Need a new harddrive

I really like Lacie drives, my main external backup is a Lacie BigDisk.
 
Wouldnt have WD in the house myself. Always had good luck with Seagates *** the latest 1.5TBs have issues.

Also NEVER stand them upright like a book coz they will topple and trash.
 
Cool, so Lacie are a winner then. I'm after a HDD that powers from firewire or USB.. I use a couple of big iomega drives plugged into the wall for backup just now, but need something for being on the move.
 
Only 2.5" drives can be realiably powered via USB/Firewire. You can get adapters that plug into multiple USB ports to power a 3.5" drive but personally I wouldn't do it. You can get a really decent external drive case for a 2.5" drive then buy a decent 2.5" drive for not a lot of dosh. Remember few of these external drive sellers actually make the drives so you need to know what ACTUAL drive(s) are in it.
 
Irrespective of the make (personally I don't like IBM drives, but maybe that's just me) get TWO. It may well sound like paranoia but just assume as an absolute certainty that one of them is going to fail and take all your pics with it. The chances of two failing at the same time is a LOT less.

I work in IT and believe me trying to recover data from a trashed hard drive is only fun when it's not YOUR data. Oh... it is your data? Well life's like that sometimes.

Honestly if you really do feel that your external drive is on the way out, then get two external drives right now.

cheers
Bill
 
I know I'm tempting fate but I've not had any problems with any make of External Drive thus far.

I currently have WD Passport, Seagate and Lacie drives (all bought based on price) and have had no issues, in addition I have one that I put together myself from a 3.5" drive (can't remember which make) and a HDD enclosure.

If I had to choose I like the Seagate, then the WD and finally the Lacie. The Lacie would have come first if only it had an off switch (I know I can turn it off at the mains but that's not the point).
 
Irrespective of the make (personally I don't like IBM drives, but maybe that's just me) get TWO. It may well sound like paranoia but just assume as an absolute certainty that one of them is going to fail and take all your pics with it. The chances of two failing at the same time is a LOT less.
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if youre going to do that, buy from 2 different places at different times. rules out any dodgy batch issues. then download allway sync and replicate your data.
 
take a look at Freecom datatank or similar, it's a RAID system, so you have two drives in the box, they are written in parallel, so if one goes down you still have the other AND when you put a new one in it gets a copy of the data.

I see you are a mac user - this setup is what I have for Time Machine, inside there are two 400GB drives, it's been running for over a year and is still less that half full. It sits there and you never need think about backup - it's happening every hour :-)
 
oh for goodness sake, please stop recommending RAID as a single point of backup. as ive said after 3 of your posts, RAID controllers can fail and will destroy all attached drives. they are not indestructible and should only be used with a 2nd method of backup.
 
I agree with the RAID comments - RAID is good, but its not the full answer - if you delete something you didnt mean to delete it will disapoear of both drives - also, they will both get nicked together so you must do something else - preferably storing your images away from your computer / home. I have a lacie drive and I like it - I use both Mac and PC - the lacie drive comes with some software to carve the drive up into 2 partitions, one accessible by mac and one by pc - this was not what I wanted, so i ignored that and re-formatted it using FAT32 - this meant the whole drive was visible to both platforms. Jus tbe careful if you want to store (very) large files though - FAT 32 has limitations.
 
neil_g said:
oh for goodness sake, please stop recommending RAID as a single point of backup. as ive said after 3 of your posts, RAID controllers can fail and will destroy all attached drives. they are not indestructible and should only be used with a 2nd method of backup.
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Not a nice attitude neil, because your opinion differs from his doesn't give you the right to get snappy. As with all things your experience will vary from someone elses, sitemaster has said that his has been running for a year without problems and it may do for years to come. I'd suspect that hard drives being mechanical are more likely to fail than solid state circuits so raid is a good idea. You are correct in saying it should not be the only backup but it can certainly help.
 
I have just bought an iomega hard drive to use as a back up for files, I'm very happy with it so far! :thumbs: designed to go with imac mini but seems to be great with a PC too after formatted!
 
