OT: Mac storage devices

[William]

What are the Macophiles on the Paceline using for external hard drives?

Any recommendations?






Thanks!
William

[that guy]

I have this Rugged by LaCie for work that's pretty cool because I can throw it down the stairs. Not that I do that (often).

http://www.lacie.com/imgstore/product_overview/hd_rugged_1.jpg

I have to personal ones from SeaGate that I've been happy with.

[gone]

What interface are you looking for? eSata? USB? Network attached?

How are you wanting to use it? Backup? Lots of space but slower? Disk clone?

I've got an 8TB NAS (Netgear ReadyNAS) I've had for about 2 years. Configured as a RAID5, used for backups and lots of space.

I've got a Fantom eSata 2TB I use to periodically clone the system drive.

I've got a Seatgate GoFlex 2TB USB I use to periodically make backups of the backups on my NAS (paranoia will destroy ya).

The stuff on my NAS is my music collection of more than 5K CD's. They took me forever to rip so I don't EVER want to lose them. I've got them stored in both WAV and MP4, I use the MP4's as a source for my whole house music system. I also have my photo collection (more than 10k pictures and scans). It took me forever to scan all of my prints and I don't EVER want to lose them.

All of the devices mentioned work fine. I backup both my Mac and Windows PC's to the NAS.

[William]

What interface are you looking for? eSata? USB? Network attached?

How are you wanting to use it? Backup? Lots of space but slower? Disk clone?

I've got an 8TB NAS (Netgear ReadyNAS) I've had for about 2 years. Configured as a RAID5, used for backups and lots of space.

I've got a Fantom eSata 2TB I use to periodically clone the system drive.

I've got a Seatgate GoFlex 2TB USB I use to periodically make backups of the backups on my NAS (paranoia will destroy ya).

The stuff on my NAS is my music collection of more than 5K CD's. They took me forever to rip so I don't EVER want to lose them. I've got them stored in both WAV and MP4, I use the MP4's as a source for my whole house music system. I also have my photo collection (more than 10k pictures and scans). It took me forever to scan all of my prints and I don't EVER want to lose them.

All of the devices mentioned work fine. I backup both my Mac and Windows PC's to the NAS.

I'm thinking USB. Mainly looking to back up the system, photos, and music. Plus extra space to free up the main computer.




William

[Elefantino]

I've been using a WD MyBook 1TB for the last couple of years. Easy backup. A little porkier than some, but inexpensive.

USB interface, BTW.

[false_Aest]

G-technology.

But

its not a matter of if a drive will fail but WHEN.

Every semester I have at least 1 student loose a hard drive (read: breaks). Doesn't matter what mfg. The only way to ensure that your data is kept is to back it up. If its THAT important, back it up 3x.

[charliedid]

A friend (and others) who has been an independent Mac Tech for past 15 years swears by these. FWIW we have 3 here and no problems over the years.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

[BumbleBeeDave]

. . .Western digital desktop drives.

Office places around here seem to sell both Seagate and WD. But these days with all USB connections and cross-platform compatibility it doesn't seem to matter unless you have some sort of specialized needs.

Apple has their new Thunderbolt connector that is supposed to have some insane MB-per-second capacity, but that is brand new and beyond a certain point, for normal use you're not going to need the capacity.

Biggest factor might be platter speed. I had a 320GB drive in my Macbook and got it upgraded to 750GB. Lots more space but as far as I know it's the same platter speed--5400rpm--as the 320 and I get the "rainbow pinwheel of death" more often now while it hunts down something on the drive. But I'm not even sure you can get a 2.5 in. drive with 10k rpm.

BBD

[DRZRM]

The Mac Time Machine is so effortless, it wirelessly backs up every time you join your network and works on multiple machines. It may be a bit pricey, but ease of use for a lazy man makes it more than worth it.

[echelon_john]

I use these:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006Y5UV4A/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i00

Under $100ea; bought two. One has a full backup, and stays at the bank in a safe deposit box. The other has a full daily backup, and sits on my desk. Once a week, I swap them out. To me this represents a reasonable approach that's not neurotic, but still offers pretty good protection/redundancy.

