
By the way, within the last four months no less than 3 out of 10 external hard drives in use, died on me! No one was older than 3 yrs. young.
Since nowadays all major hard disk brands only sell crap manufactured in China, you have to backup your files at least twice.
In my case that would mean at least 30 TB just for keeping my sd movie collection safe! My growing 1080p collection, would be even more disk space consuming.
On a personal side note: I can't stand Mac zealots who eagerly put the "Mac hater" stamp on every reasonable critical voice. That pathetic "buy a PC" sermon shows the same ugly roots of intolerance as the hateful "go to hell" from fundamentalists followers of any other religious cult...
Consumer grade hdd's die young these days.
And even if Time Machine is better than nothing for consumers, it isn't solution for everything. If purchsed digital download movies have unlimited download counts, it isn't so important to backup terabytes of movies.
But when I can buy a hard copy of a movie with better quality than any download offered anywhere for ten bucks, I just don't see the reason to spend money, time and expertise to backup systems.
There really is no point comparing enterprise level arrays and tape robots to consumer needs.
It's all about the value of data you are prepared to pay.
Majority of consumers will not pay twice something like $1000 for recovering data. After one critical crash they start burning. Some optical disks might get old sooner, but their small capasity is an advantage in backups. You loose only small part of your life's digital memories.
And hdd's get old just sitting on a shelf. Lubricants and capacitors get dry.
Another thing is power that 24/7-nas-boxes use. You could buy every year bd's for same amount of data those boxes hold with the costs of electricity. At least if you are not heating your house with them.
There is a reason why almost all macs do still have optical drive...
If your industry's function is to get ink on a dead tree, I'm not surprised that bd has little interest in that business.
But I'm getting the same approach; there's no need for the latest and greatest, since the latest are not any greater than before. So I buy used macs.
If I buy 15" now and usb3 start to dominate later next year, what should I do then? Buy another 15" when it ships? Problem is that when 15" lost express card, it also lost ALL expandability. You can't even choose if you'd like to use eSata or fw800 anymore.
I'm not buying a machine for my needs now. I'm buying a machine for my needs for next 5 years.
Ever tried to capture dvcprohd to external disk with just one fw port?
Have you noticed what Decklink is offering this year? All new products are based on usb3.
I guess most people haven't realised what kind of revolution usb3 could be.
Older solutions with same speed costs 100x more. Need for different connections disappear. All devices will have same fast connection.
Lightport will cost 10x more and so few will benefit its 2x speed compared to usb3, that it might not fly.
I wouldn't be surprised if future MBs would have only few usb3 ports and sd-slot. And MBPs just one LP in addition.
If you compare the situation to 2003, when macs finally got usb2, situation is totally different. Back at 2003 macs already had had faster connection: firewire. Now there are 2 faster connections that macs don't have and much more use for those speeds than back then.
My problem is that being mixed bag (of hurt or...) of artist and engineer, I take technical stuff a bit too emotionally. Apple & macs have best possible opportunity to make state-of-the-art machines, but they just don't do it (anymore). Makes me angry... Duhh, maybe they just got rich by ditching the idea of state-of-the-art machines and longing after them is just nostalgy. They still make good stuff, that's why people buy them. They just could be so much better.
Just look what has happened to 15" powerbook to last MBP:
2005: cardbus + 2 fw + 2 usb
2006: lost fw800 & dual-layer
2007: fw800 & dual layer back
2008: lost fw400
2009: lost expessCard
2010: got nothing new
This thing about having only 4 ram banks for triple channel memory in workstation has been a joke in all technical discussions. Everybody including apple knows it. But they hold the cards; if you want OsX & expandability and don't want to waste money as much as dual-cpu model costs, you just buy the only option. Nevermind how stupid it technically is. And how much more expensive it gets, if you want to upgrade ram.
They got SD card slots, because a lot of noise was made over it. Pretty much the lamest consumer bend over Apple have done with peripheral ports.
And yet you suggest that expensive Data retrieval services are a good way to ensure backup reliability of hard drives ?
Seriously, you're not even trying anymore.
That's was the proposed solution for a worst case scenario.
Seriously, what are the chances of two drives failing simultaneously? Maybe the servers at the cloud back-up service will also fail. OH NO! I have more faith in getting the data off a drive for failure of a moving part than off a scratched Blu-Ray. By the way, where will you take your Blu-Ray when it gets scratched?
Seriously, what are the chances of two drives failing simultaneously?
Actually, the chances of two drives failing within a short period of time is quite high if they are from the same manufacturing batch (serial numbers are close). Or, as one paper says:
That page has lots of links to other papers, but don't read them if you want to feel confident about your RAID - especially with two identical drives purchased at the same time.
By the way, the "correlated failure" issue is aggravated by the nature of redundant RAID systems. When one drive fails, you're OK - the RAID system gets data from the redundant copy.
When you replace the failed drive with a new one - the RAID system "rebuilds" by reading the survivors and writing the appropriate data on the new drive. This "rebuilding", however, puts a heavy load on the survivors - and if one of them is close to failure the rebuild itself can trigger the second failure.
RAID-6 with hot spares is a big help, but not perfect. If you get a second failure while rebuilding, you're still OK. A third failure - all the data are gone. The hot spare helps get the rebuilding going as soon as possible, increasing the likelihood that the rebuild will finish before a second failure.
