Hard Drive Deal

[mixedupsteve]

I've been getting closer and closer to running out of space on my external drives. I finally went online and bought one of these.
I thought I'd pass along the info since I felt it was an exceptional deal.
Steve,

[Dan Steinberg]

Are you using this as a drive for backups, or do you record directly to it? I noticed that the case is USB2 only, no Firewire, which can be a problem for at least some systems (Pro Tools LE for example).

One other cool external hard drive choice, while kind of expensive, is the Lacie D2 series, because you can buy rack ears to mount the hard drive in a standard pro audio rack (it takes up half the width). While the rack ears are overpriced as well, it's nice to have the hard drive mounted in a rack with the other gear for location work, one less "loose" item rattling around in an unprotected manner.

Thanks!

[Remoteness]

Originally Posted by mixedupsteve

I've been getting closer and closer to running out of space on my external drives. I finally went online and bought one of these.
I thought I'd pass along the info since I felt it was an exceptional deal.
Steve,

Wow, that's pretty inexpensive.

Did you put it through any serious tests; benchmarks and such?

[mixedupsteve]

Originally Posted by Dan Steinberg

Are you using this as a drive for backups, or do you record directly to it? I noticed that the case is USB2 only, no Firewire, which can be a problem for at least some systems (Pro Tools LE for example).

One other cool external hard drive choice, while kind of expensive, is the Lacie D2 series, because you can buy rack ears to mount the hard drive in a standard pro audio rack (it takes up half the width). While the rack ears are overpriced as well, it's nice to have the hard drive mounted in a rack with the other gear for location work, one less "loose" item rattling around in an unprotected manner.

Thanks!

I'm not sure if I'm going to use it as backup only or just another drive. I've gone through 2 300 GB drives and they both have old projects I really don't use anymore and some more current projects. They are both USB 2 5800rpm MyBooks. This one is 7200 rpm so I'm thinking I'll make one of the MyBooks an archive drive and use this one with the other one as working drives.
I've never had a problem recording with USB2 since I only record 16 tracks at most. I use Logic 8 Express and Tracktion 2

[mixedupsteve]

Originally Posted by Remoteness

Wow, that's pretty inexpensive.

Did you put it through any serious tests; benchmarks and such?

No, I just went by the specs and the customer review. Hitachi internal drives are considered pretty good drives and they make great tools!!

[NorseHorse]

Stay away from LaCie.

Personally, I love the Western Digital Passports. I've been using them for three years. No problems yet. They are extremely portable and are bus-powered. Handy for remotesters.

EDIT: Yes, I record directly to them. 18-tracks of 24/44 no problem.

[Jim vanBergen]

Originally Posted by NorseHorse

Stay away from LaCie.

Why? I have eight of them for project storage and zero problems. What's the scoop?

[Remoteness]

Originally Posted by Jim vanBergen

Why? I have eight of them for project storage and zero problems. What's the scoop?

We also use LaCie d2 drive without any issues to date.

I have heard folks complain about them, but no problems to date here.

[Thomas W. Bethe]

One dog drive to stay away from is anything from IOMEGA, We just had one crash (it was a Seagate drive in an IOMEGA enclosure). It just stopped working one morning. I finally figured our that it was the on off switch and soldered a jumper so it was on all the time. Then the Seagate drive started having problems and when we called IOMEGA tech support and waited for over an hour we were told we had to pay a $50.00 consulting fee before we could continue to ask questions. I hung up and called the sales line. We told them of our problem and they put us through to a different tech support area but with the same results NO PAY-NO TALK. I told the tech support person what the problem was and he finally agreed to help us without the fee. His advice was to purchase another drive from them for the same price we paid for the first drive and then send the bad drive to their "data recovery" team and pay the fee for recovering our data. He was nice enough but he was like a broken record and every question was answered with the same "well you can buy a new drive from us and sent the old drive back for data recovery" It was like he was reading from a script. I finally hung up and vowed never to purchase another IOMEGA product. What a joke! but the joke unfortunately was on me. I also contacted Seagate but since this is a OEM drive they referred me back to IOMEGA.