Knock on wood.

[MerckxMad]

The Mac Time Machine is so effortless, it wirelessly backs up every time you join your network and works on multiple machines. It may be a bit pricey, but ease of use for a lazy man makes it more than worth it.

+1. It's pricey, but it's bulletproof and comes with a built-in router to boot.

[oldpotatoe]

What are the Macophiles on the Paceline using for external hard drives?

Any recommendations?






Thanks!
William

I looked on ebay, got a 1 TB X Media external..mostly for pictures..cheap, about $95 I think. Works fine, easy setup-I have a last gen MacMini

[MattTuck]

Under $100ea; bought two. One has a full backup, and stays at the bank in a safe deposit box. The other has a full daily backup, and sits on my desk. Once a week, I swap them out. To me this represents a reasonable approach that's not neurotic, but still offers pretty good protection/redundancy.

Knock on wood.

It depends on your definition of neurotic ;)


I knew a guy in college that had some special disk that was designed to destroy itself in someway in the event you poured water on a certain spot. He was running an illegal movie download site. So he was constantly worried about the feds busting down his door.

[GuyGadois]

I use two backups. First is a cheap Costco WD huge TB size USB thing. I also use Time Machine which is pricy but the best backup wireless hub ive ever used.

[Likes2ridefar]

Right now I'm running seagates but have used Lacie and WD in the past with no issues.

I bought the seagates simply because they were the cheapest USB 3.0 drives at the store I was in (staples)

the portable drive is fantastic. it's 500gb and was fairly cheap. it's about the size of a typical smart phone.

the external 3TB drive I recently got is fine as well. It was about $150.

if you can do USB 3.0 go for it. It's significantly faster than my former 2.0 drives.

I don't recommend the wireless storage options unless time and speed is not a concern. Wireless is not fast enough to stream full blu-ray movies over a network, for example...i realize that most dont do this, but something to consider for future use.

[559Rando]

I have a few external drives and also recommend using some type of cloud backup too.

You need redundant data in different places. God forbid, you had a fire, if your one and only backup drive is sitting on the desk next to your computer, you're likely to lose all of it.

I have two little kids and the photos are priceless.

[carpediemracing]

I found that a powered USB hub (i.e. it doesn't draw off the USB port on the laptop), with external drives, works well. Everything sits on a UPS and it worked through some power outages.

I have WD external drives (Elements) but they're all USB 2.0. I'm starting to migrate over to external drives, 3.0, but I don't know what's reliable etc.

I store all my helmet cam clips and it takes a lot of disk space for one actual youtube clip. The cam eats up 3.67 GB per hour and some of my youtube clips (4-15 min long) take up about 100 GB of drive space. Most of the (HD, i.e. after Feb 2010) youtube clips take 40-60 GB. It seems all the newer ones are closer to 100 GB. The prior clips reside on a windows backup scheme.

Therefore I use a lot of storage space.

Mac: 500GB drive (using carboncopy to copy the original drive)
External: 1500 GB (2 of them)
Backup (external): 2000GB (2 of them, backs up Mac + external 1.5 TB)

I have a second mac with a 500GB drive that is more like scrap paper. I carbon copied that one too, have a backup for it at that point, and now it roams sort of "free".

I have another pair of external drives, 1.5 TB and 2.0 TB. I will need to put them into action soon as both my 1.5 TB drives are down to 200-300 GB free (so just 2-4 edited clips). I think I'll test-restore to the new 1.5 to verify that my backups are working, then wipe the original 1.5 and use that as a new drive.

I also have a (Toshiba) 500GB USB 3.0 drive for scrap use and to see for myself if I want to migrate over to 3.0 (I do).

I have about 10-12 clips in my queue so I figure I need 1.5 TB to finish those, plus whatever other clips from 2012 and 2011 that I haven't done yet. I edit the clips on the external drives so I think that going to USB 3.0 will really speed up the process.

