Need help finding External BackUp for MacPro

[Angelo]

I am looking for a good external HD to backup my MacPro, but the largest capacity I can find is a Lacie 1Terra Byte. I'm looking more closer to 2 or 4 TB capacity. The only external HD I've found in that capacity is a Buffalo NAS drive with 2-4 TB, but they only make NAS (netwrork backup).
My problem is that Apple Aperture, my photo management program, does not support NAS.
All I need is a simple external backup with 2TB capacity to back up my photo library by creating an Aperture Vault.
Any help would be appreciated.

[Spec A!]

http://www.lacie.com/us/products/product.htm?pid=10351

[Angelo]

Anthony, checked out the Lacie 2TB and the customer reviews are bad ( 2 1/2 stars out of 5 reviews). I'd like to get something bigger but there's nothing above 2TB without NAS.
http://www.pcmall.com/pcmall/shop/de...EW~Redir~1.asp

[Spec A!]

I had heard the same thing a while back about the single terabyte drives- internally it was two 500gigs and if one failed you were SOL.

Can't offer any other suggestions other than you may want to check this out if you haven't already- could be some answers here- http://www.apertureprofessional.com/

[Angelo]

Thanks Anthony for the URL. I was able to find a posting on a 2TB from Western Digital. Only one review and it's a 5 star. http://www.wdmybook.com/en/

I was surprised when I went to the Woodlands Apple Store a few months ago and they told me you went to greener pastures :^) miss being able to speak to someone at the store with similar interests.

[zach-e2]

lacie external usb drives are probably the best drives you can get..
not to mention, they are built incredibly well and also feature the brushed steel look.. so, it matches your mac pro quite well.

[Dobick]

if you are talking about a desktop -- you can always get a fiber card or a scsi card to put in the thing, and then you can attach a raid array to it.

We recently bought a raid array here at work with a scsi interface, has eight bays for drives, so the capacity can get pretty large ( we filled ours with 750's for a total space of 4.74 TB in a raid 5)

Kinda pricy, but with what you are talking about (2+ TBs of space) you are going to be getting into some of the pricier configs

Most of the raid shelfs are available with a fiber interface now, so I would think about going that direction if I was you.

[Angelo]

I had a 160 lacie and it worked well, but to hear someone having warranty problems with theirs, And having Lacie deny to fix it gets me nervous.

[KingViper]

An up-and-coming popular device. There is a link for the "drobolator" which shows you how many drives you would need for what capacity. It is also equivalent to a RAID5 with more than 2 drives in it.

http://www.drobo.com/

Right now it only supports USB 2.0, however there are rumors stating a new version supporting NAS and other features will be coming out. The nice thing about this device, is that it does not require the same size drives, so if a drive fails, you can replace it with the same size drive, but it could be slower, or have different amounts of cache, or it could even be bigger etc.

Here are the things you would need

1x of these
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822240001

4x of these for 2TB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136073

4x of these for 3TB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136131

4x of these for 4TB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822145143

Also, realize you DON'T HAVE to fill it up right away, you can add drives on-the-fly later.

[ibleave]

I put one of Firmtek's hot swappable eSATA serial ATA enclosures (and the proper eSATA card) on my G5. I can purchase any size SATA drive (have 2 500GB drives in there now) and it runs fast and well on my mac. If you buy the 2 drive version, it's almost portable. I've taken it on trips with me and use it on my macbook pro with their SM2-E 34 express card.

www.barefeets.com did a review of Firmtek's stuff a while back.

You can find out more at:

http://www.firmtek.com/

Scott

[boldimagery]

Check out G-Tech
http://www.g-technology.com/

[Spec A!]

FWIW I've had three separate G-Tech Mini 100gb's fail on me. The FW board would stop working, thankfully the internal drive was still fine, just needed a new board. YMMV.

On the flipside I have a friend that dropped his 500gig RAID G-Tech and they took care of it for him and fast- their customer service is very good.

Angelo- with the storage you need, Fiberchannel may be a great option for you as suggested, and last I checked you can get a fibercard for your MacPro.

[KingViper]

Originally Posted by Spec A!

FWIW I've had three separate G-Tech Mini 100gb's fail on me. The FW board would stop working, thankfully the internal drive was still fine, just needed a new board. YMMV.

On the flipside I have a friend that dropped his 500gig RAID G-Tech and they took care of it for him and fast- their customer service is very good.

Angelo- with the storage you need, Fiberchannel may be a great option for you as suggested, and last I checked you can get a fibercard for your MacPro.

Fiberchannel? Are there consumer level fiberchannel solutions? All I know is we setup server oriented fiberchannel, and NOTHING for it is cheap. The cards alone are over $1000 not including the connectors cable, and storage of all things.

If there is a consumer level version, let me know, that would be interesting to see.

[Spec A!]

From Apple's Website-

"A Fibre Channel PCI Express card is required to connect Xserve RAID to your Mac Pro. Choose from two PCI Express card options:

Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
This card runs at full bandwidth in a four-lane or eight-lane PCI Express slot.

Quad-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
This card runs at full bandwidth in an eight-lane PCI Express slot.

A quad-channel card is ideal if your computer is slot-constrained or if you want to connect two Xserve RAIDs to a single host computer without the expense or complexity of connecting through a Fibre Channel switch. Some hosts can utilize two quad-channel cards and support up to four Xserve RAIDs.

Each card ships with two or four 2.9-meter 4Gb Active Copper Fibre Channel SFP to SFP (small form factor pluggable) interconnect cables. The cables are used to connect to the SFP port on Xserve RAID with SFP connectors.

SFP connectors on the card allow use of copper or optical cabling and provide the capability of directly connecting to Xserve RAID or Fibre Channel switches over long distances up to 500m.

Notes:

* Installation of a Apple Fibre Channel PCI Express card in Mac Pro reclassifies these systems as FCC Class A devices.
* Optical connection requires SFP transceivers and optical cables.
* The dual-channel and quad-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel cards occupy one of the available PCI Express slots. "

prices- Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card [Add $599]
Quad-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card [Add $999]

We actually had one in the store for a customer that set up an Xserve as a RAID storage off his MacPro.

[KingViper]

Yea, $600 - $1000 just for the card. How much do the Xserves cost?