Topic: Advice on good external hard drive for backup?

[Brian E.]

I'm looking at a heavy duty external for my Time Machine backups for Mac (firewire).

I'm currently using 250 & 320GB WD Passport drives (USB powered) which are great because they are small.  But I just yesterday installed a 500GB drive in my macbook, so I'll need something larger and more powerful to use as a backup now.  I don't mind having it stationary at home since it'll just be for backups anyway.  I can position it in the second room on a shelf and only plug in for Time Machine.

Anyway....... what's the best drive from 1-2TB?  Searching Amazon I'm pulling up mostly Seagate and WD drives.

This is looking like one of the best deals out there:

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-FreeAgent-External-Mac-Silver-ST315005FJA105-RK/dp/B001FFRTRQ/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1250623929&sr=8-9

My macbook has Firewire 400/800, I'm good there.  But also of course USB.

Thanks for any experience/input you have quality and use-wise.

[hummat]

I've always been a fan of seagate drives. 

-jay

[Brian E.]

I've only used WD or Maxtor, until I just installed a Seagate 500GB 7200RPM in my macbook pro last night.

[Brian E.]

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=11166

this looks solid.

[hummat]

Have a couple of LaCies as well.  Picked'em up on the post Katrina 'hurrication'.  They are still running strong.  Was looking at a LaCie external about a year ago and they only had one that fit my requirements (firewire/72,000/bus powered).  It was more expensive than what Seagate had out at the time, to I reverted back to Seagate at that point.

-jay

[Belexes]

I am a Maxtor fan.

[OFOTD]

Here is another option for you.  Buy a bare drive and an external enclosure.  Western Digital seem to be currently making the best quality affordable drives right now.  Especially over the 1TB barrier.   The drive below is their Green 1.5TB drive for $120.  Add in an external enclosure with firewire AND usb and you're looking at $160 or less total.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136351

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145657


A somewhat comparable (less storage) and reliable 1TB MyBook with fw and usb is $140

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136172


The big problems with the LaCie drives are 1. They use Hitachi drives (no thanks) and 2. Are pretty damn overpriced considering that they are using Hitachi drives.   Cool looking enclosures but nasty insides.

[aaronji]

The big problems with the LaCie drives are 1. They use Hitachi drives (no thanks) and 2. Are pretty damn overpriced considering that they are using Hitachi drives.   Cool looking enclosures but nasty insides.

I was using a 1TB LaCie drive at work.  It was about 3/4 full (with a lot of valuable data) and then one day the computer stopped recognizing it...Nothing I could do to remedy the situation and the customer service folks at LaCie were no help whatsoever.  Ended up paying a data recovery company to at least pull the majority of my data off the thing.  Granted, that's a sample of one, and these things happen to machines from every company, but suffice to say I am using a Seagate now...

[Brian E.]

thanks for the info about Lacie, will avoid like the plague.

I used to do external enclosures and add drives, but really I'd just like a sleek all in one solution for this.  Also that enclosure doesn't have FW 800.  The 1.5TB Seagate is $170, which is similar to the price an enclose plus drive would be, so that's a wash.

[lastubbe]

I am not an expert in this are by any means, but I just went with this WD 2TB with Raid, recommended for Macs, lotsa good reviews, and so far so good I love it and am thinking about buying another in the coming months....

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-WDH2Q20000N-Studio-Interface/dp/B0016P7H3Q/ref=pd_ys_iyr_img

If anyone can share any experience I'd appreciate it.  I have also used Maxtor externals as well in the past, but this is by far the most sophisticated external I have purchased. 

[greenone]

I will second the recommendation to stay far, far away from LaCie drives. We had three of them at work over a three-year period and they all failed. I've been keeping an eye on dealmac for externals and you can get 1TB drives in enclosures for under $100. Cheapest 1.5 in an enclosure I've seen is this one:

http://dealmac.com/Seagate-Free-Agent-1.5-TB-Triple-Interface-External-Hard-Drive-150-free-shipping/314094.html

They had a 1.5TB Samsung Story Station for $128 after rebate but the deal is dead now...