[slidey]

http://www.amazon.com/Passport-Portable-External-Drive-Storage/dp/B007FQNKRC/ref=sr_du_10_map?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1354728122&sr=1-10

I've been using the WD Passport 250/320GB for over 3 years now, no failure yet. The above link is a newer version of the passport.

[Don49]

The Mac Time Machine is so effortless, it wirelessly backs up every time you join your network and works on multiple machines. It may be a bit pricey, but ease of use for a lazy man makes it more than worth it. +1

That's what I use for backup. I also use an external USB drive to make a bootable clone of my HD twice a month.

[gavingould]

i use WD MyBook usb, the cheap ones...
no need to get the Mac formatted ones, just use Disk Utility to format.

i have one that i use Time Machine to back up the full system, and then 2 that are the same for current photo/video/music library.

i like having redundant backups for the important stuff, so archived photos are kept on a couple more mirrored MyBooks.

considering a Synology system (multi-drive RAID, hot swappable, etc) as we just got a couple of those devices at the office and they seem pretty cool.

[11.4]

A couple issues to consider:

1. Networking -- Thunderbolt is superfast but you waste the speed if you aren't transferring to RAID SSDs. And the Thunderbolt hard drives are about 2.5-3 times the price of the same drives without Thunderbolt.

Firewire is phasing out. Other modalities ended up outperforming it.

eSATA is very fast and if you have anything you can connect eSATA to (like an Express 34 slot or a Thunderbolt to eSATA converter), it's fast and easy. This will pretty much always give you bandwidth as fast as your hard drive or SSD can handle.

USB is good, especially 3.0. It's probably the future unless Apple and Intel drop the price and complexity of Thunderbolt quite a bit. For backup you rarely need pure bandwidth.

2. Hard drives -- drives are different. The best are enterprise hard drives, which are rated higher, carry longer warranties, and are a bit more expensive. Most tabletop hard drives are frankly pretty cheap. You can get an enclosure and put in an enterprise hard drive and get a really good, reliable storage system. That's pretty much what OWC tends to do, but they charge you for it. Get an enterprise Toshiba drive and an enclosure and you have your own hard drive storage in minutes. A 3.5" drive at 10K rpm with a big buffer and enterprise rating can really fly and is reliable. You can stack them into a RAID setup but it isn't really necessary for backup purposes unless you want to choose a redundant RAID format.

3. SSDs -- these are solid state drives (no hard drive). They solve the problem of hard drives crashing, and they are very fast. Go to OWC for the better ones. If you don't need huge capacity for your backup, you can get up to 256GB SSDs pretty inexpensively now and prices are falling like USB thumb drives fell in price.

4. Method -- I'd have a big hard drive (or two) that you do a Time Machine backup to every week or so (more if you put a lot of new content on your hard drive daily). Have two in a RAID enclosure and get complete dual-copy backup infallibility with one pass. Just run it at night. Then have a Time Machine backup on a USB-powered portable. It becomes your go-to when you need to travel or when you want to back up some stuff you were doing right on the spot and don't want to risk til your next major backup.

5. Time Machine -- I've seen a few problems with Time Machine backups. Like any software, it can glitch. Every week or so, I do a complete backup to a hard drive using SuperDuper. It gives me a safe alternative to Time Machine. I don't rely on it completely because you overwrite your prior backup (unless you have like a 4TB drive and several partitions, which is actually what I do, so I have serial copies for the past couple months or so) and you can overwrite the last version that helps you cover whatever problem you encountered.

Time Machine and SuperDuper copy everything on your hard drive, including system files, programs, etc. I also keep a frequently updated copy of documents, photos, contacts, calendar, etc. all on a cloud storage system. Again, just one more piece of redundancy. It also makes sure I can reach them when I travel.

Redundancy is everything, more than trying to optimize just one storage solution.

[William]

Lots of great suggestions!! Must...now...process!!!


