Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Of course in 22 years of using computers, I have never had a HDD failure on one of my machines. (knock on wood cause Im sure its a matter of time)

As the beach ball starts to spin indefinitely on your desktop....
Seriously though, it's not a question of if, but when your HDD will fail.
 
Just bought a 2 TB WD My Book Pro for 530 at NewEgg earlier tonight. Planning to mirror the drives.
 
As the beach ball starts to spin indefinitely on your desktop....
Seriously though, it's not a question of if, but when your HDD will fail.

I am sure of it. I think its because I never seem to have a computer or HDD for very long because of upgrades. I just like buying and upgrading alot. Of course now that I have a mac, I dont have to do that as often so maybe I will finally have my first failure. Not hopeing of course. lol
 
I am sure of it. I think its because I never seem to have a computer or HDD for very long because of upgrades. I just like buying and upgrading alot. Of course now that I have a mac, I dont have to do that as often so maybe I will finally have my first failure. Not hopeing of course. lol

True, but then even new drives can fail if they are the bad egg.
When I buy several new drives at once, I go to different vendors. Theory being, if I order x number of drives from a single vendor and one of the drives is bad, all of them could be bad if they were part of a bad batch.
 
As the beach ball starts to spin indefinitely on your desktop....
Seriously though, it's not a question of if, but when your HDD will fail.

Yeah, it's just a matter of when! :eek:

I think I have had maybe 2 HDD failures over many many years, and god knows how many HDD's we have owned. In all honesty I do not know how many HDD's we have in use today. We prepare for HDD failures so when they happen, it's not an issue.

Of course Leopard and Time Machine make it all that much easier to prepare for HDD failures! :D
 
Yeah, it's just a matter of when! :eek:

I think I have had maybe 2 HDD failures over many many years, and god knows how many HDD's we have owned. In all honesty I do not know how many HDD's we have in use today. We prepare for HDD failures so when they happen, it's not an issue.

Of course Leopard and Time Machine make it all that much easier to prepare for HDD failures! :D

I hear that. now that I finally upgraded to leopard I am seriously eying the time capsule.
 
I hear that. now that I finally upgraded to leopard I am seriously eying the time capsule.

I wouldn't recommend the Time Capsule. Save your money and get an enclosure with no HDD in it. Stock it with your choice of drive(s). I use the NewTech Guardian Maximus FW800 for my MP. It's a RAID1....makes rebuilding a failed drive simple, it rebuilds in the background as soon as you plug in a replacement drive. They sell it at OWC. Anyway, the enclosure and 2 VERY large HDDs will still cost you less than the Time Capsule and besides, you probably already have a gigabit wireless router.
 
that is a thought. However I dont have a gigabit router or wireless N. I have a regular old Linksys wireless G router. However if I get the airport extreme and I use an external hdd I would want something in the same formfactor so I would need to get one of the mini sized enclosures.
 
that is a thought. However I dont have a gigabit router or wireless N. I have a regular old Linksys wireless G router. However if I get the airport extreme and I use an external hdd I would want something in the same formfactor so I would need to get one of the mini sized enclosures.

I have one of those too!! The V3. It rocks!
 
I wouldn't recommend the Time Capsule. Save your money and get an enclosure with no HDD in it. Stock it with your choice of drive(s). I use the NewTech Guardian Maximus FW800 for my MP. It's a RAID1....makes rebuilding a failed drive simple, it rebuilds in the background as soon as you plug in a replacement drive. They sell it at OWC. Anyway, the enclosure and 2 VERY large HDDs will still cost you less than the Time Capsule and besides, you probably already have a gigabit wireless router.

For me, I just bought the CalDigit FireWire VR 1.5TB drive. Love it.
 
i'm about to start ripping movies in HandBrake
and i was wondering where you guys think
i could find a semi-inexpensive 1TB external
HD that I can store the files on and connect
it via USB to my AirPort Extreme.


Any response is much appreciated.


chase :apple:

I'm a big fan of the My Book series from Western Digital. I think I saw one at either BestBuy.com or Buy.com (some sorta Buy site!) at $230 for 1TB. They take up very little desk surface area and look really neat (although I wish they'd stop changing how the lights look on the outside every 2 months).

Be warned: I can only get one drive to work via an AEBS on the network. When I use a USB hub on the AEBS, neither drive works. It's very annoying, so I have them both hooked up directly to my MacBook. Nice for iPod syncing, bad for getting to files away from the desk.
 
The best solution is the WD 1TB drive is cable of RAID and also offers a 1gig Network port. There is also a 2TB external box now, I found other SAN solution which cost more for the box then you have to the hard drives
 
Stay away from WD.. They suck! I had a 1TB WD Premium II that retailed for $400 and it sounded loud enough to bother my sleeping. Thank god I got it for free..then i got 2 1tbs from costco...They were $250 and fw400 equipped so I thought this is a killer deal but 2 wouldn't mount and 2 wouldn't power on. I went with 4 500gbs and they're silent and work perfect.
 
Call me ignorant but...

Can you link up an external USB HD to the Apple TV?

If so is this now a standard feature, or a 'hardware hack'?

Or we talking via a NAS share?

