Buying first external HDD - any advice? [Archive] - Large Format Photography Forum

Kuzano

2-Dec-2008, 13:13

Maxtor? Iomega? Seagate? LaCie? Are the more expensive makes more reliable or is it lucky dip? Phil

I am surprised if Maxtor still exists as a name brand as they were purchased by Seagate some time ago. Of the list, I would be least interested in a Maxtor, although perhaps the quality control improved with acquisition by Seagate.

I believe Seagate is the venerable grandfather of the lot, being the first HD used in IBM PC's and early clones when I started working on PC's in the 70's.

For the most part, however, it is the luck of the draw, with full form factor hard drives being extremely reliable, as long as you know two things about them.

The solid state electronics are often more reliable the longer they survive. It's called burn-in. Heat is the killing blow. If a hard drive is going to fail, it will either be an early failure of it's the solid state circuity, and this is uncommon, unless enclosed in a way that creates heat buildup.

The second concern would be longevity. Long term failures are most often due to mechanical wear (bearings likely). The bearings used in hard drives are rated in a generalized lifetime equivalent of 4-5 years. This is a loose average based on how the drive is used. I've seen the majority of drives run longer than this, interestingly in networks that run 24/7. However, the failure of an old drive is often due to bearing wear that allows miniscule movement of the platters relative to the read/write heads and ultimately causing read/write errors or sector failures that cannot be recovered.

As a related issue, you can extend the lifespan of the hard drive by having an abundance of RAM so that applications are not constantly driving the hard drive to it's early demise.

The "iffy" drives are no longer in the market for the most part. You left a major drive manufacturer off your list. That MFR is Western Digital. Over the years, the drives I tended to favor have been Seagate and Western Digital, with Seagate as the leading candidate.

The other factor you will run into is the smaller portable form factor (laptop) drives. They are getting fairly large data capacity now, but unless I absolutely needed "shirt pocket" transportability, I'd suggest the larger drives, and don't put them in an enclosed space while they are powered up.

In any event, I would expect a second storage drive installed in the computer to outlive any external drive, as well as be hugely faster on data transfer due to the internal interface in the computer. That being the case, one of the options you may want to consider is a "front bay" removable drive that uses a common interface inside the computer, and a hard drive mounted in a special removable caddy that plugs into the front bay, yet can be removed and stored elsewhere. These are not USB or Firewire on the interface, but hooked in just as if they were installed inside the computer.

If you have multiple computers, you can then install the bay interface in each computer and plug the drive(s) into the bay equipped computers.

Frank Petronio

2-Dec-2008, 14:11

LaCie HDs suck

Gordon Moat

2-Dec-2008, 14:42

I picked up a SeaGate FreeAgent 500GB FireWire/USB drive a few months ago. Set-up is very easy. Drive is fast and quiet. Takes very little room on a desk. I got mine through Amazon. Recommended.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography (http://www.gordonmoat.com)

dwhistance

2-Dec-2008, 15:15

I agree with Frank - I've also had problems with Lacie hard drives. The ones I've owned have been very fast in use as they are essentially two disks configured as a RAID 0, however if anything goes wrong it is very difficult to recover the data. I've had two go in the time my Seagate external drives have been running, the last one only just lasted through its warranty period!

David Whistance

Steve Gledhill

2-Dec-2008, 15:23

I am about to begin scanning some of my older negs and wanted to get an external hard disc drive to keep the files separate from my everyday stuff. I was thinking of a single 500GB or 750GB unit to start with.

I have seen mixed reviews of many makes and models.....is there anything in a name?

Maxtor? Iomega? Seagate? LaCie? Are the more expensive makes more reliable or is it lucky dip?

Thanks in advance!

Phil

Buy a big one ... it's amazing how quickly you outgrow them. My two Maxtors are trouble free - so far. And so was my LaCie - but it's too small now to use.

Ash

2-Dec-2008, 15:44

I've always used Maxtor and continue to use them.

