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MIKEGEE
New Member
Joined: 20 Apr 2011
Posts: 3
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 Posted: Thu May 05, 2011 11:14 am Post subject: BEST OFF THE SHELF FIREWIRE DRIVE |
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I am ready to purchase a FW HDD that I can run virtual windows off of. Dependability is the key, as there are many times I will be doing a lot of switching between OS and MACOSx. What off the shlf firewire do you recommend? I don't want to build one, just purchase it.
thanks
Mike |
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Bandit Bill
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Joined: 07 Jun 2005
Posts: 5804
Location: Edmonton, AB, Canada
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T'hain Esh kelch
Junior Member
Joined: 10 Oct 2010
Posts: 36
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| Posted: Fri May 06, 2011 9:55 am Post subject: |
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Lacie Quadra design..  |
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castaway
Senior Member
Joined: 21 May 2005
Posts: 465
Location: UK
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PhillT
Junior Member
Joined: 30 Jan 2011
Posts: 44
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Sun May 15, 2011 5:11 am Post subject: |
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For the sake of flexibility, I got the VoyagerQ dock from OWC.
_________________
M1. 2009 Mac Mini - 2.26GHz C2D - 8GB OWC RAM - 120GB Mercury Extreme SSD - Shintaro Dock.
M2. 2009 Mac Mini - 2.26GHz C2D - 8GB OWC RAM - 120GB Mercury Extreme SSD - Voyager Q Dock.
Billion Bipac 7700N modem / Router. |
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Cypher
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Joined: 24 Jan 2007
Posts: 2920
Location: North West - UK
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| Posted: Sun May 15, 2011 7:38 am Post subject: |
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I had a couple of external drives a 500GB Freecom, and also a 500GB Western Digital. The freecom worked well, but I had trouble with the Western Digital. When the WD failed I bought a VoyagerQ it's been great. Now I just buy cheap bare drives to throw in it. I really only use it for backups so most of the time it's turned off.
I also have a Drobo as I didn't want loads of external drives all over the place and looked at the Drobo as a good solution with it being expandable. I could add drives as I needed them.
The Drobo has worked well but I'm really not sure I'd ever buy another. I'm convinced that something Drobo are doing wrecks the drives you put in it. I bought a 5 bay drive last July and have already had 3 drives fail. One was very early on before I had loaded loads of data on it, so I replaced the drive without any issues. A couple of months ago two more drives failed, Actually one failed and whilst Drobo relayed the data, which took forever, another drive failed causing me to loose all of the data, over 3TB worth  I now have 3 disks which the Drobo will no longer except but which all appear to be work fine in the VoyagerQ. They have all been reformatted and checked but still refuse to work when plugged back in the Drobo. Not that I would ever trust putting them back in, but I did plug them in to test them.
After the failure I completely wiped all the remaining drives in the Voyager Q before putting them back in the Drobo, I also adding a brand new 2TB drive and then started to put data back on the Drobo. At this point I sent a diagnostic report off to Drobo to check everything was ok. They tell me I have bad sectors on two of the remaining drives in the stack.
So with the 3 faulty ones that makes 5 disks all less than 8 months old, some around 4 months old as I filled the Drobo up as I went along and all of them have developed problems whilst being used in the Drobo. Coincidence ?
_________________
Phil
Mac Mini 2.53GHz - iMac 2.0Ghz - Macbook Pro 2.4GHz - iPad 1 32GB 3G
6TB Netgear Ready NAS NV+ - 6TB Drobo S |
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gigaguy
Senior Member
Joined: 23 Jun 2007
Posts: 466
Location: AusTX
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| Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 3:13 pm Post subject: |
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I used to recommend G Technology drives. I had 4 or 5 and half have failed abruptly. They are high quality, I guess I don't trust any ext drive to last more than 3-4 years, I was not a heavy user, mostly for storage and occasional access.
I guess I don't trust any ext drive, and backing up is the only option for when, not if, they fail. |
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Bandit Bill
Veteran Member
Joined: 07 Jun 2005
Posts: 5804
Location: Edmonton, AB, Canada
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| Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 7:20 pm Post subject: |
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| gigaguy wrote: | I used to recommend G Technology drives. I had 4 or 5 and half have failed abruptly. They are high quality, I guess I don't trust any ext drive to last more than 3-4 years, I was not a heavy user, mostly for storage and occasional access.