Sorry if I have missed something, but this would pretty much mean me getting an AppleTV (was thinking of a Mac mini as it would allow me to add storage to it easily).
 
you cannot add storage unless you change the internal drive. However, I think someone was working on a hack to allow the USB port to work, but I am not sure if it was ever completed or successful.
 
Anyone running a RAID 5 solution?

Yes, internally on my MP. But, I still back up externally with Time Machine. RAID5 internal solutions only protect me from a single HD failure. For a fried system, fire, flood, theft, file corruption, or brain fart, an external (off-site) backup is still a must. I keep an external Time Machine attached (updated hourly) and a clone detached (off-site) and updated weekly.
 
Well, I don't know if this will blow your budget, but consider the Guardian Maximus from OWC. It is a RAID1 device (mirrored drives) that will protect your media content.

I don't ever want to have to rip my stuff again (I've got dozens of hours involved in that process).

I went with the 1TB version, it was about $860 shipped. The internal drives are good quality (Hitachi 7k1000's). The enclosure has a 2yr warranty and provides 2 FW800, 1 FW400, and a USB port.

If that's too pricey, consider a 500GB version. If you can't afford a RAID1, then I suggest you order a Hitachi 7k1000 or Western Digital 1TB drive from NewEgg and put it into a nice enclosure that has good cooling and a triple interface (FW800/400/USB2).

I have the 750, this thing is TITS. Fast and everything is always backed up. With the failure rates of drives these days some sort of redundancy is needed these days. Anyway I think the 500 is the cheapest per GB, but the 750 isn't much more. The 1TB is a bit pricey yet since 1TB drives are a bit pricey, you can buy the case for 150 and a couple TB drives from newegg and save yourself a hundred bones or so too.
 
....you can buy the case for 150 and a couple TB drives from newegg and save yourself a hundred bones or so too.

That is the best option. There's always a sale on drives at tiger or newegg. I saved a couple of benjamins by just getting the Maximus enclosure by itself.
 
I have the 750, this thing is TITS. Fast and everything is always backed up. With the failure rates of drives these days some sort of redundancy is needed these days. Anyway I think the 500 is the cheapest per GB, but the 750 isn't much more. The 1TB is a bit pricey yet since 1TB drives are a bit pricey, you can buy the case for 150 and a couple TB drives from newegg and save yourself a hundred bones or so too.

I considered buying just the case and then getting WD drives at employee cost (I used to work for WD, and I still have friends there ;) ). However, I decided to buy everything from OWC for the following reasons:

1. The Hitachi Drives (7k1000) are good drives (see feedback at storagereview.com forums).
2. The drives go through a burn in period at OWC prior to shipping
3. The drives come pre-formatted HFS+
4. The enclosure warranty is 2 years, but if you buy just the box, it is only a 1 year warranty.
 
I considered buying just the case and then getting WD drives at employee cost (I used to work for WD, and I still have friends there ;) ). However, I decided to buy everything from OWC for the following reasons:

1. The Hitachi Drives (7k1000) are good drives (see feedback at storagereview.com forums).
2. The drives go through a burn in period at OWC prior to shipping
3. The drives come pre-formatted HFS+
4. The enclosure warranty is 2 years, but if you buy just the box, it is only a 1 year warranty.

I guess that worked for you. But like I said, I saved a couple hundred getting only the box and waiting for a good sale online. The 1-year warranty isn't an issue since the box only costs $150 and is the kind of hardware that when surge-protected will last a LONG time, unlike a hard-drive that I can pop in a year or two from now when the price for the drive is about 50% cheaper!
 
Is there a size limit to the drives you stick in a Guardian Maximus? I like the idea better than DROBO, and it if the drive size is limited only to whatever you can afford, then I think I'm in.

???
 
Is there a size limit to the drives you stick in a Guardian Maximus? I like the idea better than DROBO, and it if the drive size is limited only to whatever you can afford, then I think I'm in.

???

As far as I know, the limit is the biggest SATA you can buy, which is 1TB in both slots, for a useable space of 1TB (RAID1).
 
I guess that worked for you. But like I said, I saved a couple hundred getting only the box and waiting for a good sale online. The 1-year warranty isn't an issue since the box only costs $150 and is the kind of hardware that when surge-protected will last a LONG time, unlike a hard-drive that I can pop in a year or two from now when the price for the drive is about 50% cheaper!

That's good you saved some $$$, but you (and everyone else) should know that OEMs tend to get the best batch of drives from a manufacturer (he who buys the most, gets the best stuff). The leftovers (drives with more media defects, lower quality heads, etc) go to smaller businesses. I don't know if Hitachi sends the same quality stuff to OWC that they send to a large distributor (such as HP or Dell), but there's a good chance they get better stuff than the mom and pop online shops.

Not that I've ever had a drive fail on me when purchased from such places, but thought I'd share.

So, bottom line, if you see a good deal on a drive, make sure the shop selling it does a decent volume in sales, otherwise that $50 you might be saving might cost you in the end.
 
So, bottom line, if you see a good deal on a drive, make sure the shop selling it does a decent volume in sales, otherwise that $50 you might be saving might cost you in the end.

All true. And I think tigerdirect and newegg qualify in this department. :)
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.