External Hard Drive Thoughts

[tukaniray]

So, I am in the market to buy a new External Hard Drive because my current 1 TB is about full. Lots of HD Video.

I use my hard drives for my photography, motion graphics and video (HD and SD).

So that will give you an idea of what I use them for.

I am looking at the GTech Drive at the moment.

I have had:
- Seagates - not my fav, went through 3 in year 3 years ago. Bad Enclosures in my book.
- MyBooks - Not bad, just sometimes they either don't mount or unmount on their own. It is my currect 1TB
- Lacies - Very sturdy to me, but when they fail ... THEY Fail
- Iomega - Never going back to these ... issue after issue

So, again, I am looking at the GTech Drives. And the Drobos are nice ... but a bit out of what I want to pay for at the moment.

Thoughts anyone or any other suggestions? Looking to spend less than $250 before Tax.

-Ray-

[TheFantasticG]

Look for a used Drobo?

[KenJulio]

What you could do is buy an external enclosure or dock(thermaltake) and just buy replacement internal drives, you'll save between 20-60 dollars based on the drive you'll buy, the price of the dock or enclosure is between 20-60 depending on which ones you purchase.

I actually purchased a couple of docks by Thermaltake and have my external storage setup not including a couple of 2.5" drives

Amazon.com:

[dmcantrell]

I have had good luck with the Maxtor OneTouch 750GB drives. I have two of them and they are both more than 2 years old. I don't have them running all the time though, only when I need to use them.

Just recently I bought a Fantom 2TB drive with a ESATA port. So far it's been great, and the transfer speeds are really something. I've only had it for a few months, and again, I don't run it all the time.

[tukaniray]

Hmm ... thanks guys.

Garret ... where do you find Used Drobos? I didn't think people ever let those go. They are great. Used one at an editing studio I have done some freelance for.

Ken ... I didn't even think about building an external. Last one I built I used an Acomdata Enclosure. What hard drive would you recommend inside? Western Digital? Or Hitachi?

David ... Fantom, hmm ... could you tell me where you picked up yours at. Might look into it.

-Ray-

[dmcantrell]

Originally Posted by tukaniray

David ... Fantom, hmm ... could you tell me where you picked up yours at. Might look into it.

I got mine from newegg : Newegg.com - Fantom Drives G-Force 2TB USB 2.0 / eSATA External Hard Drive GF2000EU

[tukaniray]

Thanks David, unfortunately it doesn't have Firewire 800.

Firewire works real well with video because it is a consistent data run as oppose to USB.

-Ray-

[dmcantrell]

Ah well, that's too bad.

[divenut1]

I built a 1TB external with a thermaltake enclosure and a hitachi drive. I have the choice of sata, usb, or possibly firewire to PC.
It ran me about $100 a year ago...

[KenJulio]

Ray - I have been using the Seagate Barracuda drives and I havent had a problem for 2 years. I'm on the verge of getting a RAID enclosure though, to have additional redundancy such as the LaCie, Drobo was on the top of my list but the 'non-standard' in which it does it's replication has my weary

[KdLaneJr]

Originally Posted by ken74

what you could do is buy an external enclosure or dock(thermaltake) and just buy replacement internal drives, you'll save between 20-60 dollars based on the drive you'll buy, the price of the dock or enclosure is between 20-60 depending on which ones you purchase.

I actually purchased a couple of docks by thermaltake and have my external storage setup not including a couple of 2.5" drives

amazon.com:

+1

I have a 2TB iomega nas on my network. It gave me some issues, including drives failing, until I replaced the 40mm fan inside it. Now it just works. My computer case has four hot swappable hard drive bays. If I were doing video, I'd just designate one of the bays as a video drive and change out hard drives as necessary. That said, I have two 2TB drives standing by to handle data storage as my needs grow. I currently have 3.6GB of hard drives installed in my system (1-600GB vraptor, 1-seagate 1TB and 1-2TB wd caviar green drive) This system has room to add an additional 8TB of hard drives (sized at 2TB each).

Have you thought about building a video friendly system?

[tukaniray]

Well, yes I have KDLANJR ... (trying not to confuse you and Ken74 )

I use a MacPro at the the studio I work at Full Time. Has All the bays full for our Video Production and an External XRaid system from Apple.

But I am building my home office. Since, I haven't made enough revenue for a MacPro ... well the one I want . I am looking to upgrade my current home iMac to the Newer i7 Quad iMac that was released. Bench Marks the same to the Current MacPro 8-Core at half the cost. Hence why I am looking for an External Answer.

Also, I use my MacBook Pro on the system as well. Being external, I can just swap the cable as oppose to working off a network ... like I do in my Full Time gig.

-Ray-

[TheFantasticG]

Originally Posted by tukaniray

Hmm ... thanks guys.

Garret ... where do you find Used Drobos? I didn't think people ever let those go. They are great. Used one at an editing studio I have done some freelance for.

-Ray-

The normal places: eBay, Amazon, and craigslist.

I prefer Hitachi HDDs. I had a brand new Seagate Barraccuda fail, literally, two days after plugging it in.

The infamous "Click, click, click --- nothing" error. The 'cuda HDD was a total loss.

[tukaniray]

^^ Yeah ... I am looking at the Hitachis as well ... because the MacPros come with Hitachis in their from factory state. If Apple uses them well, it makes sense to stick with em. I know the SS Drives are Samsung ... but not all software support SS yet ...

I am quite weary of buying used HDs off those sites because, you never know what the user would have done to them. Plus you don't know what the life time will be once you start doing some major work on em. I think I will just stick with new here.

-Ray-

[KdLaneJr]

Originally Posted by tukaniray

^^ Yeah ... I am looking at the Hitachis as well ... because the MacPros come with Hitachis in their from factory state. If Apple uses them well, it makes sense to stick with em. I know the SS Drives are Samsung ... but not all software support SS yet ...

I am quite weary of buying used HDs off those sites because, you never know what the user would have done to them. Plus you don't know what the life time will be once you start doing some major work on em. I think I will just stick with new here.

-Ray-

agreed, I don't buy used hard drives either.