Topic: Who makes the best external drive( most reliable )?

[THE NIZ BIAAAAACH!]

ssia

[RebelRebel]

smartdisk/crossfire

[THE NIZ BIAAAAACH!]

any one own a LaCie?

[RebelRebel]

I dont own them, but they were selling them at the PX for about a month and not a one of them sold, even though they were cheaper than anything else there.

[momule]

any one own a LaCie?

laCie has always Been about three steps ahead in the external drive market.
I believe they are also one of the only companies making a External drive that has the speed of Firewire 800 . (hell Im pretty happy with the firewire 400., I could only Imagine 800) 

but honestly For speed, price and warranty I would have to suggest picking up a Seagate drive and buying your own enclosure .
Gonna be hard to find another drive that carries a 5 year warranty, And Seagates are almost twice as quiet as most other drives.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

Don't settle for anything less than a 3 year warranty.  Most retail drives only have 1 year warranties.  OEM are 3.  You may have to assemble your own drive and enclosure.

I only buy external enclosures with fans.  Drive temp is very important to reliability.

[mhibbs]

any one own a LaCie?

I have the LaCie Porsche designed silver one...250gb.  Haven't had any problem w/ it so far.

[dnsacks]

any one own a LaCie?

I have the LaCie Porsche designed silver one...250gb.  Haven't had any problem w/ it so far.

I have one of these too -- winxp reports that the hard drive inside is a Maxtor. 

Thus far I've had equal luck with maxtor, seagate and westernd digital hard drives. 

Personally, I agree with the recommendation to pick up an internal drive (look for cheapest b&m prices via www.salescircular.com) and an external enclosure and build your own.

[it-goes-to-eleven]

FWIW, I will no longer buy segate.  They didn't have an advance replacement warranty a few years back and more than a couple early drive failures. Not sure if they've since caught up. I've had good luck with WD and their warranty replacements have always gone smooth. I have over 2TB of WD drives and won't buy anything else right now.

[THE NIZ BIAAAAACH!]

Thanks for all the input guys. +T for everyone

[nic]

LaCie and Glyph are probably the best overall external HD setups...Glyph is specially made for external audio capture

[mfisch]

external RAID drives have long been conspiciously lacking in the consumer market ... until now

http://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/data_sheets/onetouch_iii_turbo_datasheet.pdf

That'd be the one Id get, if you have the cash. No availability for another two weeks though, this is a new product!

[poorlyconditioned]

any one own a LaCie?

laCie has always Been about three steps ahead in the external drive market.
I believe they are also one of the only companies making a External drive that has the speed of Firewire 800 . (hell Im pretty happy with the firewire 400., I could only Imagine 800) 

but honestly For speed, price and warranty I would have to suggest picking up a Seagate drive and buying your own enclosure .
Gonna be hard to find another drive that carries a 5 year warranty, And Seagates are almost twice as quiet as most other drives.

If you have the cash I recommend buying the retail product, either WD or Maxtor.  Look for closeout sales on older models.  I've used several of the Maxtor drives and found their enclosures to be better (quieter, better cooling, and better looking) than the after market ones.  If I were doing a huge number of drives I might standardize on one enclosure, but tracking down good quality ones is a challenge, especially if you want specific things, like both Firewire and USB.

   Richard

[Brian Skalinder]

external RAID drives have long been conspiciously lacking in the consumer market ... until now

http://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/data_sheets/onetouch_iii_turbo_datasheet.pdf

That'd be the one Id get, if you have the cash. No availability for another two weeks though, this is a new product!

I didn't check out the Maxtor above, but IME many of the firewire/USB external RAID setups are s/w controlled RAID v. h/w controlled RAID.  You're better off with h/w controlled RAID.  Most of the h/w controlled external RAID options are SATA at the moment.  A quick PC Guide write-up on h/w v. s/w RAID.

[heath]

like i've said before, we use nothing but Quantegy drives for our archival audio work.  Thus far, I've filled about 2-300 200gig firewire drives with no failures.  They are fantastic.

h

[mfisch]

external RAID drives have long been conspiciously lacking in the consumer market ... until now

http://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/data_sheets/onetouch_iii_turbo_datasheet.pdf

That'd be the one Id get, if you have the cash. No availability for another two weeks though, this is a new product!

I didn't check out the Maxtor above, but IME many of the firewire/USB external RAID setups are s/w controlled RAID v. h/w controlled RAID.  You're better off with h/w controlled RAID.  Most of the h/w controlled external RAID options are SATA at the moment.  A quick PC Guide write-up on h/w v. s/w RAID.

Thats why the maxtor onetouch III is so exciting. Other than spending thousands on equipment, or building your own hardware from scratch, its the FIRST external USB/1394 product with integrated _hardware_ RAID. Take a look at the specshttp://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/data_sheets/onetouch_iii_turbo_datasheet.pdf.

[Brian Skalinder]

Thats why the maxtor onetouch III is so exciting. Other than spending thousands on equipment, or building your own hardware from scratch, its the FIRST external USB/1394 product with integrated _hardware_ RAID. Take a look at the specshttp://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/data_sheets/onetouch_iii_turbo_datasheet.pdf.

Ah, yes, that IS exciting.  I only glanced at the specsheet, namely the "includes" section and didn't see reference to a dedicated h/w controller.  I missed the reference to the Oxford 924 chipset (and actually had to go look it up since I wasn't familiar with it).  External h/w RAID over USB/1394 - very cool!  And about time, I say.