Steep said:
Not a nice attitude neil, because your opinion differs from his doesn't give you the right to get snappy. As with all things your experience will vary from someone elses, sitemaster has said that his has been running for a year without problems and it may do for years to come. I'd suspect that hard drives being mechanical are more likely to fail than solid state circuits so raid is a good idea. You are correct in saying it should not be the only backup but it can certainly help.
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sorry but it really gets my goat that people and marketing blurb state RAID is the best thing for data retention and youll be 100% safe.

its the reason why tape backups are still done on our servers, theyre a god send when a RAID controller fails and destroys everything on all attached drives at a root level. and on the occasions they have failed they have been server spec items, and if those can fail im pretty sure a consumer level device will too.

if you like having all your eggs in one basket then yes having a single point of storage, be it a single USB/SATA drive or a RAID enclosure, is for you.

sorry if this is fairly strong wording, however all i am trying to do is safeguard people data against bad advice. i cannot emphasise my point enough.
 
ding76uk said:
I am also interested in getting an external HDD. Are any drives better in peoples opinion than others, and are there any manufacturers to avoid?
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personally every hard drive that has developed a tick of death for me (ah home and work) "coincidentally" has been maxtor.

seagate are currently my choice for external drives.
 
My WD Elements just died after only 3 months - went to save something on it a couple of weeks ago and its just not showing as being there. Luckily i back everything up on monthly discs but talk about pain in the bum...

I'm going to get 2 external replacements this time so next time i won't have to faff around with discs.

No idea what to get instead though:shrug:
 
I've had good luck with Samsung drives, got 3 of them all working up to two years old now, I used to swear by Maxtor but that was years ago and far away.
 
Bill Roberts said:
Irrespective of the make (personally I don't like IBM drives, but maybe that's just me) get TWO. It may well sound like paranoia but just assume as an absolute certainty that one of them is going to fail and take all your pics with it. The chances of two failing at the same time is a LOT less.

I work in IT and believe me trying to recover data from a trashed hard drive is only fun when it's not YOUR data. Oh... it is your data? Well life's like that sometimes.

Honestly if you really do feel that your external drive is on the way out, then get two external drives right now.

cheers
Bill
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Don't worry- I have a few other HDD's, and use timemachine to keep everything nicely backed up. :D

Going to go for the linked Lacie drive.. cheers for the advice all. :D
 
Qwerty69 said:
I know I'm tempting fate but I've not had any problems with any make of External Drive thus far.

I currently have WD Passport, Seagate and Lacie drives (all bought based on price) and have had no issues, in addition I have one that I put together myself from a 3.5" drive (can't remember which make) and a HDD enclosure.

If I had to choose I like the Seagate, then the WD and finally the Lacie. The Lacie would have come first if only it had an off switch (I know I can turn it off at the mains but that's not the point).
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No word of a lie, the HDD in my Macbook failed this afternoon :'(

and it's a Seagate as well :thumbsdown: off to the Apple store tomorrow but not holding out much hope that they can fix it.

Looking on the bright side I don't actually keep any data files on the machine.
 
annao said:
My WD Elements just died after only 3 months - went to save something on it a couple of weeks ago and its just not showing as being there. Luckily i back everything up on monthly discs but talk about pain in the bum...
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ive just bought one of these :( hope mines ok
 
I have a WD passpost after I chuked my lacie porchse degin. Best thing !
THe WD are good !
 
Interesting thread,

Only last night was I talking with a good friend of mine who is the IT man at a telecommunication firm, he has seen all makes and sizes of drive fail!

We concluded that the best way forward was to have a back up, no mater if it is to have a raid, internal or external drive(s), the thinking behind this is easy, "you would have to be very unlucky to have both systems fail in the time it would take to rebuild the information lost on one of your drive(s)"

I have spread the risk, one NAS with Raid1 (mirror) with all important files stored, RAW etc and the HD in the PC has the same information on it, if the pc drive failed I have the NAS with the files on, if the NAS has one disc fail I have a mirror copy and if the Raid failed and I lost all on the mirrored drives, I then have the PC as a back up drive to then fill the NAS again.

If it’s real important stuff get an external drive, make a third copy and leave it at someone’s house, so if a natural / un-natural disaster happened you still can go and collect the copy from another location and re-install back at you location.

Another good point which was raised a few posts ago was to buy two drives from different shops, was also said last night while we were talking.

I short the question you need to answer is how important is my data? If the answer is very, then having a back up of the back up off site is a must!

I hope this helps a little.
 
Steep said:
Not a nice attitude neil, because your opinion differs from his doesn't give you the right to get snappy. As with all things your experience will vary from someone elses, sitemaster has said that his has been running for a year without problems and it may do for years to come. I'd suspect that hard drives being mechanical are more likely to fail than solid state circuits so raid is a good idea. You are correct in saying it should not be the only backup but it can certainly help.
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I have to say that I agree with Neil. I had the job of explaining to a business area that I worked with that they RAID controller had failed and taken ALL of the data with it. At least their data was also backed up to tape.