I chuck my old 120gb hdd about (it's kicked about the floor in a caddy, plugged in when I need it) and so far no corruption or data loss. I recently bought a 500gb "Maxtor Basics" and it's great.

bernal

2-Dec-2008, 15:46

Just make sure the mechanism (hard drive) inside has at least the following specs:

1) 16 or 32MB Cache (I would only buy a 1TB drive with 32GB cache)
2) 7500RPM
3) 3.0Gbps (they all are now)
4) 3 to 5 years warranty

Until recently, Samsung was the only company offering 334GB platter hard drives, meaning that a 640GB drive had only two platters, consequently, faster and less prone to failure. Western Digital and Seagate followed the trend.

OWC (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEAQ7750GB32/) has one of the best prices. I highly recommend their products.

bernal

Phil Hudson

2-Dec-2008, 15:47

Thanks for all your replies - much appreciated. I'm building up a clearer picture of what I should get.

Phil

kilimanjaro1996

2-Dec-2008, 15:54

I have used 4 Maxtors Mass Storage with Ethernet for home and work, and they work well. The newer versions with gigabit Ethernet are very quiet and fast.

I recently bought a Seagate FreeAgent Pro 1GB USB/Firewire for home use, good price performance ratio. With the sales going on these days in Fry's and etc, you should be able to get one under 150 dollars.

argos33

2-Dec-2008, 16:44

When I was getting an external HD I talked to a lot of people and eventually went with a G-Tech "G-Drive." Although a bit more expensive I have found these to be very reliable. I talked to a video professor who had gone through many external drives in the video lab he teaches in and that's what he recommended. Because of the space needed for digital video, the drives were subjected to some pretty hard use and many of them failed anywhere from 2 months to a year after buying them. He tried a bunch of different brands and eventually settled on the G-Drives, saying he had been using them (the RAID version I think) without any problems for a year or two now. A friend of mine also has had one for a year or two that he routinely travels with and hasn't had any problems.

Evan

Deane Johnson

2-Dec-2008, 17:06

Add me to the list of those who have had nothing but trouble with LaCie drives.

I know everyone has their good and bad experiences with almost any brand, but for me, I've had the best luck with Western Digital.

If you're going to a lot of work on these scans and don't want to lose them, consider buying two identical drives and duplicating your files. With drives being a cheap as they are now, it's not as impractical as is once was.

Dave Aharonian

2-Dec-2008, 17:11

I now have three Seagate 500gb hard rives and they have performed flawlessly. And they keep getting cheaper too!

Frank Petronio

2-Dec-2008, 18:13

The real answer is to have a back up strategy that involves more than just a hard drive. It may be safer to get a couple cheap 500 gbs and keep one off-site for instance. Even the best hard drives will fail, so actively updating and shuffling drives around needs to become part of your routine if you really want to be "backed up".

All of your most important files should be backed up onto DVDs and/or online....

Unfortunately, there is no digital storage media that you can just stick into a safety deposit box and forget about for fifty (or even ten) years. You need to be paying attention to it all the time.

The cheaper large drives are assemblies of cheaper smaller platters. The less platters, the simpler and more reliable. I use a 1tb Firewire 400 drive for everyday storage and four 500 gb USB 2.0 drives that I rotate around, including off site. Plus DVDs and a core 50 gb hunk of work stuck on my web hosting server. I can't fit everything onto a single 500 gb anymore so I am due to get some more drives when the prices get really low after Xmas.

Ken Lee

2-Dec-2008, 18:23

You might consider having a different external drive for each year of work. That way, you can spread the risk a little, and buy smaller disks. Smaller disks are cheaper and... smaller.

Of course, shooting film - especially b&w film - you can always re-scan.

In fact, you will probably end up re-scanning, as your scanning technique improves, or when you acquire a better scanner.

Buy some nice prints for the holidays:

David Swinnard

2-Dec-2008, 20:53

Get two big ones the same size, set them up as a RAID 1 (mirrored pair). (total capacity = that of single drive). It can be done reasonably inexpensively (two drives and an external housing with built-in RAID controller)

A single drive, external or not, WILL fail. At least with a suitably configured RAID you will have some hope of saving the data. (though I am sure there are failure modes where you could still loose everything)

I speak from bitter experience. My 5 month old 500GB LaCie bit the dust suddenly August past. They of course replaced it for me, but I did loose data I foolishly thought was "safe".

I may not be totally safe now, but with the mirrored enterprise drives I feel better.

