wlaidlaw Posted July 3, 2007 Author Share #21 Â Posted July 3, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) Eric, Â Thanks for the advice. I was getting a bit over-enthusiastic on Firewire. I had in in my mind that when Apple upgraded me from an Intel Core duo 20" iMac after multiple failures, to the later Core duo 2, I had gone from 2 x 400 Firewire to 1 x 400 and 1 x 800 but as you say that was only on the new 24", so I am stuck with Firewire 400. It is still quite a bit faster than USB2 I think. I agree that if you buy LaCie, Intego or Buffalo, you have no idea where the drives come from - the cheapest source I would guess. I may look for a quiet fan-cooled housing with the only proviso, that you get no warranty on this arrangement. It would always be the other guy's fault if a drive failed. Â Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted July 3, 2007 Posted July 3, 2007 Hi wlaidlaw, Take a look here New External HD needed - recommendations please. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
stunsworth Posted July 3, 2007 Share #22 Â Posted July 3, 2007 Back when hard discs were much less reliable and I had IBM System 36 and IBM 6000's in my business, I was always replacing the hard discs in the server box... Â I never worked on a System 36 - it slipped though the net, though I've worked on System 3, 34, 38 and now AS/400. I've found the disks on all of those to be very relieable - though I do remember an occsaion when we were doing a disaster recovery test on a System 38 and a hard disk failed on the recovery box on two consecutive occasion forcing us to abandon the tests. Not terribly confidence inspiring <grin> Â At home I have a 1 tb Lacie unit with the contents mirrored on other external drives. Haven't had any problems so far (fingers crossed) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ericperlberg Posted July 3, 2007 Share #23  Posted July 3, 2007 Wilson, you do get a guarentee with internal drives (up to 3 years depending on quality and manufacturer). I just had a Seagate Barracuda (enterprise server grade drive) fail after 2 weeks. Seagate replaced the drive straight away, even special delivery from Germany. I had to send them my old one. And since super duper had backed up the data to the night before, I lost nothing.  I too find that firewire 400 is faster than USB 2 despite the nominal speeds being similar. I use a combo of Seagate Barracuda with 16mb cache SATA II, Western Digital Raptor 10,000RPM and Western Digital Cavier (fast, quiet, reliable). Cost for the enterprise level drives (high MTBF) with 16meg cache (more responsive) are about £55 for 500gig drives here: Components » Hard Drives - Overclockers UK Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
haribo Posted July 3, 2007 Share #24 Â Posted July 3, 2007 Use a Western Digital Pro Edition 1 T drive, mirrored (Raid 1). Which makes it essentially a 500 MB external hard drive but in opposite to the LaCie's T drives you can get access to the second one if the first one fails. With LaCie if one dies, the second one is dead too because of no access. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted July 3, 2007 Author Share #25 Â Posted July 3, 2007 Use a Western Digital Pro Edition 1 T drive, mirrored (Raid 1). Which makes it essentially a 500 MB external hard drive but in opposite to the LaCie's T drives you can get access to the second one if the first one fails. With LaCie if one dies, the second one is dead too because of no access. Â Haraki, Â Good system but lots of complaints about noise. This is going to sit in my bedroom/study on 24/24, so quiet is essential. Â Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wparsonsgisnet Posted July 3, 2007 Share #26 Â Posted July 3, 2007 ... you have no idea where the drives come from - the cheapest source I would guess. I may look for a quiet fan-cooled housing ... Â Wilson, the four LaCie's I have opened up all had Maxtor drives in them. Again, when the LaCie device failed (one day they just don't wake up), in all but one case, the drive itself was fine; some circuit board had failed. Â I do have one LaCie with a fan in it and it's very quiet. I notice on their site that some drives do have fans. The inexpensive Ultra enclosure that I have been buying also has a fan, and the last one I bot is the quietest as well as a new case design. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wparsonsgisnet Posted July 5, 2007 Share #27  Posted July 5, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) Those looking for lots of storage might be interested in this offer at Buy.com  Buy.com - Buffalo TeraStation Live - Multimedia Storage Server - 2TB, 2 USB 2.0 Ports, SATA, DLNA CERTIFIED - HS-DH2.0TGL/R5  nice price: $800 for 2TB. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted July 5, 2007 Author Share #28  Posted July 5, 2007 Those looking for lots of storage might be interested in this offer at Buy.com Buy.com - Buffalo TeraStation Live - Multimedia Storage Server - 2TB, 2 USB 2.0 Ports, SATA, DLNA CERTIFIED - HS-DH2.0TGL/R5  nice price: $800 for 2TB.  Bill,  Thanks for the link. It is a pretty heavy article to get shipped across the pond, even if it is about 25% cheaper than UK. If you win the lottery and don't get charged import duty, VAT, handling fee, collection charge, postman's leather wear, stringage etc you are fine but if you get caught for the lot, you would be much cheaper buying in the UK. Luckily it is getting less frequent. In 10 sendings from overseas last year - just one got charged duty.  Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wparsonsgisnet Posted July 5, 2007 Share #29  Posted July 5, 2007 Bill, Thanks for the link. It is a pretty heavy article to get shipped across the pond, even if it is about 25% cheaper than UK. If you win the lottery and don't get charged import duty, VAT, handling fee, collection charge, postman's leather wear, stringage etc you are fine but if you get caught for the lot, you would be much cheaper buying in the UK. Luckily it is getting less frequent. In 10 sendings from overseas last year - just one got charged duty.  Wilson  Wilson, I wonder if either you or another monster wants to comments on what this thing is worth.  I see it here at $800 for a $2k item. To me that means it's being discontinued, but so what? What's the price over there, and is this a recommended component?  If I were to spring for the 8 bills, I could save my storage problems for quite a while. After all, I'm paying about $170 for a 500/600 GB drive, refurb, from LaCie. I just buy four that way over a longer period.  Any comments are appreciated. Thanks. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stunsworth Posted July 5, 2007 Share #30  Posted July 5, 2007 Bill the same unit over here is about £650 - that's around $1300. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wparsonsgisnet Posted July 5, 2007 Share #31 Â Posted July 5, 2007 Thanks, Steve. $700, the difference between your 650 lbs and my $2k is a big shipping charge! Â What I am really interested in knowing is if this stuff is any good. I could decide to consolidate a couple of years worth of storage purchases into this gizmo, but I need to know that it's good stuff. Â Also, I will do a google search, but haven't heard anyone talk about RAID 10. Anyone using that and do they like it? I can see the use of RAID in environments where there are multiple users who need this kind of security (backup), but there's just me and I know when to mirror. Â I would stay away from RAID because of the above-mentioned excessive disk accesses and I do my own "mirroring" when each shoot or project is finished. That is, I don't need continuous backup since I have not yet gotten stupid about doing my own backups. But, if R-10 is cool I might consider it. Â Thanks for these contributions. Man I love this photography stuff! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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