One of the many reasons I love this place!:banana:





Thanks everyone!
William

[rice rocket]

I just purchased a diskless NAS, and have 2 x 2TB drives to fill it with.

I'm excited about the proposition to be able to access my media anywhere in the world (and have it only consume a few watts, I guess I could've created this setup with a full computer).

[Likes2ridefar]

I just purchased a diskless NAS, and have 2 x 2TB drives to fill it with.

I'm excited to be able to access my media anywhere in the world.

Unfamiliar with this. could you elaborate our provide a link to what you got?

Plex works great for sharing media to pretty much anything that has an internet connection, but I think what you refer to is something entirely different.

[rice rocket]

Sure, I have a NETGEAR FVS318 router at home. On my phone and laptop, I have the VPN/IPSec setup to connect to my home whenever it receives a signal.

On my phone, I use ES File Explorer to setup a mapped drive to the NAS, and then I can play it through any music player.

For my computer, I do the same, except I can use iTunes.

You need a pretty hopping connection to stream most video content unless you keep it under 720p.

[BumbleBeeDave]

I also use an external USB drive to make a bootable clone of my HD twice a month.

. . . do you do this?

BBD

[slidey]

Ok, I didn't quite follow the entire flow of the hardware setup you explained but from what I understand you've solved the problem of music storage and on-demand playback, si?

If so, this is exactly what I need help with. My current setup is a Macbook/iPhone => dependent on iTunes sync for music sync'ing, etc. I was looking at the option of "iTunes Match" to get around the problem of throwing away my music from my HD onto Apple's plate, and still be able to access it via my existing playlists, and sync when needed. Clearly since this shouldn't be an issue, but do you know how good is music streaming capability on wi-fi or on the so-called AT&T 4G? Any estimate on how much data suckage happens, say for an hour of music played, etc?

Sure, I have a NETGEAR FVS318 router at home. On my phone and laptop, I have the VPN/IPSec setup to connect to my home whenever it receives a signal.

On my phone, I use ES File Explorer to setup a mapped drive to the NAS, and then I can play it through any music player.

For my computer, I do the same, except I can use iTunes.

You need a pretty hopping connection to stream most video content unless you keep it under 720p.

[Likes2ridefar]

Sure, I have a NETGEAR FVS318 router at home. On my phone and laptop, I have the VPN/IPSec setup to connect to my home whenever it receives a signal.

On my phone, I use ES File Explorer to setup a mapped drive to the NAS, and then I can play it through any music player.

For my computer, I do the same, except I can use iTunes.

You need a pretty hopping connection to stream most video content unless you keep it under 720p.

So I guess what you are doing is basically what I thought, at least partly.

I use Plex to do this on my server. It streams movies, music, and photos for free to anyone that is given access. It's works on most any phone, tablet, roku, hacked apple tv, and every OS. It's fairly easy to setup as far as media streamers go since it's compatible with most anything. Like anything, it's not perfect, but for the average user it is satisfactory. For audio and videophiles, it may not be adequate. For my own theater I use J river.

But, I have a home theater pc (htpc) that is always on that acts as the server. and it's on a fast internet connection (50MB/s dl and 15MB/s upload)

Before my parents got their own media server they would stream 720p from my computer to their home and it worked great. Similar to using something like Netflix, as far as load times go.

[Don49]

+1

That's what I use for backup. I also use an external USB drive to make a bootable clone of my HD twice a month.

. . . do you do this?

BBD

Yes, on the 1st and 15th of the month. Takes 15 minutes to clone my internal HD with SuperDuper. I can boot to the external drive in the event of an internal HD failure.

I misspoke, I'm using FireWire not USB for this. I don't know if USB would be bootable. The drive itself is from OWC, kind of like these: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/1394/USB/EliteAL/eSATA_FW800_FW400_USB

[bluesea]

I use a Newer tech adapter with external hdd's (in anti-static cases), and backup with CarbonCopyCloner (free).

http://www.newertech.com/products/usb3_universaldriveadap.php

[sean]

I've found it's much cheaper to buy the bare drive and then an inexpensive enclosure on NewEgg or similar. Dealmac seems to list good HD prices, and it's an amazing place to start.

