recommended external 2tb drive

roc1

roc1

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looking at getting a 2tb drive to compliment the imac, have seen iomega 2 tb external with FireWire 800, and also WD MyBook Studio Edition II (this is a raid but i don't really know the pros and cons of this?!), both have good reviews and are at about £150 each.

the drive will be used for main storage of photos as don't want to clog up the internal drive on the mac, so a fast connection like firewire800 is a must.

any pointers would be much appreciated!

thanks
 
FireWire or network connections add loads to the cost :-(

If you could take the drop on speed there's a LaCie 2 tb USB 2 drive on warehouse express for just over a ton.
 
I run 2 laCie Quadra drives. These have FW800 FW400 USB and eSata connections. They seem to be prices around £150. Although I have seen a Qudra on Amazon without the FW400 connections fror around £125.

I wouldn't opt for the RAID version as you lose half the storage capacity. The idea is that the information is stored across two disks so if one fails you don't lose all the data. Fine but if the electronics in the drive go you still have a problem. I'd opt for a additional drive, a simple inexpensive USB option to use as a backup. and cheaper if you take into account that with a raid option you only get 1TB of real storage.
 
I run G-Tech drives, which like the Quadras have FW800 FW400 USB and eSata connections.
G-Tech_G-Drive_196.jpg

They are NOT cheap, but I've found them to work well, if your really flush they do a 3TB one now.
 
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GTech are very highly regarded.

I have a 1.5TB Western Digital as my main photo drive at the moment. No complaints, really good drive.

Think the main brands are all good, but if you remember to backup like you drives are bound to fail, you will not be fine with any major brand really.

Neil is good at explaining raid. I am sure he will correct me if wrong, but raid on the drive you mention is 2 x 1tb discs in Raid 0. It reads and writes data to both drives at once to create the 2tb drive. Basically this allows a little more speed to the drive when working with data.

You can get raid drives that backup the same data to 2 drives, but do not treat this as an only backup, as the disc controller can cock up both drives as simply as one. You cannot safely use it as a primary backup solution.
 
ding76uk said:
Neil is good at explaining raid. I am sure he will correct me if wrong, but raid on the drive you mention is 2 x 1tb discs in Raid 0. It reads and writes data to both drives at once to create the 2tb drive. Basically this allows a little more speed to the drive when working with data.

You can get raid drives that backup the same data to 2 drives, but do not treat this as an only backup, as the disc controller can cock up both drives as simply as one. You cannot safely use it as a primary backup solution.
Click to expand...

oh hai :D

it depends on what raid level you set the drive in..

raid 1 - mirroring, i.e - 2x 1tb drive = 1tb but in a redundancy configuration, so you can lose one drive and continue operating from the other albeit in a reduced performance mode. this is not to be confused with backups, as the data is replicated between drives instantly this will not protect you against deletion, corruption or indeed total hardware (i.e. enclosure/disk controller) failure.

raid 0 - striping, i.e. - 2x 1tb drive = 2tb. supposedly faster performance HOWEVER if you lose one drive you will lose ALL data on both.

raid 5 - striping with parity, i.e. 3x 2tb drive = 2tb. although this is not possible with less than 3 drives, essentially you have 1 hot spare drive. so if one fails you can replace and rebuild your data from the other 2.

you can get combinations of the above, in a consumer level unit offering RAID with 2 disks id expect to see either 1 or 0.

some bed time reading - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
 
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I had a LaCie drive which didn't work very well with Time Machine for some reason. Replaced with a WD drive which has been faultless.
 
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