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Looking for 1TB External HD
- Thread starter chaseardoin7
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I just bought a new MyBook Essential 1TB drive for 218 bucks at Amazon. Its small and absolutely quiet and I have it running all day. The old MyBook that sounded like a jet engine ( without fan modification ) days are gone. I think I'll get another one of these pretty soon.
Is there any reason why I couldnt buy this and throw 6 1TB drives in it and have a insanely large AppleTV setup using the USB port hack?
http://www.satadrives.com/sasixbay5ina1.htm
http://www.satadrives.com/sasixbay5ina1.htm
A cautionary tale for Lacie drives.
I've had 3 Lacie drives crap out in the last 6 weeks. All between 1-2 yrs old. One was a 1TB (2x500GB), one was a 500GB (2x250GB), and the other was a single 250GB. The 1TB and 500GB drives both suffered from one of the drives in the case crapping out. I opened them up and played around, swapping other drives in and out, trying to figure if the problem was the drive, the chipset, or maybe with the firewire connection. I haven't been able to get them to work again. Interestingly, my colleague connected them to his windows XP machine and had no problems. I am now looking for replacements, trying to stay away from Lacie, but Lacie are more widely available to me than other brands, especially with the higher capacities.
I have investigated a RAID 5 box. However, a dealer told me that there is a specific issiue with OS X and RAID 5 over firewire for desktop use. The issue is that only capacities upto 2TB are recognised. Does anyone know if this is true?
I've had 3 Lacie drives crap out in the last 6 weeks. All between 1-2 yrs old. One was a 1TB (2x500GB), one was a 500GB (2x250GB), and the other was a single 250GB. The 1TB and 500GB drives both suffered from one of the drives in the case crapping out. I opened them up and played around, swapping other drives in and out, trying to figure if the problem was the drive, the chipset, or maybe with the firewire connection. I haven't been able to get them to work again. Interestingly, my colleague connected them to his windows XP machine and had no problems. I am now looking for replacements, trying to stay away from Lacie, but Lacie are more widely available to me than other brands, especially with the higher capacities.
I have investigated a RAID 5 box. However, a dealer told me that there is a specific issiue with OS X and RAID 5 over firewire for desktop use. The issue is that only capacities upto 2TB are recognised. Does anyone know if this is true?
Yes but with no fan in the casing, do not expect the drive to last years and years. I had a few cases that had no fans and all the drives gave up the ghost after about 18 months of use where I have another few ext drives with fans and they've been running for several years.
For me. no case fan no buy and must be in an aluminum casing too.
I also believe that the lack of active cooling means an early death for a disk drive. I noticed that the new line of My Books appear to be going fanless, so I just bought another My Book Pro II (with fan) while I could.
There are numerous reports of weird OS problems with the My Book line, I suspect that half of them are related to the WD software. I do not install their software and have had no issues so far.
I've used a LaCie Bigger Disk Extreme (extremely noisy, that is), a Seagate PushButton Backup (firewire compatibility issues with Leopard), and the NewerTech MiniStack (fine if you need USB/FW hubs).
I find the Drobo to be a fascinating device, but it is relatively slow, USB-only, and expensive. Since I already back up to separate drives, it's RAID functionality is of limited value to me. Still, I'll be watching them to see where they take it.
A.
I went with an external case with esata and usb and installed a westerb digital 1 tb drive. Connected directly to the iTunes "server" for appletv streaming and it works great. It's installed in the office and it's very quiet with a small thermo fan (vantec case, I think).
For redundancy, I picked up a 1tb time capsule and make monthly backups of content over to it. It's installed in a network closet with passive air cooling (air vents allowing cold air in and hot air out).
Why not just put everything on the time capsule? Traffic (say, a streaming movie) would go from the TC to the server back to the TC and then to the appletv - since I'm also browsing fairly constantly (I often work from home) and torrenting (shhhh) I wanted a more efficient path for network traffic.
Having the TC, though, gives me a lot more comfort that I won't lose the hundreds of hours invested in encoding all those movies if I lose a drive...
For redundancy, I picked up a 1tb time capsule and make monthly backups of content over to it. It's installed in a network closet with passive air cooling (air vents allowing cold air in and hot air out).
Why not just put everything on the time capsule? Traffic (say, a streaming movie) would go from the TC to the server back to the TC and then to the appletv - since I'm also browsing fairly constantly (I often work from home) and torrenting (shhhh) I wanted a more efficient path for network traffic.
Having the TC, though, gives me a lot more comfort that I won't lose the hundreds of hours invested in encoding all those movies if I lose a drive...
I just bought a MyBook 1TB and its super quiet, Its got one drive in it, air vents all around it, I just transferred 90GB to it took 50 mins over firewire 400 (avg file size 4gb) and it is easily cooler than the heat raditaing from my macbook hdd lol !
It runs nice and quiet and and just warm to the touch, maybe high 20's (C)
but why is there 2 firewire ports? can you disy chain these things together?