So far, loud knocking on wood, the best drives have been the SEAGATES with a 5 year warranty. We have a number of their drives and they all seem to be very quiet and very reliable.

[Corran]

I used to be 100% Seagate but all my drives suddenly started dieing after a year or so! But there was one drive that I had from an old computer build that was still going strong after almost 5 years - a Western Digital. I have since switched over to them exclusively. I got a 1.5TB internal WD drive for $120! I also have the WD bus-powered Passport drive and it's fantastic.

They are all more stable than the Seagates. I have not had any LaCie drives but all their stuff seems overpriced.

Western Digital all the way!

[Remoteness]

Call me crazy, but I'm looking forward to the day when huge RAM chip based drives are readily available and inexpensive enough to be used day in and day out without major failure issues.

Bubble chip technology must replace the disk (platter) based drives for better archival reliability and hard everyday usage.

[sonare]

ALL hard drives fail sooner or later. It is simply a question of when, and if the critical data on it is backed up.

Rich

[sonare]

Originally Posted by Corran

They are all more stable than the Seagates.

Exactly what does this mean, and how did you arrive at this conclusion?

Rich

[gareth.h.rees]

Originally Posted by Remoteness

Call me crazy, but I'm looking forward to the day when huge RAM chip based drives are readily available and inexpensive enough to be used day in and day out without major failure issues.

Bubble chip technology must replace the disk (platter) based drives for better archival reliability and hard everyday usage.

I'm sure you've heard of them, but Solid State Drives aren't hugely expensive anymore.

Corsair 128GB 2.5" SATAII Solid State Hard Drive - Ebuyer

Maybe for your average user they're a bit of a luxury, but for a company like yours I'd imagine they're well within affordable?

They also read a lot quicker, making your computers faster

Again, I'm sure you've heard of these - but just thought I'd put it out there

Gareth

[Corran]

Originally Posted by sonare

Exactly what does this mean, and how did you arrive at this conclusion?

Rich

Using some third party software to analyze read errors and such a 6 month old Seagate drive had tons of read errors and bad sectors while a 5 year old WD drive had hardly any. This was true of all my Seagate drives almost regardless of age. The WD drives also have quicker read times it seems and less random errors.

My last computer crashed mostly because that 6 month old Seagate decided to get a read error right in the Windows directory.

[Remoteness]

Originally Posted by gareth.h.rees

I'm sure you've heard of them, but Solid State Drives aren't hugely expensive anymore.

Corsair 128GB 2.5" SATAII Solid State Hard Drive - Ebuyer

Maybe for your average user they're a bit of a luxury, but for a company like yours I'd imagine they're well within affordable?

They also read a lot quicker, making your computers faster

Again, I'm sure you've heard of these - but just thought I'd put it out there

Gareth

Thanks Gareth!

I still think the price point vs. drive size is not there yet to make them the defacto solution.

In any event, I feel that bubble chip technology is the answer to all our hard drive problems and issues.

[Corran]

Oh yeah, of course all hard drives eventually die but it just seems like I get better life out of WD drives.

Of course I could have just gotten several lemons. It seems like there is more and more slack in the manufacturing process of computer parts.

[mixedupsteve]

You guys with critical data might consider one of these:
Velocity2 Redundant Backup and Disaster Recovery Solutions from CMS Products

Run it in Raid 1

[therecordinghous]

i too have had zero problems with my two lacie d2 drives. i also have many friends with the same drives who have had zero problems as well.

[slaphappygarry]

I think the only solution seems to be the glyph systems. Reliability seems pretty high and, on top of that, they offer a data rescue service should the worst happen.

Anyone using them?

[mixedupsteve]

Originally Posted by Remoteness

Call me crazy, but I'm looking forward to the day when huge RAM chip based drives are readily available and inexpensive enough to be used day in and day out without major failure issues.