[stevetoney]

I've seen this same question asked before...what's the best drive to buy.  Well, no drive is gonna last forever. 

It's a fact of life...DRIVES FAIL because they have a limited life. 

My opininon is that if you have important data on one drive and you lose it, you should be blaming your backup practices, not the hardware. 

A 1TB drive only costs $100, so why buy a 2GB drive for $200 when you can buy two 1GB drives for about the same price and use a backup strategy that almost totally eliminates the risk of data loss.

The best backup strategies will not really care about the brand that you buy, nor will it even for that matter be dependent upon the life of the drive. 

The best solution is to implement a strategy that involves redundancy, frequent backups, and off-site data storage (in case of the catastrophic act of God) such as keeping the second drive at work, in a safe deposit box, etc. 

EDIT TO ADD:  Personally, I've gotten into the habit of buying the low priced 1TB drives (just picked the last one up for I think $89 at Best Buy).  I've got I think 4 or 5 of them now.  I've been lucky so far and none have failed, but when one does fail, since I have little invested and I'm not looking to buy the best possible drives, it's no big deal to run right out and buy a new drive and use it to replace the redundancy that was lost with the failure. 

[taperj]

The best way to go is obviously going to be an internal raid array with a good raid controller, RAID-5 would be optimal for write performance and redundancy. If you cant afford to get multiple drives to RAID together in a RAID-5 configuration I would suggest at least getting 2 and doing a RAID-1(mirror) configuration, this is 2:1 relationship. The 2 drives mirror all data so if one fails you still have your data and can insert a new drive and rebuild the array. If you just are looking for a simple non-redundant drive, I have been loving my "MyBook"

available in: 1 TB, USB 2.0, FireWire 400, eSATA

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=357

Easy to add on, looks sleek, hides nicely. I encrypted mine so if anyone steals it, sorry charlie.

J

[Brian Skalinder]

The best way to go is obviously going to be an internal raid array with a good raid controller

While RAID5 may offer the best performance and redundancy, I've found, given my requirements, it's not worth the effort and expense unless one uses a high quality business-grade (and therefore expensive) RAID controller to minimize risk.  Over the years, I've used several different consumer-level RAID controllers and all ultimately caused more problems than they were worth (controller failures, inability to rebuild the array, etc.).

For my purposes, since I don't find real-time redundancy necessary, I simply mirror my drives nightly.  More info here and there are multiple discussions about backup/redundancy in the Computer Forum's Readme1st! thread.

[OFOTD]

Back to what the original post seemed to convey (don't these threads always turn into the same RAID/backup talk)

Western Digital and Seagate seem to put out the better drives on the market right now. 

Hitachi, Samsung are a couple examples of weaker products.

Always check to see what bare drives are in an external; case (like LaCie using the Hitachis).  Many many folks back up to one single drive without any problems.   RAID is nice but its not the only way.   For roughly $150 to get a 1.5TB drive in a case is pretty damn good.

[rigpimp]

Why use a hard drive at all?  2TB on a postage stamp and no moving parts.

http://www.sdcard.org/developers/tech/sdxc

[Brian Skalinder]

Why use a hard drive at all?  2TB on a postage stamp and no moving parts.

Because 2TB SDXC cards aren't available yet, nor are the devices that may take advantage utilize the new SDXC standard?

[lastubbe]

The best way to go is obviously going to be an internal raid array with a good raid controller, RAID-5 would be optimal for write performance and redundancy. If you cant afford to get multiple drives to RAID together in a RAID-5 configuration I would suggest at least getting 2 and doing a RAID-1(mirror) configuration, this is 2:1 relationship. The 2 drives mirror all data so if one fails you still have your data and can insert a new drive and rebuild the array. If you just are looking for a simple non-redundant drive, I have been loving my "MyBook"

available in: 1 TB, USB 2.0, FireWire 400, eSATA

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=357

Easy to add on, looks sleek, hides nicely. I encrypted mine so if anyone steals it, sorry charlie.

J

Do you have RAID set up with this drive or do you use the full 1 TB?

I have been contemplating setting mine to RAID 1 and getting another to set to RAID 1 in a daisy chain.  I called WD pre sale support today to better understand what my options are.  I started thinking about the 4 TB.....