Dave

Don Boyd

2-Dec-2008, 21:34

Phil, here is what I did just today: purchased two (2) Seagate 1TB (1000gb) FreeAgent Desk external hard drives; used microsoft SyncToy to link them together so that one drive backs up the other automatically (a free download that you can read about here - http://maximumpcguides.com/windows-vista/windows-xp-powertoy-synctoy/) . The two Seagate drives which have received good reviews cost $160 each at BestBuy. To not automatically backup drives that you store your images on is to ask for trouble that eventually will find you.

Ivan J. Eberle

2-Dec-2008, 21:34

I bought a Seagate Free Agent that I simply could not get to work with my MacBook Pro 15". Pretty looking but a piece of junk that has known issues with Macs.

Yet I have only good things to say about the utilitarian looking E-SATA/FW800/USB2 LaCie 500GB bought to replace it, which I run off an SIIG E-Sata II PCI Express Card. This combo is very fast and has been 100% reliable for over a year now.

(2 year warranty IIRC, but that'll mean but little if you lose all your work.)

Ross Chambers

3-Dec-2008, 00:04

FWIW I recently bought a Western Digital "My Book - Studio" " 640 gb for audio work.

Recommended by my Mac dealer as being for heavy duty.

Advantages: whisper quiet, virtually silent. SATA (which I don't use) and Firewire 800 and 400, USB 2.

Disadvantages: Not recommended for carrying about, best for limited portability. A little more expensive than a number of other 640 gb external hard drives.

Portability seems more easily achieved with something smaller like a Maxtor; the smaller ones around here are very cheap.

I can't speak for durability, it's only a few weeks old, but so far, so good.

regards - Ross

Peter von Gaza

3-Dec-2008, 00:19

Go simple. Buy a 1GB or 1.5GB SATA drive and get something like a ThermalTake BlacX drive docking station. The docking station works either as USB (too slow so ignore) or as an external SATA (eSATA) drive. The beauty of this system as that you simply drop a hard drive in the docking station and it is detected as a normal hard drive. If you want to work with another drive you just pull the drive out and pop in another. All this system requires is a $10 eSATA bracket for your computer (plugged in to one of your SATA ports on your motherboard). I paid about $60 for the docking station. 1GB drives are arouind $100.

Peter

ljsegil

3-Dec-2008, 04:50

There is also online backup, which is incredibly slow for your initial load (~2gbyte/day) but does provide secure redundant encrypted backup of all your initially designated files (and new and updated existing files as they occur) away from your own personal power surges, fires, or other disasters like coffee spills that can occur to anything physically near your main machine or imperfect person (I spill a lot). I am currently uploading on to Carbonite, which provides unlimited capacity for very nominal (~$60/yr, IIRC) fees, with unlimited ability to download your files should you need to (haven't tried this as yet). It does not provide any of the functionality of the typical photo websites, it is strictly for off site data backup. My initial upload will take several months, but once complete should be quite secure, and is automatically updated as I change or add files. I'm hoping it will prove to be a successful solution, as I am concerned that merely adding a new hard drive next to my current one does not add too much incremental safety, and I'm far to disorganized to ever reliably download onto CDs or DVDs. Of course, YMMY.
LJS

David E. Rose

3-Dec-2008, 05:05

If you want your data to be safe, I would suggest a Raid setup with mirrored drives. The Western Digital My Book Studio drive that I use has that capability (1TB total space on two drives, 500GB of storage in mirrored Raid configuration). In addition to the mirrored drives, I burn a gold archival DVD or CD for each project as it is completed and keep them in my detached garage for additional safety. All hard drives fail eventually, so you should have a system that allows easy recovery when it happens.

Dave Jeffery

3-Dec-2008, 05:38

Dave Jeffery

3-Dec-2008, 05:49

bsimison

3-Dec-2008, 06:13

Not trying to hijack the thread on external HD's but Bluehost could save $ on hard drives, as mirror drives, or in Raid arrays and it offers an extra level of safety being in a different location.

Also I was using a Maxtor external firewire drive with Windoze 2000 and I had either moved the firewire card to a new box, or I was installing Windoze, and with absolultly no prompting the OS started reformatting the drive and I had to reload 313 video files.