[poorlyconditioned]

Thats why the maxtor onetouch III is so exciting. Other than spending thousands on equipment, or building your own hardware from scratch, its the FIRST external USB/1394 product with integrated _hardware_ RAID. Take a look at the specshttp://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/data_sheets/onetouch_iii_turbo_datasheet.pdf.

Ah, yes, that IS exciting.  I only glanced at the specsheet, namely the "includes" section and didn't see reference to a dedicated h/w controller.  I missed the reference to the Oxford 924 chipset (and actually had to go look it up since I wasn't familiar with it).  External h/w RAID over USB/1394 - very cool!  And about time, I say.

Yeah, but what you want is RAID5 (redundancy built in) not RAID0 (just stripping).  Anyway, software RAID is not bad, especially if you do just RAID0.

  Richard

[Brian Skalinder]

Yeah, but what you want is RAID5 (redundancy built in) not RAID0 (just stripping).  Anyway, software RAID is not bad, especially if you do just RAID0.

The OneTouch - and a whole slew of other internal and external solutions, though most are SATA-based - supports RAID1 (mirroring = redundancy).

[poorlyconditioned]

Yeah, but what you want is RAID5 (redundancy built in) not RAID0 (just stripping).  Anyway, software RAID is not bad, especially if you do just RAID0.

The OneTouch - and a whole slew of other internal and external solutions, though most are SATA-based - supports RAID1 (mirroring = redundancy).

OK, there are many different types of RAID.

RAID0: This stores data over 2 or more drives: more storage, faster speed, but less reliable as more drives added.

RAID1: Store same data over 2 (or more?) drives: more reliable, but needs a second drive.

RAID5: Store data over 3 or more drives, with 1 (or more) drive having parity information.  (Actually, the parity information is not stored on a single drive, but distributed across all of them.)  You can recover from failure of a single drive and the array will still work.  This has the speed/storage advantages of RAID0, but with more reliability.  The disadvantage is that it requires a lot of CPU power to do all the number crunching.  This is where you want an hardware controller, either on a PC card or built into the box of disks.

A typical setup for RAID5 would be: four 300G drives, one for redundancy, giving 3*300G=900G of storage.  Or eight 300G drives, one redundant, giving 2100G of storage.

  Richard

[Brian Skalinder]

OK, there are many different types of RAID.

Good summary, Richard, for those unfamiliar with RAID.  More RAID info for those interested.

Straight RAID1 and RAID5 both will provide redundancy for a single HD failure within the array, but not multiple concurrent failures.  If both HDs fail in RAID1, you're hosed.  Likewise, if two or more drives fail concurrently in RAID5, you're still hosed.  For the same level of redundancy, albeit with a slight performance hit, RAID1 is less expensive and I suspect suitable for most TS users' needs.  As always, just make sure you have ample backups off-HD!

[mfisch]

Thats why the maxtor onetouch III is so exciting. Other than spending thousands on equipment, or building your own hardware from scratch, its the FIRST external USB/1394 product with integrated _hardware_ RAID. Take a look at the specshttp://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/data_sheets/onetouch_iii_turbo_datasheet.pdf.

Ah, yes, that IS exciting.  I only glanced at the specsheet, namely the "includes" section and didn't see reference to a dedicated h/w controller.  I missed the reference to the Oxford 924 chipset (and actually had to go look it up since I wasn't familiar with it).  External h/w RAID over USB/1394 - very cool!  And about time, I say.

Yeah, but what you want is RAID5 (redundancy built in) not RAID0 (just stripping).  Anyway, software RAID is not bad, especially if you do just RAID0.

  Richard

The unit above does RAID 0 (striping) or RAID 1 (mirrored set). The former buying you read/write speed and space, the latter buying you redundancy and read speed.

Some okay easy to understand RAID information is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks

Also, Ive been working with RAID 1 and 5 for about 5 years on mid-range attached storage arrays (not to be confused with high end gear like an EMC clariion that might have hundreds of disks, or a SAN) ... and Ive slowly come around to the point that RAID 5 is a waste of money, or at the very least a misuse of money.
See http://www.baarf.com/ for a rant on why. Although RAID 5 is often pitched into the mid-range server market, seasoned pro's avoid it like the plague.

Consider RAID 0 for speed/space, RAID 1 for redundancy of a single disk, and RAID10 when you need redundancy, speed, and extra space.

[mfisch]

Thats why the maxtor onetouch III is so exciting. Other than spending thousands on equipment, or building your own hardware from scratch, its the FIRST external USB/1394 product with integrated _hardware_ RAID. Take a look at the specshttp://www.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/documentation/data_sheets/onetouch_iii_turbo_datasheet.pdf.

Ah, yes, that IS exciting.  I only glanced at the specsheet, namely the "includes" section and didn't see reference to a dedicated h/w controller.  I missed the reference to the Oxford 924 chipset (and actually had to go look it up since I wasn't familiar with it).  External h/w RAID over USB/1394 - very cool!  And about time, I say.

If you really can't wait, there's also this: http://www.cooldrives.com/ufsatofibrbo.html
I considered picking one up a few months ago but the cost of all the parts alone is way more than the maxtor solution. I'm just counting the days until that thing launches.

ps.
Dont buy that interface unless you are really hardcore, it probably requires custom programming to be loaded onto the onboard ROM to function in a raid set. There might be reference software available from oxford, but "reference kits" arent exactly consumer friendly either.