It runs nice and quiet and and just warm to the touch, maybe high 20's (C)
but why is there 2 firewire ports? can you disy chain these things together?
i am debating a couple options and hopefully i could get some great input here.
my situation is this:
have a mac mini and have about 500 gb of vids/music/photos etc but it will grow to just under 1tb. right now i have a 500 gb HD that has everything on it (used as my itunes folder) and a western digital my book 1 tb "mac" edition. I love the 1tb but have read some not so good reviews on it and am thinking of returning it. My worry is the HD's crashing suddenly and losing all the info.
these are the different scenarios i am thinking of doing, which one do you all think is best?
#1-buy 2 of these at costco, getting them at costo because of their return policy. http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11240846&whse=BC&topnav=&browse=&lang=en-US
use one as my itunes folder, other as my back up HD. total cost about $450
#2-buy 2 internal 750 gb and get a 2 bay enclosure for them and use this as my time machine HD and keep the WD mac edition and use that as itunes folder
#3-get a time capsule (tb) and use it as my time machine HD and then use a tb HD as itunes folder.
Which one would be best? feel free to suggest what HD's (internal or external) would be best, what enclosures would be best or a better option all together i havent posted
Thanks!!!
my situation is this:
have a mac mini and have about 500 gb of vids/music/photos etc but it will grow to just under 1tb. right now i have a 500 gb HD that has everything on it (used as my itunes folder) and a western digital my book 1 tb "mac" edition. I love the 1tb but have read some not so good reviews on it and am thinking of returning it. My worry is the HD's crashing suddenly and losing all the info.
these are the different scenarios i am thinking of doing, which one do you all think is best?
#1-buy 2 of these at costco, getting them at costo because of their return policy. http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11240846&whse=BC&topnav=&browse=&lang=en-US
use one as my itunes folder, other as my back up HD. total cost about $450
#2-buy 2 internal 750 gb and get a 2 bay enclosure for them and use this as my time machine HD and keep the WD mac edition and use that as itunes folder
#3-get a time capsule (tb) and use it as my time machine HD and then use a tb HD as itunes folder.
Which one would be best? feel free to suggest what HD's (internal or external) would be best, what enclosures would be best or a better option all together i havent posted
Thanks!!!
Given how much time you're going to invest in getting your media library set up, you really should get a RAID box. RAID 1 or RAID 5. It's the only (reasonable) way to ensure a hard drive failure doesn't cause your data to be lost.
D-Link DNS-323
After days of research on the net, I bought the following last weekend.
D-Link NAS enclosure DNS-323 $179.99
WD Cavier SE16 500GB $99.99 x 2 ... configured to RAID 1
1. Connected this to my Netgear WPN824 router.
2. Created Music/iTunes/iTunes Music folder in DNS-323.
3. Designated the DNS-323 iTunes Music folder as the default path in iTunes. Then did a Consolidate Library. The files on my MBP were copied to the above path.
3. When connected to DNS-323, iTunes will connect to that path upon its start up. If not connected to DNS-323, iTunes will revert to internal HDD iTunes Music folder.
4. This way I still have music to go, i.e. when not connected to DNS-323.
5. Any new music, I will add to iTunes off-line, which will copy the file to the internal iTunes Music folder. Once I get to connect to the DNS-323, do a Consolidate Library so the music is also synced with the DNS-323 iTunes Music folder.
6. For movies, I will add to iTunes when DNS-323 is connected, unless I want to carry that load in the internal HDD as well, in which case same procedure as in #5.
7. ATV streams fine over wireless. Of course, MBP has to be up and running and connected to DNS-323. For longer movies, might want to pause the movie at the beginning and let it load for half a minute or so.
FTP setup was also a breeze. Music streams fine via internet FTP. Photos are good as well. I now have access to my music and photos from any where in the world. Movies, however, lacks the bandwith, but who knows, 2 or 3 years from now, that too may be possible.
After days of research on the net, I bought the following last weekend.
D-Link NAS enclosure DNS-323 $179.99
WD Cavier SE16 500GB $99.99 x 2 ... configured to RAID 1
1. Connected this to my Netgear WPN824 router.
2. Created Music/iTunes/iTunes Music folder in DNS-323.
3. Designated the DNS-323 iTunes Music folder as the default path in iTunes. Then did a Consolidate Library. The files on my MBP were copied to the above path.
3. When connected to DNS-323, iTunes will connect to that path upon its start up. If not connected to DNS-323, iTunes will revert to internal HDD iTunes Music folder.
4. This way I still have music to go, i.e. when not connected to DNS-323.
5. Any new music, I will add to iTunes off-line, which will copy the file to the internal iTunes Music folder. Once I get to connect to the DNS-323, do a Consolidate Library so the music is also synced with the DNS-323 iTunes Music folder.
6. For movies, I will add to iTunes when DNS-323 is connected, unless I want to carry that load in the internal HDD as well, in which case same procedure as in #5.
7. ATV streams fine over wireless. Of course, MBP has to be up and running and connected to DNS-323. For longer movies, might want to pause the movie at the beginning and let it load for half a minute or so.
FTP setup was also a breeze. Music streams fine via internet FTP. Photos are good as well. I now have access to my music and photos from any where in the world. Movies, however, lacks the bandwith, but who knows, 2 or 3 years from now, that too may be possible.