Many storage experts recommend small arrays for this reason - they rebuild faster than large arrays. A good ratio is 4+2+1 -- 4 data disks, 2 parity disks, 1 hot spare. You buy 7 disks to store 4 disks worth of data, but the confidence is much higher. (One of my lab admins once set up a number of arrays as RAID-5 with 14 data disks, 1 parity disk, and no hot spares.
) You build larger volumes by using striping (therefore it's often called RAID-60) across the small volumes.
Blu-ray drives are unreliable and expensive,
and that's why they will not be inside the Mac!
I am sure cost is a reason for keeping a blu ray drive out of a 2-3 grand laptop. Second no one is saying a blu ray drive is mandatory, they just want it as an option. However since apple dictates rather than listens to it's costumers they wont even give the option. Do you have any stats on the reliability of blu ray drives vs other optical drives? My guess is you are just making stuff up in order to defend apple in what, not me but others, would consider typical apple fanboyism.
I agree. However, the chances my Mac's hard drive and my external backup hard drive being from the same batch are extremely small.
Thanks for the info on RAID.
Do you have any stats on the reliability of blu ray drives vs other optical drives? My guess is you are just making stuff up in order to defend apple in what, not me but others, would consider typical apple fanboyism.
I believe it is a bit presumptuous to assume that Apple is not listening to their customers because they will not provide a Blu-Ray option. If people were clamoring for Blu-Ray, why risk alienating your customers that may take their money elsewhere? Also, anytime you add an extra stop to an assembly line, there will be additional cost that may hurt rather than help the bottom line depending on the level of demand.
I feel for you that Apple is not meeting all of your needs. I felt that way when they did not have a pro-level 13" laptop. Thankfully, they now do. Try emailing Steve Jobs and writing corporate.
That's was the proposed solution for a worst case scenario.
I have more faith in getting the data off a drive for failure of a moving part than off a scratched Blu-Ray. By the way, where will you take your Blu-Ray when it gets scratched?
Blu-rays can be scratched? Easily? News to me..
You should see the one's that I get in the mail from Netflix. I am surprised they even play in my PS3.
Yep,They got SD card slots, because a lot of noise was made over it. Pretty much the lamest consumer bend over Apple have done with peripheral ports.
there are plenty of cheap sd-readers for ec-slot.
Surprisingly, I haven't yet found any sd-card-to-esata-adapters...
...or sd-to-fw-adapters...
...or sd-to-usb3 or sd-to-lightport or sd-to-SxS or sd-to-card-bus or sd-to-hd-sdi...
But, no worries!
You can always get wifi inside of sd-card!
And I haven't counted how many hdd's I have thrown away.
Both internal & external.
They usually break when they are brand new or after warranty is void.
Or when I have dropped it on the floor (once!) or accidentally short sircuited internal disc with open pc case (again only once!) or moved spinning internal desktop sized (it was breaking already!).
Needless to say that I haven't break optical disk in any situations above.
If you handle only new hdd's and throw them away before they get old, you can keep the impression that they don't break wen they get old.
Also some of them wil last 10 or 20 years.
But I'll guess that average optical disk's lifetime is 10x compared to hdd.
Anyway, I feel that these comments like "I don't need this", "I use other things" are not very smart dealing with the topic.
Everybody should be able to choose their way of doing things.
Bd is now standard IT technology, so it should be fully available to OsX users.
Thank you, that's very useful information.
I've read about RAID5 being a bad idea, but less on what constitutes a good idea!
I've read about how Windows Firewall is a vastly superior product to any other software or hardware firewall.
Y'know, I'm not so bothered about a Blu-Ray burner. But a player that would allow me to watch/rip BDs to HDD would be quite useful.
Yeah right,Blu-ray drives are unreliable and expensive, and that's why they will not be inside the Mac!
and dvd drives are reliable and that's why they are inside the Mac?
Or maybe dvd drives are inside damn expensive macs because they are so cheap?
Hail the stock owners!
Yeah right,
and dvd drives are reliable and that's why they are inside the Mac?
Or maybe dvd drives are inside damn expensive macs because they are so cheap?
Hail the stock owners!
Tell me about it, my Macbook's SuperDrive won't burn DVD discs anymore, it's not even 2 years old. iFixit wants 150$ for one, +shipping +tax +duty.
Cheap ? Reliable ?
+1
My Powerbook's superdrive won't even play discs any more. After getting a quote just to look at it from Apple, I ended up buying an external Lacie drive. But it's hardly convenient for travel.
My Powerbook's superdrive won't even play discs any more. After getting a quote just to look at it from Apple, I ended up buying an external Lacie drive. But it's hardly convenient for travel.
Tell me about it, my Macbook's SuperDrive won't burn DVD discs anymore, it's not even 2 years old. iFixit wants 150$ for one, +shipping +tax +duty.
Cheap ? Reliable ?
Umm, and why didn't you purchase an AppleCare plan?
I didn't think it was required seeing how everyone raves about Apple quality and all. In the end an external USB burner will be cheaper.
EDIT: wait a minute... Applecare is 300$ for a Macbook. You're seriously suggesting I should have forked over 300$ to Apple in case a 150$ part (that should be around 40$) just randomly decided to die earlier than it should but after the standard 1 year warranty ?
Did you really just suggest this ? Wow, with a snarky and arrogant tone too. Seriously, next time, just don't post if you're not going to post anything of value.
But apple care is great.
It provides you with less service, cost more money and more easily denied than the warranties other companies like Dell provided.
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