[ChipRI]

+ + + on Lacie

[carpediemracing]

I've learned some stuff now too :)

With CarbonCopy it's very straightforward to create a bootable copy of your hard drive, even with USB whatever. Just plug in the new drive (I have something that allows you to drop a bare drive into it):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153066
http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/17-153-066-TS?$S300W$

Drop drive in, start up CarbonCopy (a few clicks, make sure you select the external drive that you want!), go. I just let it run while I do other things.

To test I swapped drives. It worked. This is how I upgraded the internal HD in my two macs.

I have a couple extra 3.5" drives so I may be redoing some of my backup plans/schedules. Hm hm hm.

Someone in a different forum lamented the lack of backups in general. In database forums there's inevitably the question of "how do I get my database back? I don't have a backup."

The answer: you don't.

[bluesea]

I've learned some stuff now too :)

With CarbonCopy it's very straightforward to create a bootable copy of your hard drive, even with USB whatever. Just plug in the new drive (I have something that allows you to drop a bare drive into it):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153066
http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/17-153-066-TS?$S300W$




I obviously need to update my adapter technology.

[11.4]

Also, get two or three 32 GB or so high quality thumb drives like Corsairs. Put your key files on them as additional backups. I keep one at home, one at work, one with me, so no matter what happens I at least have my most critical files and can reconstruct if something dies.

[biker72]

I've learned some stuff now too :)


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153066
http://images17.newegg.com/is/image/newegg/17-153-066-TS?$S300W$





I've used one similar to this for a couple of years. I've got 3 bare hard drives I use with this docking station. Even works with laptop drives.

[boxerboxer]

+1 for the OWC stuff.

[rice rocket]

I dislike companies like OWC and LaCie, because I feel like they're disingenuous about making their things "Mac ready", and charging double what it would cost normally. Ever since Apple went to Intel x86 architecture, everything is Mac ready nowadays.

I understand Mac users like to be spoonfed and they're capitalizing on that, but c'mon...

[bluesea]

I plan to upgrade to a 512 GB solid-state drive next year for my 2011 MBP.

[rice rocket]

I have a 128GB Crucial M4 in my 2009 13" MBP right now, works great. I dropped the DVD drive for a 500GB hard drive though, so I can deal w/ the smaller size of the SSD.

A 480GB just showed up for sale pretty cheap:

http://dealnews.com/OCZ-480-GB-SATA-III-6-Gbps-Internal-SSD-for-290-after-rebate-free-shipping/644482.html

[mudhead]

I've had great luck with a Synology NAS and Amazon S3. External drives are better than nothing but if your files are important you'll want to have some level of RAID involved. Synology's OS now has native support for S3 transfers which can be automated as well.

[rice rocket]

I've had great luck with a Synology NAS and Amazon S3. External drives are better than nothing but if your files are important you'll want to have some level of RAID involved. Synology's OS now has native support for S3 transfers which can be automated as well.

Which model?

I've been shopping for the past month or so, it seems likes NASs have pretty low cost to performance ratio. i.e. I could build a small nettop for less money than most these NASs cost. The only reason I bought a NAS (the $149 ZyXEL posted earlier) is for data accessibility and low power consumption (it should be <8W when the drives aren't spinning).

Also, RAID is fine and all but one thing many people don't consider is, what if your NAS fails? Will you be able to find the same NAS 4 years down the road, to plug your drives into to try to recover them? I've been using Windows's software RAID for my more important files for this reason, because you can pull those drives and plop them in any Windows PC.

[bluesea]

I have a 128GB Crucial M4 in my 2009 13" MBP right now, works great. I dropped the DVD drive for a 500GB hard drive though, so I can deal w/ the smaller size of the SSD.