Bubble chip technology must replace the disk (platter) based drives for better archival reliability and hard everyday usage.

RAM may work someday but right now most SS drives are flash and it's my understanding there are lifespan issues with them. Many don't last any longer than the average HD.

[Remoteness]

Yes sir, that's why I'm looking forward to the day when...

Originally Posted by mixedupsteve

RAM may work someday but right now most SS drives are flash and it's my understanding there are lifespan issues with them. Many don't last any longer than the average HD.

[dbro]

I hate to pile on with me-too's, but me too.

I use Lacie D2s as media storage for video production in my other life and have had nothing but trouble. They were purchased as part of a custom solution I bought and I had no reason to question the spec due to Lacie's reputation at the time.

Mind you, these things are powered and spinning for years at a time with daily reads and writes but I expect more from a company that markets itself as a tool for A/V professionals. I've had 4 out of 6 fail on me in the past 3 to 4 years. I even had one that I purchased as a replacement fail on me so it's not a problem associated with a specific batch.

Save yourself the potential headache. I would recommend every product out there except Lacie.

Derek

[theblotted]

like someone else mentioned, the reality is that all HD will fail at some point. regardless of brand.

that said, i tend to lean towards Seagates. i've had the least failure rate on these.

i believe LaCie's used to be a problem a few years back, but not so any more.

my issue with Glyph's are the rack mountable ones, their FW port dies easily, and we actually take out the HD's out of its racks and store it securely in foam padded drawers during transport, from city to city or country to country, and they still nevertheless fail.

i too am waiting for SSD to come down in price, but it may be another 5 years or another technology comes around. until then, my work drive is still a SCSI 15k rpm Seagate Cheetah.

[David Spearritt]

Unfortunately there is an over abundance of anecdotal info on the net and strong opinions from well meaning users, such that it is all pretty useless in making an informed and reliable purchase decision.

Here is a real paper on the subject with a huge population of test drives.
http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf

Worth reading. Especially the bit about high temperatures and utilization age not really affecting failure rate, contrary to intuition. Its such a shame though, that they conclude brands are important, but fail to name them. Understandable, but frustrating for the consumer.

[Remoteness]

Thanks David - very helpful information in that PDF.

[LX3]

Originally Posted by NorseHorse

Stay away from LaCie.

Like others here, I haven't had any trouble at all with LaCie's gear. Although ironically, I have seen one of their little "rugged" portable drives die after about a week or two... though I don't know exactly what went wrong there - not my drive. Maybe someone stuck a screwdriver in a firewire port or something.

The thought that crossed my mind was that if LaCie's go wrong all the time, then there's a world renowned musician/"rock star" here in the UK who's in for a nasty surprise! All his work from the last few years is stored on literally hundreds of LaCie drives.

[Thomas W. Bethe]

Something to be aware of Seagate 1.5TB Drives Randomly Freezing - Tom's Hardware I have known two people who recently had that exact same problem, We are sticking with the proven 500gig Seagate drives.

FWIW and YMMV

[nowatthepl8]

I've used g-tech 1tb RAID 0 external drive with pretty good success. The only problem comes with firewire bandwidth. If you are using a Macbook Pro, your firewire bus maxes out at 800 Mbit/s, meaning you can't run a firewire 400 and firewire 800 device without getting a big headache! My solution has been to use the easycard bus with an eSATA adapter to send to a RAID 5 external I've pieced together. This frees up firewire for audio interfaces and such.

I also have used WD hard drives for several years now with great success. I avoid Seagate like the plague!

[sonare]

Originally Posted by nowatthepl8

If you are using a Macbook Pro, your firewire bus maxes out at 800 Mbit/s, meaning you can't run a firewire 400 and firewire 800 device without getting a big headache!

I do exactly that much of the time-- PLUS an express34 FW800 card. The Mac bus is limited to FW400 speeds but that's NOT really disastrous!

Rich