Internet-based solutions are fine for your offsite backup method, but I would only trust them as a tertiary layer. Economies of business change quickly -- look at how the Photoshelter Collection and Digital Railroad have both folded in the last few months. Make sure that you have your own complete *local* backup of your work as well as a secondary layer.

I'm using an old Mac MDD G4 tower with several internal drives as the main host. Images are burned to DVD (using unique, timestamped names) and stored on the G4 tower in folders named the same as each DVD. As my offsite backup, the DVDs go to a folder in my wife's office at the local college.

The G4 is connected to my home network via gigabit ethernet, and many of the archived discs are cataloged in Lightroom. The remainder are easily searchable from the G4 using a Mac OS X app named Leap (http://www.ironicsoftware.com/leap/index.html), a Spotlight add-on that digs into image metadata to return results.

Jeff Bannow

3-Dec-2008, 08:56

I'm going to try Blue Host for an added backup http://www.bluehost.com/contact_us.html $6.95 a month unlimited storage and bandwidth and you can run a website as well.

Has anyone had any experience with them?

I use Bluehost for my website and have been happy with the uptime, speed and customer service. Note the $7 price is for 3 year prepayment.

Kuzano

3-Dec-2008, 09:21

Internet-based solutions are fine for your offsite backup method, but I would only trust them as a tertiary layer.

Remember this above all. Businesses must be profitable or they die. Web sites are businesses (is that a surprise). Web sites probably die and disappear at as high, if not higher, rate than brick and mortar establishments. When my friend lost all his images to a web site system about 3 years ago, he had no warning and there was no recovery. He never heard from anyone regarding the demise and loss of his images ever again. His efforts to contact anyone about the whereabouts of his files were in vain.

I agree with the post I quoted. Yes web sites make it easy to back up your data. They get a cash stream and you do the work, or your computer does. If the cash stream does not pay their operating expenses, salaries, and the bandwidth bill, the eventual outcome is shut down or bankruptcy.

So, for ease and a small amount per month it might be easy to use Web Site Backups, but also make sure that on some regular schedule, you also make backups on some form of media that you retain possession of and store in a safe location. I would say at least quarterly, so that at a minimum your loss will be reduced to just your last 3 months image capture and or PP work.

OH yes, and be wary of pre-payment on web site services. I would love to collect 3 years of payment in advance. However, I can guarantee that if you give me the money for three years of service in advance, the money won't last 3 years. Where will I get my operating capital when the money is gone in 18 months? How are you going to find me when I close doors in 18 months???

Frank Petronio

3-Dec-2008, 10:20

After promoting Photo Shelter I got burnt out of weeks of work keywording and prepping the stock images I uploaded to it. Online storage is one tool but you need multiple tools to safely back up your work.

Dave Jeffery

3-Dec-2008, 22:15

That's good advice about the online storage companies and I'll admit that I was too overconfident about the soundness of that business. Thanks!

I'll have to find one that is deemed by the Fed to be "Too big to fail". I guess too many of those businesses operate like our social security system.

Given that there is unlimited space and bandwidth I'm going to split the costs with family members so it will be cheap, and as everyone is suggesting I will make it just another redundant storage area which is part of a larger backup plan.

There have been a number of very large server facilities built by the government that companies can lease space on, such as in Virginia and on Maui, so it seems as though someone should be able to run a viable business.

I wonder what would happen to the servers if a company with lots of large files forewarned everyone that they were shutting down?

Perhaps it's time to consider also setting up a system where our family members can use each others computers for backup. Set up drives with password protected shared folders and send the data during the others working hours. Hard drives are cheap and cable modems are fast. Any ideas?

bsimison

4-Dec-2008, 05:27

I wonder what would happen to the servers if a company with lots of large files forewarned everyone that they were shutting down?

Digital Railroad's closing was announced by the liquidation company the same day they shut down site access. They promised subscribers 24 hours to download or transfer their images, but the servers were shut down substantially sooner than that. (DRR subscribers: please correct me if I'm wrong about this)

The point is that there was no warning of DRR's failure. In fact, the honchos were dancing on the Photoshelter Collection's grave back in September, saying that DRR would never do that to their subscribers.