A 480GB just showed up for sale pretty cheap:

http://dealnews.com/OCZ-480-GB-SATA-III-6-Gbps-Internal-SSD-for-290-after-rebate-free-shipping/644482.html



Tempting but I've seen bad reports on OCZ, both on reliability and CS. Will probably wait till I get a Crucial on the next price drop.

[11.4]

First, if you want an SSD, be sure it's Sandforce. This is a protocol that ensures the data are organized and rewritten so it doesn't slow down to a ridiculous degree. There's a point where an SSD without Sandforce will have to rewrite something else, erase the original, and then copy your new addition to the erased spot -- it gets so it's hardly faster than a hard drive. Early SSDs didn't take this into consideration, and while they were blindingly fast at first, after a few months they slowed down dramatically.

Beyond that, there's a wide variance in reliability and speed among different SSDs. OWC has some superb enterprise-level SSDs sized for notebooks -- pricey and capacities are limited right now to about 500 GB, but worth it if you're going to spring the money anyway. Whatever you do, figure quality is going up and prices are plummeting. I wouldn't think SSD storage devices for anything other than necessary video editing, etc. or for a primary drive in a notebook for another year, but then scrap your hard drives for many purposes. SSDs rock if your operating system can really handle them and if you pay attention to how they need to be managed.

[rice rocket]

First, if you want an SSD, be sure it's Sandforce. This is a protocol that ensures the data are organized and rewritten so it doesn't slow down to a ridiculous degree. There's a point where an SSD without Sandforce will have to rewrite something else, erase the original, and then copy your new addition to the erased spot -- it gets so it's hardly faster than a hard drive. Early SSDs didn't take this into consideration, and while they were blindingly fast at first, after a few months they slowed down dramatically.

I assume you mean TRIM?

Sandforce is a manufacturer of SSD controller silicon. They have had many good controllers, but aren't the only ones in the market with a good chip. Samsung's implementation is plenty reliable and fast if not faster than what Sandforces have been outputting.

[bluesea]

Does Mountain Lion have native support for TRIM?

[rice rocket]

You need to download some program called TRIM Enabler if you want to run a non-Apple SSD. But after that, it's works as if it were "native". Samsung SSDs do garbage collection in the background and thus didn't need OS support for TRIM.

I skipped Mountain Lion myself, I don't care for stupid Facebook integration.

[mudhead]

Which model?

I've been shopping for the past month or so, it seems likes NASs have pretty low cost to performance ratio. i.e. I could build a small nettop for less money than most these NASs cost. The only reason I bought a NAS (the $149 ZyXEL posted earlier) is for data accessibility and low power consumption (it should be <8W when the drives aren't spinning).

Also, RAID is fine and all but one thing many people don't consider is, what if your NAS fails? Will you be able to find the same NAS 4 years down the road, to plug your drives into to try to recover them? I've been using Windows's software RAID for my more important files for this reason, because you can pull those drives and plop them in any Windows PC.


You are largely correct on the price to performance ratio for most NAS boxes. If you are willing, building a NAS from an old PC using FreeNAS it is definitely cheaper. What you gain from a quality commercial NAS like Synology is ease of use, support and a rich feature set. Not all uses weight those atributes the same.

As far as NAS failure, it is a fact of life that anything you plug into the wall can and will fail at some point. You make a good point about the flexibility of using Windows software raid, I choose to have my data backed up off site and globally accessible. If my NAS fails, I'll buy a new one and download my data from Amazon.

[sean]

The OWC drives don't require TRIM support, correct? Don't they write the data in a different way. (Sorry if that sounds Naive, not up on my HD data writing stuffs).

Last year I took my older MBP and did the two drive thing. SSD as the startup and second 750 GB drive as secondary. That and a combination of symbolic links has gone really well.

[wintermute]

Another option, in case you haven't gotten enough already, is a drobo. These are (admittedly expensive) boxes that take 4+ hard drives. When you put two or more in the data is redundantly copied such that one drive failure won't make you lose anything. This redundancy costs some storage--for instance, 2 2-TB drives don't give you 4 TB total, but more like 3.2 TB, but the redundancy is great.