[rigpimp]

Why use a hard drive at all?  2TB on a postage stamp and no moving parts.

Because 2TB SDXC cards aren't available yet, nor are the devices that may take advantage utilize the new SDXC standard?

It was a rhetorical question, Brian.  I suppose my tone of voice didn't give away the get-ready-for-better-technology-coming-soon-to-a-box-store-near-you sarcasm.

[Brian Skalinder]

It was a rhetorical question, Brian.  I suppose my tone of voice didn't give away the get-ready-for-better-technology-coming-soon-to-a-box-store-near-you sarcasm.

Right!  Makes perfect sense, now.  I should've .  Good stuff!  Technology is amazing...

[taperj]

Heya lastubbe, no I don't have mine raided at present. I run a software RAID-1 configuration on a local linux box with some smaller drives as a partial backup, the terabyte drive is a relatively recent addition and I'm about to get another and entertain raiding them together, that would give me a solid 1TB of RAID-1 storage and would free up my smaller software raided drives that currently act as a partial backup for a redundant work area. 

[rigpimp]

In all sincere honesty I am like Brian.  I run scripts that back up from one PC to another, and from one PC's hard drive to another in the same PC.  I personally think that RAID is overkill and I hate the feeling of not knowing whether a drive is bad or not.  (does a red light flash overhead or something?)

I also back up all of my masters to multiple locations.  I burn copies to DVD, an external drive, and offsite to a sub-domain that I created on our work web host.  (Shh dont tell on me)

I can guarantee with 100% confidence that I will never lose any data until December 21, 2012.  It will literally take the end of the world for it to happen.

My office backups consist of 3 scripts that backup our network drive to 3 different workstation drives, another to backup duplicate copies to an 1TB Lacie external drive, and another that sends one copy off site to cold storage in Utah.  And everyone knows that Utah is the Switzerland of the USA.  Oh yah, did I mention that the server is two 75GB raptors in RAID?  Don't get me started on my Acronis images or my bi-annual DVD backups of critical files.

I think that I might have my bases covered...

If you are looking for a particular brand I have been happy with WD Black, WD Essential, Lacie Porsche, etc.

[rjp]

I personally think that RAID is overkill and I hate the feeling of not knowing whether a drive is bad or not.  (does a red light flash overhead or something?)

I can only speak for the Linux built-in software RAID, but it has worked very well for me using off-the-shelf SATA drives with motherboard ports and/or generic PCI SATA cards. It is possible to set up the system to monitor array health and automatically email you when a drive fails; that has saved my bacon more than once. I'm currently running 4x500 GB drives in a RAID5 configuration for 1.5 TB capacity, after upgrading from 4x120 GB when I had a drive failure. The RAID5 kept on chugging in degraded mode, which gave me time for one last backup and then the upgrade.

RAID is not backup, however! I have a single drive in a USB enclosure for backups; I use rsync to make the backups.

[AHappyHourHero]

I can convey personal experience and preference.  I have used Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi, Toshiba and Western Digital Drives for various applications.  I stick to Western Digital for reliability.  I have not experienced sustained reliability with any of the others, although Maxtor comes close.

My personal philosophy with external drives is many smaller drives, vice fewer huge drives, because as we all know, electronics will eventually fail (usually right before the planned back-up that you were meaning to get to)  I do mirror image the drives from time to time, in a manual RAID, if you will, disconnect, and place in safe storage as back-up for impending disaster recovery.  This is time consuming, but not nearly as time consuming as recovering what was lost. I have suffered the loss of a 320GB drive, and the time spent to recreate the files, reconstruct what I already had is time that you will never get back, twice.  In the long run, it is cost effective to me, to have a redundant back-up, because the music really is that important to me.  Thank God for archive.org, saving my butt in the long run.
I think (and I have been recommended by many to stop doing this) that the MOST relaiable way to back it up securely is one of the many reliable online data back-up companies.  They multi-RAID (sic) their servers, have insurance, etc.  Experience here is that I can quickly and easily access my information at anytime, from anywhere, without lugging a drive around with me.