Perhaps it's time to consider also setting up a system where our family members can use each others computers for backup. Set up drives with password protected shared folders and send the data during the others working hours. Hard drives are cheap and cable modems are fast. Any ideas?

My offsite backup method before I started using my wife's office at the university was to simply trade hard drives with a good friend in town. I would store his drives, and he mine. A couple of terabyte HDs in a shoe box takes up precious little room.

Dave Jeffery

4-Dec-2008, 10:03

"was to simply trade hard drives with a good friend in town."

Great idea. It's better to have a full drive close by and my family members are too far away for convenience. FWIW A friend used to do network support in LA and I remember there was a minimum distance that the backup drives needed to be from the main servers because of the earthquakes- 8 miles?

I like the idea of a virtual private network so I can just transfer files incrementally rather than passing around the drives, and if needed just grab the full drive. Just set up a VPN with a friend in town and only activate the network share for the file transfers. May as well have one clean boot drive stored separately, and a second drive or disk space in a friends computer for the incremental backups done over the network.

Any other ideas, simple solutions?

Dave Jeffery

4-Dec-2008, 18:29

Has anyone used this VPN software that is free for non commercial use?

LogMeIn Hamachi https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/vpn.asp

Windows XP can be set up with software that's included with it, but I'm using Win 2000.

seawolf66

6-Dec-2008, 09:48

Have a look at Micro center dot com they have many types of Hard drives on sale , I have seen a W/D 1TB at 129.00 , so with the prices being low you have a lot of choices to choose from on Hard drives: Good luck

neil poulsen

6-Dec-2008, 10:28

I have a couple of Maxtors, and they seem to work OK. But, they connect with a USB. I'm going to be looking for ones in the future that connect through Firewire, at least Firewire 4.

I had an incident using my Powerbook with the Maxtor in which I copied information, but the USB was not well connected. Everything looked fine from the Operating system's point of view, including the icons showing up on the Maxtor. But, nothing really copied. Weird.

Here are a couple more guidelines that I like to follow for myself.

Buy two at a time, so that you have the information duplicated. Getting large storage units is just that much more catastrophic, if one fails.

You need a good filing system. The more one has on a drive, the more difficult individual files can be to find. Don't know what works best. Probably depends on the user.

aphexafx

10-Jan-2009, 01:41

I'm just posting a good word for Seagate's FreeAgent Extreme 1TB model. Small, quiet, USB/FireWire/eSATA, and a 5 year warranty. Mine works great so far.

They also make a SAN model, but I prefer a directly mounted drive via FireWire, which I use to backup my online working RAID mirror set.

Dave Jeffery

10-Jan-2009, 03:23

This is a thread from early December and since then I have been looking into ways to remotely control cheap offsite backup. At first I looked at Hamachi but a hack is needed for large file transfers and since Hamachi handles the protocols.... Since then I have found G-Bridge which is supposed to allow me to operate the remote computer as if I was looking at my own desktop. I liked Brett's idea of swapping hard drives but with so many freinds having cable modems the idea was to avoid that step if possible.

What do you think of this backup idea? A simple computer is set up at a freinds place with mirrored drives, using Powertoy or Ghost, and remotely administed with G-Bridge. I haven't used G-Bridge yet and maybe it's not great? Files would be transferred when my freind is sleeping. Once the computer is set up the service is free, and in return my friend would be given backup space on my system.

I have lots of drives here and all computers have dual OS's with registry backups and mirrored drives but all my eggs are still in one basket in this location so I'm looking for a cheap offsite solution. Hopefully others on this list could benefit from a similar set up once a nice means of accomplishing this is defined.

Does anyone have experience with G-Bridge? Any input or ideas?

Does anyone have the FIOS service that Verizon has installed in some areas? The latest is that they have found a way to speed it up to 100Mb/sec! (100,000 ish Kb/sec)
TIA

Dave Jeffery

10-Jan-2009, 04:00

"They also make a SAN model, but I prefer a directly mounted drive via FireWire, which I use to backup my online working RAID mirror set."