I guess I don't trust any ext drive, and backing up is the only option for when, not if, they fail. |
The mean life expectancy for hard drives is 5 years. I personally don't trust any single back-up solution. If it's important I always have multiple back-ups. |
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gigaguy
Senior Member
Joined: 23 Jun 2007
Posts: 466
Location: AusTX
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| Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 8:34 pm Post subject: |
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Yes, I had media backed up 2-3 times, just need to start buying good external drives but really watch price. I see no advantage now of buying pricier G Techs. their designs are good, and they use quality materials, but those things donlt seem to make the drives last any longer than mainstream brands.
I'm not at the 'build your own drives' stage yet, but it makes more sense now. |
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asmack
Junior Member
Joined: 13 Mar 2010
Posts: 48
Location: Vancouver, BC
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| Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 1:11 am Post subject: |
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I love those Voyager Qs, they're awesome.
I was going to buy a Drobo last year but I just read too many horror stories about them: expensive, slow, proprietary and flakey. It's just something I personally would not trust to store all my data on one.
| Cypher wrote: | I had a couple of external drives a 500GB Freecom, and also a 500GB Western Digital. The freecom worked well, but I had trouble with the Western Digital. When the WD failed I bought a VoyagerQ it's been great. Now I just buy cheap bare drives to throw in it. I really only use it for backups so most of the time it's turned off.
I also have a Drobo as I didn't want loads of external drives all over the place and looked at the Drobo as a good solution with it being expandable. I could add drives as I needed them.
The Drobo has worked well but I'm really not sure I'd ever buy another. I'm convinced that something Drobo are doing wrecks the drives you put in it. I bought a 5 bay drive last July and have already had 3 drives fail. One was very early on before I had loaded loads of data on it, so I replaced the drive without any issues. A couple of months ago two more drives failed, Actually one failed and whilst Drobo relayed the data, which took forever, another drive failed causing me to loose all of the data, over 3TB worth I now have 3 disks which the Drobo will no longer except but which all appear to be work fine in the VoyagerQ. They have all been reformatted and checked but still refuse to work when plugged back in the Drobo. Not that I would ever trust putting them back in, but I did plug them in to test them.
After the failure I completely wiped all the remaining drives in the Voyager Q before putting them back in the Drobo, I also adding a brand new 2TB drive and then started to put data back on the Drobo. At this point I sent a diagnostic report off to Drobo to check everything was ok. They tell me I have bad sectors on two of the remaining drives in the stack.
So with the 3 faulty ones that makes 5 disks all less than 8 months old, some around 4 months old as I filled the Drobo up as I went along and all of them have developed problems whilst being used in the Drobo. Coincidence ? |
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Cypher
Veteran Member
Joined: 24 Jan 2007
Posts: 2920
Location: North West - UK
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| Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 3:05 pm Post subject: |
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| asmack wrote: | | I was going to buy a Drobo last year but I just read too many horror stories about them: expensive, slow, proprietary and flakey. It's just something I personally would not trust to store all my data on one. |
I actually love the Drobo, the concept is excellent and when it works it's an amazing device. I had 8 months of trouble free computing really and it's by far the easiest multi drive system I've ever used, fair easier to work with than my Netgear Ready NAS which can be an absolute pain in the **** sometimes, that is pretty slow and file permission can really bite you if your not carefully.
With the drobo though it's a case of all your eggs in one basket and when it messes up it does it big style. I will now only use it as a scratch drive, ease of use make it the ideal first device I look for things on, but I will ALWAYS have a backup copy of everything thats on the drobo from now on. I have chronosync backing up my system and it makes backups to the VoyagerQ and then to the Drobo. App downloads, TV downloads and ripped media such as DVD's and Music will all end up on the Drobo jusy for ease of use but the master copy will always be on the NAS, the drobo is the backup. I also have chronosync backing these up via the VoyagerQ to additional bare drives.
Drobo is a really good device, I just don't trust it for the important stuff now.
_________________
Phil
Mac Mini 2.53GHz - iMac 2.0Ghz - Macbook Pro 2.4GHz - iPad 1 32GB 3G
6TB Netgear Ready NAS NV+ - 6TB Drobo S |
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