Personally I use multiple HDs in my PC, and then use MS sync toy (freeware) to run regular backups of my important data.
 
Mr_Sukebe said:
Personally I use multiple HDs in my PC, and then use MS sync toy (freeware) to run regular backups of my important data.
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I use vice-versa....got a lot more features and then intelligence for synincing one filesystem to another....have a look.

but otherwise, you are right about using mutiple devices.
 
neil_g said:
oh for goodness sake, please stop recommending RAID as a single point of backup. as ive said after 3 of your posts, RAID controllers can fail and will destroy all attached drives. they are not indestructible and should only be used with a 2nd method of backup.
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I'm sorry you don't like my suggestions

After selling computers and associated kit for nearly 20 years I know that most people don't have a backup and those who say they backup don't really do it. The only backup that really works is the one people actually use. That means fit and forget. For most users RAID is IMHO the most cost-effective solution for backup or external storage.
 
sitemaster said:
I'm sorry you don't like my suggestions

After selling computers and associated kit for nearly 20 years I know that most people don't have a backup and those who say they backup don't really do it. The only backup that really works is the one people actually use. That means fit and forget. For most users RAID is IMHO the most cost-effective solution for backup or external storage.
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Whilst I agree with some of your sentiments, the RAID controller is a lovely Single Point of Failure. Applications like Sync Toy might require a little thinking about, but can happily be scheduled to take regular (e.g. daily) backups.
 
I have a Freecom toughdrive 2.5" external 120GB HDD. I think they go up to over 300GB now.

I've had it 3 years now and is just thrown in the bottom of my bag, it's travelled all over the UK and europe, trains, car boots, planes....been dropped countless times. Basically abused the hell out of it in every way you shouldn't, short of dropping it in the bath :P.....and it's still working just fine. Extremely highly reccomended from me!

http://www.google.co.uk/products?q=...a=X&oi=product_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title
 
As far as RAID goes.....in my 20-odd years experience in IT, it'll only save data 50% of the time.

The other 50% the controller is dead, or the power supply went BANG and took out everything connected to it.

I don't believe RAID is an effective consumer backup solution. I used two methods, synchronising files onto a second PC, and periodic backups to an external drive which is effectively stored off-site (i.e. in my bag).

It's certainly cheaper than RAID if you factor in the expertise required to set it up.
 
I've seen it mentioned that apart from a few anomalies like bad batches and the like most hard drive failure rates among the big manufacturers are quite similar.

Anything from the big 3, Seagate, Western Digital or Samsung should be fine. You just have to admit that hard disks will fail and have a backup system in place.

I don't really like the idea of keeping the "backup" in the same box as the original a la RAID. If the PSU or any other component in the machine takes out the all hard drives you've lost your backup. Another problem with RAID is if a file gets deleted or overwritten accidentally it's mirrored on all disks and you've also lost your "backup". RAID isn't really a backup solution, which is why I have a server that backs up my computer every few days.
 
sitemaster said:
I'm sorry you don't like my suggestions

After selling computers and associated kit for nearly 20 years I know that most people don't have a backup and those who say they backup don't really do it. The only backup that really works is the one people actually use. That means fit and forget. For most users RAID is IMHO the most cost-effective solution for backup or external storage.
Click to expand...

completely agree that too many people do not have backups in place. however RAID is not the place for a single site of data storage.

if we're dropping experience into this, ive been playing with RAID for 10 years now and ive had several sleepless nights thanks to failing RAID equipment and having to restore back from tape.

in my opinion if you want safe data you want at least 2 copies with 1 taken offsite. not always possible but hey..
 
neil_g said:
completely agree that too many people do not have backups in place. however RAID is not the place for a single site of data storage.

if we're dropping experience into this, ive been playing with RAID for 10 years now and ive had several sleepless nights thanks to failing RAID equipment and having to restore back from tape.

in my opinion if you want safe data you want at least 2 copies with 1 taken offsite. not always possible but hey..
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Interesting direction this discussion has taken.. whats a good plan for offsite backup? I use timemachine for backing up at home. Is idisc any good? It would be for 200GB or so of data which is important to me.
 
personally ive got 2x 750gb drives which sync using "allway sync" which are on my desk at work, i also carry another drive around with my laptop which comes home with me etc which also syncs back to the 2x 750's via allway.
 
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