Be careful with Windoze with the firewire interface. I was reformatting a drive or reinstalling Windoze or something and without any prompting, software decisions or input Windoze started overwriting the files on the firewire drive? This never happened to me with any other interface such as IDE, EIDE, SATA, USB etc. It could be a freak occurance as we are all familiar with, but you may want to disconnect the drive if you are doing any IDE/ SATA hard drive or OS modifications. Firewire is great but this glitch was a PITA since there was 150 gigs of video files on the drive. Since the firewire card plugs directly into the PCI bus the OS may have decided to speak IDE language to it?

aphexafx

10-Jan-2009, 19:37

"Be careful with Windoze with the firewire interface."

Thanks for the heads up, Dave. However, being one who is intimate with the Windows OS, among others, I am uncertain as to how, exactly, a Windows installation would start overwriting files on a hard drive. Do you mean it started to format the drive?

Anyway, I have used 1394 interfaces (FireWire) for a long time and I don't feel that there is any inherent danger with the protocol or the current hardware. Users make mistakes and delete things that they rather they hadn't, but I can assure you there is no danger in Windows getting confused and sending IDE commands down your FireWire interface!

Anyway, yes I agree that it is a good idea to disconnect all peripherals when doing ANY OS installation and then reconnecting and installing drivers once the OS is running on its own. And don’t be afraid of your FireWire interface. :)

aphexafx

11-Jan-2009, 02:43

BTW, I meant to type NAS, not SAN, above in post #37!

Dave Jeffery

11-Jan-2009, 04:01

"Do you mean it started to format the drive?"
Yes.

"but I can assure you there is no danger in Windows getting confused and sending IDE commands down your FireWire interface"

I was joking about that. The PCI bus of Windows(2K) is IDE which the card is built for.

"being one who is intimate with the Windows OS" -you likely understand the unpredictable nature of the operating system at times, especially, as an example, when manually assigning IRQ's and drivers, specifically in the NT/ Win2K OS's. I think many people who have worked on computers for a while, that have manually installed PCI cards during the initial introduction of plug and play would also contend that the OS can be inconsistant in nature. I still choose to use Win2K.

"yes I agree that it is a good idea to disconnect all peripherals when doing ANY OS installation and then reconnecting and installing drivers once the OS is running on its own"
Yes, so maybe you do agree?, or Win2K can start to overwrite a firewire drive on it's own. Some people will trust me on this. I did not do anything to initiate Windows to start formatting the drive and I have never had this happen with other hard drive interfaces.

"And don’t be afraid of your FireWire interface."
Don't be afraid, but if people caution you that there can be odd behaivour with the interface, which they have personally experienced, it may be worth being a little careful and my feedback was not meant to be mean or condescending. You may never have had a problem with a firewire interface.

Another great example of mixed experiences is Windows Vista. It seems there are a variety of opinions regarding the behaivior of this OS as well, many of them are not positive and I'm glad that people caution others about Vista. I don't think it's very hard for many people to imagine that someone may have had an unusual incident with a firewire drive and a Windows OS.

Dave Jeffery

11-Jan-2009, 04:51

From,
http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=44423
I do not like or trust the Windows backup software

Hey, wait a minute..........

aphexafx

11-Jan-2009, 12:05

Dave, I wasn't intending to correct you, I'm sure something happened to your FireWire drive or whatever.

I know you were joking about the confused IDE commands, if I thought you were serious I would have just left it alone.

I do not like Vista at all either, however I do run it on my ThinkPad tablet because it has a much advanced pen interface over XP's, and that is the point of the Tablet after all! I would not use Vista on any production, or otherwise critical, system.

I am fully of the opinion that you indeed had an incident with some drive connected to you system via FireWire, however I maintain that I doubt it was the FireWire protocol or interface that was your issue. That's fine if you disagree! Sorry you had an issue, and again, thanks for the heads up. However, I have never seen a Windows kernel sponatiously begin formatting a drive at any version - and I cannot think of how that would even be possible beyond a wayward script or specific process, which would be uncommon and not Window's fault anyway - but I do not know your system.

I do not like or trust the Windows backup software. I think it is antiquated, illogical, and I do not like the proprietary file format. I'll say it as many times as is necessary, and I do not believe I am contradicting myself in any way by doing so. I DO like Genie Backup Pro very much, on the other hand, and I use it daily.

Cheerios!