1 or 2TB External HDD

TriedandTested · 10 Apr 2009 at 13:34

Your recommendations please!

Looking for a lot of storage, firewire, to back up lots of film editing being done by a colleague.

J1234 · 10 Apr 2009 at 13:36

Well.. Do you need 1TB or 2TB of space?

FreeStream · 10 Apr 2009 at 13:38

WD Mybook Studio I here

Works fine

D D Danneh · 10 Apr 2009 at 13:53

The LaCie Neil Poulton drives look very nice, and they're the cheapest too (per GB). Unfortunately they lack eSATA or Firewire ports (although some review sites seem to state that they do have them).

Edit: Seems the 1TB and 2TB models do have firewire 400, eSATA and USB 2.0, only the 500GB doesn't.

TriedandTested · 10 Apr 2009 at 13:55

Justin said:
Well.. Do you need 1TB or 2TB of space?

Either. But let's aim for 2Tb!

TriedandTested · 10 Apr 2009 at 13:56

Thanks for other suggestions - will investigate those.

FreeStream · 10 Apr 2009 at 14:08

Aim for FW800 tho, eSATA is a PAIN IMO.

The WD Studios come with FW800 (IEEE 1394b)

bigredshark · 11 Apr 2009 at 12:25

As said firewall800 is a good bet, the WD studio drives work pretty well but on the other hand my cousin is a freelance editor and she swears by the lacie fw800 drives. Probably any fw800 drive from a decent brand will do you just fine.

Rameses · 11 Apr 2009 at 13:13

Drobo FW800 4x1TB is what you want :cool:

My baby is right next to me....I love her, my little black box.

likwid · 11 Apr 2009 at 13:41

Been here before. What I will say is investigate thoroughly if you are tempted to buy a WD mybook. I also have the studio edition and it is a complete piece of garbage.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17966033&highlight=mybook

The usual answer is to buy an enclosure and fit a disk yourself but the best place to ask this question would be in the hard drives forum.

MagicBoy · 11 Apr 2009 at 13:50

likwid said:
The usual answer is to buy an enclosure and fit a disk yourself but the best place to ask this question would be in the hard drives forum.

Not so easy with FireWire 800 as the enclosures cost a fortune. Cheap ones are usually garbage (crap Firewire chip) and in my experience the PSU will pop within a couple of years. 90% of the enclosures out there are USB only and the rest are usually eSATA.

likwid · 11 Apr 2009 at 13:53

Good point. Do the expensive enclosures plus a disk cost more than a good quality and of similar capacity all-in-one product?

MagicBoy · 11 Apr 2009 at 13:56

You're definitely into £70+ territory for a decent enclosure with an Oxford chip. A branded external usually works out the same or cheaper and comes with a better warranty.

bigredshark · 11 Apr 2009 at 14:03

AmTechFox said:
Drobo FW800 4x1TB is what you want

My baby is right next to me....I love her, my little black box.

While it's a good product in terms of features with the expansion potential and data protection, I've heard bad things about transfer rates in comparison to simple fw800 disks. I think it's a great home product for storing all your personal files on and keeping them protected but I wouldn't buy one for this sort of use even if the transfer rates were up there.

It's also painfully expensive...

Phate · 11 Apr 2009 at 14:32

LaCie or WD tbh

FreeStream · 11 Apr 2009 at 18:26

likwid said:
Been here before. What I will say is investigate thoroughly if you are tempted to buy a WD mybook. I also have the studio edition and it is a complete piece of garbage.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17966033&highlight=mybook

The usual answer is to buy an enclosure and fit a disk yourself but the best place to ask this question would be in the hard drives forum.

Its 150% the price at least to do it that way.

Trust me, I did my research!

And anyway the spin down stuff doesn't bother me as its only connected to do a weekly backup to complement time machine and then is disconnected

MTWest · 11 Apr 2009 at 23:23

likwid said:
Been here before. What I will say is investigate thoroughly if you are tempted to buy a WD mybook. I also have the studio edition and it is a complete piece of garbage.

Funny you should say that, I have a WD Studio Edition too (500GB albeit) and have been running it 24/7 for more than a year with no problems as a Time Machine backup for my MBP.

I guess that's the nature of buying HDDs these days... you win some, you lose some...

wij · 12 Apr 2009 at 10:24

I've used Glyph drives since as long as I can remember for external storage and have never had a problem with any of them.

Got a couple of their new quad interface ones and they are brilliant though I think for 1Tb or 2Tb they are going to cost the earth!

Nice features and they are built like the proverbial brick outhouse (way beyond what Lacie / WD do on any of their products), have an IEC socket for power and come with a 1 day advanced replacement warranty and data recovery for the first year.

likwid · 12 Apr 2009 at 13:48

MTWest said:
Funny you should say that, I have a WD Studio Edition too (500GB albeit) and have been running it 24/7 for more than a year with no problems as a Time Machine backup for my MBP.

I guess that's the nature of buying HDDs these days... you win some, you lose some...

It's fine if you don't mind it constantly going into sleep mode then waking up at frequent and sporadic intervals. I wouldn't mind if I could turn off the terrible power saving and leave it up to my mac. It's not the quietest of disks by any stretch of the imagination and undoubtedly this is bad for the spindle motor. If you look at the high incidence of failure reported on the internet then you also probably will mind at some point in the future.

Now I'm the same a ConcordeRules. When I switch on my computer I perform one time machine back up, then eject the disk for the rest of the session. Not very impressive.